San Fernando OKs Buying Land for Police Station

San Fernando City Council voted unanimously Monday to repeal a measure approving a land exchange with the county to acquire a site for a new police station, then voted to buy for $275,520 the Los Angeles County-owned land it would have gotten through the swap.

The council action came in response to petitions filed last month calling for the city to either revoke the land-exchange agreement or put it before the voters. The county registrar-recorder verified Dec. 17 that 609 registered voters signed the petitions, qualifying the issue to appear on the April municipal ballot. The signatures of 10% of the city’s registered voters, or 583, were required.

By repealing the land-exchange agreement, the council fulfilled its legal obligation to act on the petitions, City Attorney Robert Bower said. The subsequent council vote to buy the land, Bower said, should make moot the referendum request, which only challenged the proposed land-swap agreement.

Exchange Agreement

The agreement, approved Nov. 18 on a 4-1 vote, called for the city to exchange its 31,000-square-foot police station on Macneil Street for the county’s 21,000-square-foot interest in a parking lot at 1st Street and Brand Boulevard. San Fernando owns the other half of the lot.

When it became apparent that the petition would qualify for the ballot, the city asked the county to consider selling its interest in the parking lot, City Administrator Donald Penman said. The county agreed to the sale last week.

“The land exchange was fine with us. If that doesn’t work, the sale is fine, too,” said Robert Thompson, chief analyst for the county’s chief administrative officer, James C. Hankla. “We are just trying to accommodate the city.”

All but one of five council members has agreed that the parking lot land would give the city a bigger, more desirable site on which to build a $2-million police station. The council majority has said that the 30-year-old Macneil Street station is obsolete because it consists of largely unused jail cells and the cost of renovation would far exceed the cost of building a new station.