Officials Vote to Buy Land for 6th Valley LAPD Station

Ten years after it was first promised, city officials moved Monday to buy land in Mission Hills for a sixth police station in the San Fernando Valley.

With the backing of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, two City Council committees voted to spend $4 million to buy land, and discussed borrowing more money to fund the $17 million in expected construction costs.

The action was linked to the future as well as the past. Officials acknowledged that opposition from Valley voters, spurred largely by memories of the broken promise from 1989, was decisive in the defeat of another citywide police bond issue in April.

Those bonds will again be on the ballot in November 2000, and Parks and council members agreed Monday that a new station must be functioning by then, or it may face the same fate as this year’s vote.

“This is a big step in fulfilling the long unfulfilled promise made to voters in 1989 for a new police station,� said Councilman Alex Padilla, whose northeast Valley district includes the proposed police station.

In a special joint meeting, the council’s Public Safety Committee and Budget and Finance Committee unanimously recommended a hazardous material analysis and environmental review, and purchasing the site at 11121 Sepulveda Blvd., just north of San Fernando Mission Road.

Parks told the council members that there is a great need for a sixth station in the Valley. The other five Valley stations cover an average area of 45 square miles each, more than twice the area usually policed by the department’s 13 other stations.

“There is a higher volume of calls and longer response time in this area than in other parts of the city,� added Councilman Joel Wachs.

Shortly after voters approved the $176-million bond measure in 1989, the Los Angeles Police Department shelved the sixth Valley station project after it concluded there was not enough money for its other pressing needs.

It turns out there was $6 million unspent from the 1989 measure. The LAPD recommended this year that the city expedite the project by leasing land at the old Alemany High School campus and by spending $7 million to put up trailers that would serve as an interim police station until bond funds become available to build a permanent station.

That idea drew opposition from City Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka and council members, who said Valley voters would not like to see scarce funds used to build a substandard station. City analyst Larry Stern said the standard for a police station is 50,000 square feet, and the trailers project would only have 42,000 square feet.

Wachs said voters would see through such a trick, which might backfire if residents felt they would be stuck forever with trailers for a police station.

Trailers “are not going to be temporary,� Wachs warned. “They are going to be junky and they are going to be permanent.�

Padilla said the vacant Sepulveda Boulevard property, which is zoned for agricultural use, is centrally located in the proposed new police division and is close to the gang-plagued neighborhoods of North Hills.

While the committees agreed to ask the full council to budget money for the site purchase, it remained uncertain where money would be found for the station’s $17-million construction.

Council members said the obvious choice would be bonds issued against general fund money without voter approval. The city annually issues such bond financing. Valley council members said they would press to make sure financing is found for the police station, which would take as long as three years to build once ground was broken.

Yet another potentially sticky issue for the future is the staffing of the new station.

Parks told the council panels that he would probably have to take officers and detectives from other stations around the city for some of the staffing. Stern said it would cost $6.7 million annually if the 94 needed police positions were new hires.

But Eastside Councilman Nick Pacheco said he might fight any proposal taking officers from his district.

“I don’t want to see the services in my district diminished in any way,� he said.