Lynwood Offered $5 Million to End Suit Against Jail

Los Angeles County has offered to pay the city of Lynwood $5 million to drop a recent lawsuit that could delay construction of the $158-million Lynwood Regional Justice Center and jeopardize $86 million in state funding for the project.

The proposed settlement, outlined by Chief Administrative Officer Richard Dixon in a letter to the city last week, is described by negotiators as the county’s final offer in a dispute over the impact the 1,065-bed jail would have on the city.

Construction of the massive, 560,000-square-foot facility--which would include the largest sheriff’s station in the county, three municipal courts and a crime laboratory--is scheduled to begin in December. It must start no later than September, 1990, or the state bond money will be lost.

A top Lynwood official brushed aside the county offer, saying that the city decided last fall to accept no less than $10 million. It filed suit in December, challenging the adequacy of the county’s environmental impact report. A Superior Court hearing on the suit’s merits is set for May 12.

“Five million is ridiculous. . . . Ten million was really a compromise for us,” said Mayor Pro Tem Paul Richards, spokesman for the City Council on the issue.

He said that in addition to causing traffic problems and creating only a few jobs for residents, the justice center would rob the city of millions of dollars in sales and property taxes from businesses that could have been built on the 19-acre jail site.

Potential Commercial Site

The site is now mostly vacant. But it is at the junction of the new Century Freeway and Alameda Street, the principal freight corridor from San Pedro Bay ports to regional rail yards in East Los Angeles.

“It represents one of our very few opportunities for growth and prosperity,” Richards said.

County officials say they are baffled by Lynwood’s position, since the City Council has been on record supporting the project since December, 1986, and filed no objection to it until June, 1988.

“We’re quite confused by all this,” chief county negotiator Mike Henry said. “We really felt they were behind us. This site was selected with the concurrence of the City Council.”

Henry said that since negotiations with the city began last September, “we’ve been placed in the position of having to come up with more and more offers.”

At this point, he said, the city seems to be “taking advantage” of the county, which cannot afford to have the project killed.

The Sheriff’s Department, whose jails can lawfully hold only about 22,000 inmates, has released about 100,000 prisoners early since last May to comply with a federal judge’s order to control the size of the jail population.

“To lose this facility would be a blow,” Henry said.

Contrary to Lynwood’s position, county officials say the justice center would occupy parcels that are now unused and would possibly lure business to an area suffering from crime and blight.

“This facility will strengthen the community. Commercial development is leaving it at this time because of the crime rate--gang violence, drugs, the whole works,” Henry said.

Both the city and the county agree that the justice center, headquarters for about 350 deputies to patrol several nearby cities, would tend to make Lynwood safer.

Indeed, the city has sold the project to concerned citizens over the years by saying it would reduce crime, Richards said.

Expected Fair Treatment

“We’ve worked through our block clubs, touting the facility,” he said. “But it’s always been in the back of my mind that we’d be dealt with fairly on this.

“So when citizens began asking what the city gets out of this, my point was that I didn’t know,” Richards said. City officials then asked the county to discuss the issue. “We’d never talked dollars and cents (before). Everything was always wide open in this proposition.”

The city began negotiations eight months ago by asking for free or low-cost law enforcement from the Sheriff’s Department. That service now costs about $4 million a year out of a general fund budget of about $13 million, he said.

“We’ll have the largest sheriff’s station in the county in our back yard, so why should we have to pay for law enforcement?” Richards said. “There really is a marriage between city and county, so why shouldn’t we both benefit? Isn’t it logical that we would be the beneficiary, too, since no (other city) wanted this facility?”