Board Just Says No to Gates’ Drug Agent Training Center

In a major defeat for Sheriff Brad Gates, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously rejected his plan to build a narcotics training center at Rancho del Rio, voting instead to sell the South County property for development.

Supervisors cited the training center’s uncertain funding and the Sheriff-Coroner Department’s escalating budget as their main reasons in voting to sell the 213-acre ranch, which was seized in a 1985 drug raid. The property was awarded to Orange County by the federal government three years later under a law that allows local law enforcement agencies to share in narcotics-related seizures.

“I have been troubled for many months on spending additional monies on Rancho del Rio,” said Supervisors Chairman Don R. Roth. “While it’s been promised these Safunds may be available from federal and state grants, tuition and so on, this in my opinion is speculation and should be of concern.”

In trying to win the supervisors over, Gates said his training center would prepare the “domestic soldiers” of the drug war in the same uncompromising manner that President Bush displayed in sending U.S. troops to Panama.

“He sent the best they had with all the services,” Gates said, adding that narcotics officers who face increasingly sophisticated, international drug traffickers “also need to be trained at the highest level possible.”

The sheriff said Orange County law enforcement officials “never dreamed we’d be this effective” in combatting drugs. The next step, he argued, would be to train officers in advanced drug-fighting techniques.

Afterward, Gates said he was disappointed by the board’s vote.

“I’m sure every narcotics officer on the street feels the same way,” Gates said. “It’s just a sad day that we can’t offer the kind of training they need. . . . I just hope we don’t see things happen down the road that could have been avoided if the decision had been different.”

Gates was asking the board to give him at least one year to prove the self-sufficiency and value of the regional narcotics training center. His plan called for first-year expenditures of about $388,000, with future phases bringing development costs to about $4.3 million.

A more ambitious proposal, which would have required federal grants and had been forwarded to the White House, would have cost about $26 million.

But those plans are now defunct.

The county hopes to gain at least $2 million from the sale of the land--all of which must go to supplement the sheriff’s budget, save for a 10% payment to the federal government--once it has been rezoned for development. The county’s contract with the federal government stipulates that it must sell the property by December, 1991.

“That could enhance the property two- or three-fold,” Roth said of the county’s plan to rezone and subdivide the ranch. He estimated its current value at about $1 million.

That Gates’ proposal was in trouble became clear Tuesday even before the item came up on the morning meeting’s agenda. During discussion of the county’s midyear budget appropriation of $9.9 million--almost half of which will go to the Sheriff’s Department and which reduced the county’s emergency contingency fund by $700,000--Roth spoke of “skyrocketing costs” in law enforcement.

“I wish the $4.6 million we approve today (to make up the current deficit) would be enough to meet the sheriff’s needs,” Roth said. “Sadly, that will not be true.”

In the next few weeks, Roth and other supervisors noted, the board will be considering expanded sheriff’s deputy patrols in South County that will cost between $1.6 million and $3.6 million. The expansion of the Theo Lacy jail will necessitate new hirings at a cost of about $6.8 million, once it is complete. State budget cuts have left the sheriff’s planned forensic science building with a projected annual shortfall of $300,000 in debt service costs.

Last year, the board sparred verbally with Gates over his budget before finding $120,000 in county funds to help set up a DNA analysis laboratory.

Roth also said that the county owns several land parcels that cannot be sold and might be equally suitable for a drug-training facility.

“I look forward to them giving me a list,” a skeptical Gates said after the meeting. “I’m happy to look at any site.”

Other supervisors echoed Roth’s concerns about the county’s finances.

“This is a real tough one for me,” said Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, a former police officer. “While it would be nice to have, great to have . . . the unfortunate situation is that there are fiscal limitations and . . . within seven days we’ll be facing an issue of additional deputies in South County.”

Said Supervisor Roger R. Stanton: “Can we afford it and is it a business that we should be in? That’s the question we have to look at in everybody’s program.”

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