Prop. 1 OK Vital for City

Los Angeles is riddled with old and unsafe buildings rife with faulty electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems. Unchanged since their construction, they are dangerously outdated by today’s engineering and seismic standards and so overcrowded that emergency exit plans might fail their purpose in an crisis.

It’s intolerable that these conditions describe the police and fire stations and other public safety facilities that Angelenos depend on for daily services and for emergency response to natural disasters. For that reason and many others, the Times strongly supports the passage of Proposition 1, the $744 million Fire Police Paramedic Safety Bond on the April 13 election ballot. It’s essential to the city’s resurgent good health.

In total, city officials say that public safety needs will actually require a $2-billion, 20-year public investment, but they have agreed to go to voters in five-year phases, the first being the measure on the April ballot. Once the first phase is largely complete, the city will seek another bond measure for additional projects.

Let’s address a likely reaction from taxpayers: How can the city ask for more bond money for projects that, as before, won’t be built on time or on budget--or might never get underway? Unfortunate examples abound: the never-ending City Hall retrofit and 911 system upgrade, the two police stations promised in a 1989 bond issue that were never built, the 1989 Fire Life Safety Fund bond issue that added sprinklers in one public building, not six buildings as promised.

It is the frank acknowledgment of such past and present blunders, along with the means to prevent them, that sets apart the new Fire Police Paramedic Bond measure. Its safeguards are the best reason for voter support.

In support of the bond measure, Mayor Richard Riordan moved to establish a blue-ribbon public infrastructure committee comprising local leaders in business, banking and the construction industry. And a set of common-sense ground rules has finally been established and blessed by a unanimous City Council and the support of the council’s chief legislative analyst and the city’s chief administrative officer.

Among the rules: Projects listed on ballot supplemental mailings are specifically earmarked, based on priority needs; precision will be required on project cost estimates, a change from the traditional slapdash; separate managers for every project, with oversight by the mayor and others; standardized building designs with no provisions for subjective add-ons that mean delays and higher costs; a citizens oversight committee and that the funds can only be used on these projects. All this would provide the assurances and layered oversight that have been lacking in bond issues for so many years.

Thus, for the additional taxpayer cost of $31.29 a year for a home valued at $162,000, (the tax for property assessed at other values would be proportionately higher or lower) voters can expect to get the following:

Replacements for 17 fire stations and four police stations; two new police stations in the Valley and Mid-Wilshire regions; one new fire station; a $67-million replacement for the unsalvageable Parker Center, the LAPD’s downtown headquarters building; a conversion of the Piper Technical Center into a police support facility that would include the bomb squad, Scientific Investigation Division and Motor Transport Division; a new downtown fire dispatch center; and a replacement for the Fire Department’s air operations and maintenance facility at Van Nuys Airport.

Says City Controller Rick Tuttle, “It’s clearly better defined than previous bonds . . . the last bond issue attempt didn’t enumerate the projects, never costed it out per facility. This one has time limits, specified projects, a real management structure. Change orders must go through an oversight committee. We’ll have a strong project manager. This is the right type of approach for the city of Los Angeles.”

It’s more than that. It’s vital in a city where the public safety infrastructure is more cramped and decrepit than much of the city it is supposed to protect.

A vote for Proposition 1, the Fire Police Paramedic Safety bond issue, is a sound investment in the future of Los Angeles.