Salt Lake County, City spar over public safety bond
Salt Lake County Council members Joe Hatch, Randy Horiuchi and Jim Bradley are speaking out against the bond, saying too many extra projects are attached to plans for a new public safety building and are unnecessarily driving up the bond's price tag.
The three county councilmen, all Democrats, agree the city needs to replace the nearly 50-year-old public safety building at 315 E. 200 South. But that can be done for about $100 million, which they say should be the bond's ceiling.
"They took an absolutely bad situation — a need for a new building — and dumped every single pet project onto it and think the voters would have no idea," Hatch said.
The $192 million bond, placed on the ballot by the Salt Lake City Council, would cover the cost of five public safety structures at three locations. A new public safety building, an emergency operations center and a combined parking/evidence storage structure would be grouped as a downtown public safety campus. The bond also would pay for a new west-side fire station and training center in Glendale and a combined east-side police/fire public safety facility in Sugar House.
Speaking to the Deseret Morning News editorial board this week, Burbank called a new public safety building with an emergency operations center the "No. 1 priority" because it has been neglected the longest, but he said the east- and west-side facilities also are necessary.
Burbank said the city is being fiscally responsible by combining police and fire facilities on the east side and building new west-side fire facilities around the existing training tower.
Hatch contends Salt Lake City could save even more taxpayer money by sharing a fire training facility with the county's Unified Fire Authority in Magna — a suggestion Burbank said contains "a lot of ignorance."
For one, the police chief said, the tower at the fire-training facility in Glendale already exists. Plans for the new training center call for the addition of three classrooms. Burbank also said it's not a good idea to pull public safety personnel so far away from downtown for training when an emergency could hit the state's capital city without warning.
As for the east-side public-safety center, Hatch said the new facility would represent a shift in police philosophy, changing from a centralized policing plan to a precinct-based model. That type of change, he said, should require public input.
Recent comments
The wording of the proposition sounds as if the yearly increase will...
Paul Bernard | Nov. 6, 2007 at 9:46 a.m.
Does Pat Shea also represent the financial institution that will...
SheaWatch | Oct. 23, 2007 at 9:57 p.m.
If Prop. 1 passes, how long will the increase in property taxes remain...
Tom Grover | Oct. 22, 2007 at 11:09 a.m.
