Panels Move to Buy Land for Police Station
Ten years after it was first promised, city officials on Monday moved to buy land in Mission Hills for a sixth police station in the San Fernando Valley.
With the qualified backing of Police Chief Bernard Parks, two City Council committees voted to spend $4 million to buy the land and to explore borrowing more money to fund additional construction costs.
The action was linked to the future, as well as the past. Officials acknowledged that opposition among Valley voters, spurred largely by memories of the broken promise from 1989, was decisive in the defeat of another citywide police bond issue in April.
Those bonds will again be on the ballot in November 2000, and Parks and council members agreed Monday that a new station must be functioning by then or the citywide bond issue may face the same fate as this year’s vote.
“This is a big step in fulfilling the long unfulfilled promise made to voters in 1989 for a new police station,” said Councilman Alex Padilla, whose northeast Valley district includes the proposed new station.
Meeting jointly, the council’s Public Safety and Budget and Finance committees unanimously recommended a hazardous-material analysis and environmental review we well as the purchase of the site at 11121 Sepulveda Blvd.
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