A Credibility-Gap Bond Measure : Good cause, but police-station plan is very risky

In 1989, the previous Los Angeles mayor and the previous police chief asked city voters to pass Proposition 2, a $176-million bond measure, to pay for new police stations and other improvements. The chief even wrote an Op-Ed article for The Times, saying the new police stations would be in the San Fernando Valley and the Wilshire district.

Proposition 2 passed with 69% of the vote . . . and the stations were never built.

It turned out that officials had vastly underestimated construction costs and the stations had to be cut from the bond’s long project list. Police officials wouldn’t admit until later that they knew that the bond measure could not fund all of the promised projects. The voters were misled.

FIGHTING HISTORY: This year, City Councilman Richard Alarcon knew he was facing mistrust sowed among the voters in the aftermath of the 1989 election when he argued that it was time for another bond issue to build the two stations. But with overcrowding at every station house from Rampart to Devonshire, he also knew they were greatly needed. Moreover, the new stations could accommodate new patrol divisions vital to public safety.

Alarcon’s solution: get the council to vote to put a much smaller, $100-million bond issue on the ballot that would fund the Valley and Wilshire stations and almost nothing else. Avoid another unrealistic “wish list” and regain voter confidence. For a time even this modest measure seemed doomed. It couldn’t even gain a City Council committee recommendation. Members questioned the cost estimates. Too piecemeal an approach, they said--an in-depth study of police needs should come first.

So what happened? The council ended up voting 10 to 1 for a package that, in addition to the two stations, called for replacing the Rampart and Hollenbeck stations, building a parking structure in Van Nuys and making various improvements at other substations ranging from new detective squad rooms to child-care facilities and a new LAPD training center. It all came to $171 million--very close to the 1989 amount.

A 10-PART THREAT: The problem is that because the estimates for each of the 10 projects in the package undoubtedly will be off to some extent, the $171 million might prove to be too little to cover the total. The problem is also that many contractors, fat in an era of earthquake repairs, might be unwilling to shave profit margins to get work. Just ask the Fillmore City Council: It recently called for bids for a proposed $2.2-million city hall and couldn’t find any builder willing to talk about any figure below $3.3 million.

And who knows what the economy has in store? Who knows where the price of building materials is headed? Who knows whether there will be new quake-related building codes that will raise costs?

The City Council should not have once again put itself in the position of boosting a bond that might not pay for all of the projects it is supposed to cover. It should have backed Alarcon’s more modest, more credible proposal. Now the council faces a very tough sell. Let the voter beware.