December 6, 2007

City staff finds money to make Southside Police Substation reality

By Carol Rosen
Editor

It’s been 25 years in the making and it’s finally looking to become reality. On Dec. 18 the City Council will discuss and vote on plans to provide funds, over and above the $60 million in bonds that voters approved in 2002, to build a Southside police substation in the Edenvale area.

An architect’s rendering of the Southside Police Substation to be located in Council District 2 near Santa Teresa Boulevard and Cottle Road.

The city manager’s staff has devised a plan to meet the low bid of $67 million for the cost of the substation, a 105,000-square-foot three-story building built to house between 300 and 400 officers and administration in order to speed response times and cut down on driving time.

Currently, according to San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis, officers working in the southern part of San Jose have to travel long distances—in traffic—to respond to situations and then must go back to the station house on Mission Street in downtown San Jose to do paperwork and other job-related business.

“San Jose is the only major city that still is centralized,” Davis told the Times. “This is a city of 178.1-square miles and one million people. Some of our officers are commuting with the commuters. We have to get the officers stationed in the areas where they are working.”

The substation will be located immediately north of the Great Oaks, Highway 85 interchange just beyond iStar in the area of the former IBM and Hitachi campuses in Council District 2, near Santa Teresa Boulevard and Cottle Road. It will service the southern areas of the city including parts of Almaden, Evergreen, Blossom Valley, Santa Teresa, Cambrian Park and Edenvale extending into Coyote Valley when that area is developed. It will provide officers working in council districts 2,8, 9 and 10 a station in the area where they work.

The bond issue generated $60 million for the project, but in the ensuing years construction costs have rapidly escalated, according to Ed Shikada, deputy city manager. The staff is concerned that if the city decides to redesign the building to lower costs, they still will increase exponentially over the redesign period, which is estimated at about six months.

Instead the group has found sources that will provide the $7 million gap without putting the city into further debt. First thing that will happen is the community policing center. There were plans to relocate the center from Oakridge to its own building. But given the current leasing costs of $1 annually to Westfield, Shikada says it makes sense for the city and its taxpayers to continue that relationship and reallocate the $1.6 million on reserve for that project to the substation.

The second method of suggested sourcing is coming from the contingency reserves, which currently holds a bit more than $2.5 million. “This fund is set up for dealing with situations such as this,” Shikada said.

Instead of taking all the money out, the staff is asking for $2 million, since other projects, including five fire stations and a police driver training facility are needed, leaving slightly more than $500,000 in the fund.

The staff then decided to tap into a separate line item in the General Fund source. The furniture, fixtures and equipment line item is designed to cover costs for items, such as furniture, that are not eligible to be funded by the bond money. This area will provide and additional $2.3 million.

In order to provide the necessary furniture to equip the facility, staff suggested the department establish a police foundation similar to the library foundation, which has helped provide the furnishings for the new libraries.

An additional $2.3 million, which was generated from city land sales at Corta de Rosa, at Almaden Expressway and Coleman, can also be added to the pot. The sale has been concluded and the money received, but it has not yet been budgeted.

The staff also has suggested that the public arts allocation of $1.1 million be reallocated to construction of the substation. While this might be controversial, artwork can be added later when other funding sources are found, Shikada said. That would at least allow the substation to be built and operating.

“Its hard to say how the council will feel about our plans. We will know more in the next few days. I’m sure there will be a great deal of discussion and it probably will raise a lot of questions,” Shikada said. “This is an important project and is more cost effective than the alternative. To redesign, it would be an order of magnitude more money increasing costs at least $500,000,” he said.

In the meantime, Shikada said the Citizens Oversight Committee had scheduled a meeting for the evening of Dec.5, which should enlighten the staff as to how some citizens feel about the idea.

Meanwhile, Ken Ferguson, the police department’s deputy chief for the bureau of administration, which includes capital improvements, agreed that it’s time the city added the substation. “It’s our largest project and it’s very important that we divide the city up for the officers to make their jobs more efficient and to decrease response times.”

Davis added that the city began undertaking studies about the substation in the early 1980s, and it’s “finally getting off the ground. The city has more than doubled in that time period,” he said, “we are two-and-a-half times the size we were. This is the single biggest and most important capital project in the last 25 years. The last time the department did any capital improvements was in the late 1980s, early 1990s when we added the communications center. The police building dates from 1971.”

Mayor Chuck Reed told the Times that “Southside Substation has to be the top priority in the bond programs. If we have to make any cuts, they will have to be in other programs. The substation is priority number one,” he said.

“Opening the South San Jose Police Substation is a top priority in my book,” said District 10 Councilmember Nancy Pyle. She echoed the mayor’s comments stating, “If it means that other cuts in other budget areas are necessary in order to ensure that this substation opens and offers further protection to District 10 residents, then so be it. My top priority is ensuring that the City of San Jose is a safe place to enjoy life and raise a family.”

“This would not have been such a huge job if we had left money in the contingency fund for such a project,” added Pierluigi Oliverio. “We knew we were going to run into issues with the substation. I’d rather spend the money for safety improvements than on something like Fire Station 2. We’ve built a number of fire stations, but no [police] substations and this is very important.

“We are the only major city of our size not to have a police substation. It’s been on the city’s wish list for at least a decade, and based on that area’s size and geography, we need police out there. Now the council has to make trade-offs, we have to rob Peter to pay Paul or redesign for even more money” he said.

The final debate will be Dec. 18, and while Davis appears confident that the city will begin construction on the project, which is scheduled to be completed by September 2009, it’s still anyone’s guess.