LAPD Is Asked to Produce Plan for New Valley Station

Flush with a $10.8 million windfall from the state, a City Council panel asked the Los Angeles Police Department on Friday to develop a detailed plan to use the money to create a sixth police station in the San Fernando Valley.

The Public Safety Committee asked that a variety of locations be considered in the plan, including the former campus of Alemany High School in Mission Hills for the new station and a second administrative bureau for the Valley.

“The top priority is the north Valley police station, and we can accommodate that now,” said Councilman Alex Padilla of Pacoima.

However, council members Laura Chick and Mike Feuer overruled Padilla’s request to recommend Friday that the City Council commit $4 million out of a total of $6.3 million in surplus police bond funds to the project.

Chick and Feuer said they want to wait until their Aug. 2 meeting to get more details on the cost and feasibility of the north Valley station project before committing funding.

“I am very supportive of wanting the station to happen,” Feuer said. “It seems to me we still don’t have some very basic information.”

Feuer said he would not want to commit money that is insufficient to do the job, especially given the history of the 1989 police bond measure that promised but did not deliver the sixth Valley station.

Unwilling to wait for the committee, Padilla later introduced a motion to the City Council to have the money allocated. The motion was sent to committee.

Until this week, the council was wrestling with the idea of using the $6.3 million in surplus funds from the 1989 bond measure to help build a temporary station of modular buildings, but that amount was short of the minimum $7 million the LAPD needed for the most temporary facility.

The Valley station project was given new life by a state decision this week to reimburse the city $10.8 million overcollected in local property taxes by the state.

Padilla said that money, combined with the surplus bond funds, gives the city more than $17 million to put toward the station. Mayor Richard Riordan is also proposing that the state money go to the Valley police station.

LAPD Cmdr. Dan Koenig told the panel that he will prepare details of how to make the project work.

“Our No. 1 priority is, was and will be the north Valley station,” Koenig said. “Logistically we feel the best location is Alemany, because of the location in the division and the ingress and egress for major streets and freeways.”