Yes on L.A. Proposition Q

Proposition Q, a $600-million city of Los Angeles bond measure, would finance two new police stations, repair existing police and fire stations, establish new bomb squads and build facilities that would speed up response time to 911 emergency calls. Who could oppose these?

Supporters, especially Los Angeles Fire Chief William R. Bamattre, make a good case for the tax, approximately $3 a month on a house valued at $189,000. But taxpayers are still smarting over broken promises from the 1989 public safety bond measure, particularly the failure to build a new Valley police station. And the unfinished 911 upgrade funded by a bond measure approved a decade ago. Voters, who must give the measure two-thirds approval, will rightly demand to know what’s different this time. However, because of oversight and other bond-issue spending safeguards in a law passed last year, The Times endorses Proposition Q.

The ballot description does not list the specific major projects it will fund, an omission that is unfair to voters, but the projects are in a separate motion passed by the City Council. They include: improvements to every fire station ($25 million); a new earthquake-safe police and fire emergency operations complex to replace the underground center built four decades ago ($120 million); a new jail ($100 million); replacement police stations in the West San Fernando Valley, Hollenbeck, Rampart and Harbor divisions ($170 million), and two new stations in the Valley ($70 million, including a Valley Bureau headquarters and traffic division) and the Mid-City area ($45 million); two new bomb squad facilities, including one in the Valley ($20 million); and repairs at police stations ($50 million).

Unlike previous public safety bond measures, Proposition Q requires annual independent audits and an oversight board appointed by the mayor and City Council. Citizen activists and news organizations will surely also inspect how the money is spent. The total will not put the city over its own limits on bond debt.

Residents needing police and fire protection should not be the first to suffer from the broken promises of politicians. Neither should firefighters and police officers be crammed into overcrowded stations that need repairs.

Yes, it’s a tough time to ask voters to tax themselves. True, the city has yet to prove that it can do what it promises in a reasonable time.

Yet the need is there, and the requirement of oversight makes a difference. The Times endorses Proposition Q on March 5.