2 Police Facilities Proposals Approved

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved two recommendations Friday that Councilman Richard Alarcon contends will help expedite construction of bond-financed police facilities.

The council voted to:

* Direct the city Planning Department to assign a “case manager” to each construction project.

* Request that Mayor Richard Riordan issue an executive order giving police facilities construction “top priority” status.

The case managers would act as ombudsmen who would help guide specific projects through the city’s often-unwieldy bureaucracy.

A recent internal review by the Police Department blamed the bureaucracy for keeping the city from moving ahead with previous bond-funded projects, such as new stations in the Mid-Wilshire District and the San Fernando Valley.

“These are two more pieces to a growing number of things that are being done” to speed up the projects, said Alarcon, who represents the northeast Valley. “I hope they send a message to people that we are, in fact, changing our system, continuing to improve it and will build these stations faster than ever before. [Both steps] therefore should give voters a greater confidence about” next month’s $171-million bond measure to add and expand police facilities, a ballot proposal that Alarcon wrote.

Assigning specific case managers, Alarcon said, “will help us keep a focus on these projects and move them forward.” He added that he believes the mayor “should have no problem” with issuing an executive order.

The council had already given the projects top priority, but Alarcon asked for the executive order from the mayor to lend added support.