Police facility

I've read a lot of crappy Statesman Journal editorials during the 39 years I've lived in Salem. But today's "Salem police deserve better than lowest common denominator" could well be the worst of them all. 

You can read the whole confusing, nonsensical piece via the link above, or in a continuation to this post.

The basic "argument" –and I put that word in quotes to indicate how the editorial barely has any coherent logic to it — is that those, like me, who want to protect the lives of everybody who works at or visits City Hall and the Library from the next Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake (the "Big One"), not just Police Department employees, somehow is guilty of a Lowest Common Denominator thought crime.

I can't even begin to attempt to describe how this assertion makes sense, because the editorial lacks any sense.

For example, the editorial writer, who probably was Dick Hughes, added URL links to supposedly bolster points he was making. One would thlnk that the link underlying "public safety is the #1 responsibility of local government" leads to some academic research or political science article. 

But no.

It leads to a Statesman Journal story about the Salem Chamber of Commerce endorsing Measure 24-399, the $82 million police facility bond measure on the November ballot. And the story says nothing about public safety being the #1 responsibility of local government. 

As Jim Scheppke points out in his comment below, when the Chamber of Commerce commands, the Statesman Journal editorial board obeys. Such is the power of corporate advertising in this age of newspapers teetering on the edge of a financial abyss.

Here's the online comments that I and several of my Salem Community Vision colleagues made about the editorial. We demolished it. 

Jim Scheppke
Time to retire "Statesman Journal Editorial Board." How long did it take for you to research and write this? Did you knock it out in under a half hour? This piece is pretty breathtaking in its lack of analysis of the many subtle nuances of the police facility issue that the other commenters here discuss intelligently.

You are also guilty of binary thinking, something editorial writers should scrupulously avoid. The claim here is that you are either for the $83 million Taj Mahal police facility or you are for "the lowest common denominator" and don't believe that police are important. That is not the position of the people like me who plan to vote "No" on this bloated bond measure.

Another mischaracterization that you make is that the opposition won't support a new police facility "until the civic center and library also are rebuilt or replaced." No one is calling for replacement. And we firmly believe that all of the projects can be completed at the same time for $20-30 million less than the Taj Mahal by itself.

It seems obvious that the SJ is determined once again to take direction from your overlords at the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, and not undertake a careful and thoughtful analysis before rushing to judgement.

———————–

Brian Hines
This is an astoundingly uninformed editorial. Whoever wrote it didn't bother to educate themselves about the police facility planning saga.

If they had, they would have realized that until 2014 Mayor Peterson, Police Chief Moore, and other city officials were totally on board with a Public Safety plan that sought funds for (1) a 75,000 square foot police facility, and (2) seismically retrofitting City Hall and the Library so lives and public property are saved when (not if) the next Big One Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake hits.

This plan made sense, and was being pushed by the City of Salem, because City Hall will collapse in a large earthquake. Which is a prime motivation for moving the Police Department out of City Hall into an earthquake-safe building.

What the wise 2014 City of Salem plan recognized, and what the Statesman Journal editorial board is failing to understand, is that moving the Police Department out of City Hall obviously does nothing to fix the seismic deficiencies of that building, and of the Library.

So the current unwise plan is to move other City employees into the same unsafe space in City Hall now occupied by the Police Department. Thus other City staff, rather than police employees, will be killed in the Big One earthquake.

Further, children and other Library visitors will be buried under tons of concrete, because the proposed $82 million bond measure doesn't include the previously allocated funds for making City Hall and the Library earthquake-safe.

The editorial board is absolutely wrong with its "lowest common denominator" talk.

Opponents of the wasteful $82 million police facility plan on the November ballot object to this boondoggle because the cost per square foot of the vastly oversized police facility is DOUBLE what other police headquarters have been built for recently in Oregon.

What we want is a lower cost yet adequately-sized police facility that recognizes the common denominator of keeping BOTH police employees safe and other Civic Center employees safe (along with visitors to the Civic Center).

See the Salem Can Do Better web site for more reasons to vote NO on Measure 24-399.

http://www.salemcandobetter.com

There isn't a need to choose between protecting the lives of Police Department staff and the lives of everybody else who works at, or visits, City Hall and the Library. Just a few years ago, before the size and cost of the police facility got supersized by Chicago consultants, the Mayor and Police Chief argued for making seismic retrofitting of the Civic Center part of a Public Safety bond.

They were right.

Voters should reject the $82 million police facility bond, because $50 to $60 million would allow Salem to BOTH build a perfectly adequate police facility and make City Hall and the Library earthquake-safe.

———————–

Brian Hines
Had to add another thought about this ridiculous illogical editorial. Here's the proper swimming pool metaphor that applies to the $82 million police facility boondoggle:

Imagine a plan to give two Salem high schools, A and B, swimming pools. But after out-of-state consultants come to town, the plan changes. Now high school B will get an Olympic-sized pool, double the size of what was planned before, and high school A won't get ANY pool.

This is exactly analogous to how plans for making a new police facility and the Civic Center earthquake-safe have changed.

First, a new 75,000 square foot seismically-sound police facility was to be built, AND the Library and City Hall would be seismically retrofitted to save lives when the Big One earthquake hits.

But then Chicago consultants were hired, and the size of the proposed police facility doubled to 148,000 square feet. Plans to do seismic retrofitting for City Hall and the Library were dropped.

So before, Salem had a common denominator: save lives of BOTH police department employees and everyone else who works at or visits City Hall and the Library, including children at Storytime.

Now, the $82 million plan gives the Police Department double what it needs, while ignoring the urgent need to prepare the Civic Center for the 8.0 – 9.0 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake that is a matter of when, not if.

The Statesman Journal editorial board needs to read the public documents that I've collected regarding the dangerous structural deficiencies of the Library and City Hall before making rash assertions that returning to the Public Safety plan being pushed by the Mayor and Police Chief in 2014 — a 75,000 square foot facility PLUS renovations to the Civic Center — reflects a "chip on the shoulder" mentality.

No, it doesn't. It represents a "Save the lives of EVERYBODY who works at or visits City Hall and the Library, not just the lives of police employees." This is why voters need to say NO to Measure 24-399.

It makes Salem less safe.
———————–
Geoffrey James
The speaker for the Salem Can Do Better PAC, at the City Club debate on Friday, was crystal clear that the opponents of the current proposal, for an over sized and over priced police facility, DO support a state of the art "MODERN" police facility, and they are actually IN FAVOR of what the city, and the previous consultant, planned for the O'Brien site in 2013, and that was a $30 million facility and $15 million of seismic strengthening of city hall, and a replacement Council Chambers, all for a total of $55.8 million.

I believe EVERYONE would support that.

The new city councilors should place a $60 million Police+Seismic on the ballot in May 2017, so we can ALL vote for it. 75,000 sq.ft (they have 28,000 now) actually provides excess space for decades of growth, and we observed all that when we toured Eugene's handsome new 74,000 sq.ft. facility ($17 million complete).

Here are FOUR reasons why this current $82 million proposal is a bad idea, (and has divided this community), and Salem Can Do Better.

https://www.scribd.com/document/325196125/Four-Reasons-to-Vote-No-on-the-Police-Facility-Bond-Measure

Here's the entire Statesman Journal editorial for what it's worth (which isn't much):

Proponents of the over-priced bond measure on the November ballot for a new 148,000 square foot building to house the Salem Police Department like to say that critics of this poorly-planned proposal, such as me, are totally wrong that it would be feasible to build a perfectly adequate 75,000 square foot police facility — AND make the Library and City Hall earthquake safe — for much less money than the $82 million that the current supersized facility would cost all by itself.

Well, in this post I'm going to prove that it's the people who say I'm wrong who are wrong! 

I've written a one page "How to reduce the cost of the $82 million police facility proposal" description of how this can be done. Here's the conclusion:

So about $60 million, or less, buys Salem a perfectly adequate police facility AND seismic upgrades to the Library and City Hall that will save lives when the Big One earthquake hits— rather than spending $82 million just for an over-priced and over-sized police facility.

I encourage you to read the entire paper via this PDF file:  Download How to reduce the cost PDF  

Here's an encapsulation of key points in those 573 words, along with some bonus screenshots. 

What I tried to do is use the City of Salem's own facts and figures as much as possible to prove that Salem Can Do Better — which is what the campaign for a wiser and less wastefully expensive police facility plan is called. 

In April 2015, the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Police Facility produced its final report. After a bunch of meetings, which included getting expert advice from two consulting firms, the Task Force concluded (see above) that:

The 75 to 106 thousand square foot size range is a "best practices" estimate provided to the Task Force by design and operations experts. We generally agreed that this is the size of building that Salem should be considering given the scope of our operations, program needs, and size of staff.

Now, as I say in my paper, this 75,000 to 106,000 sq.ft. recommendation for the size of a new police facility included a new 911 Center (a.k.a. the Willamette Valley Communications Center), which now is in 10,000 feet of leased space.

So the task force's recommended square footage of the Police Department itself would be no more than 65,000 to 96,000 sq. ft., and possibly considerably less (the current plan is to include a new 25,000 sq. ft. 911 Center in the 148,000 sq. ft. proposed building).

Since the 911 Center is fine where it is for about another ten years, and a City of Salem financial analysis showed that it would take 30 years to break even on the $11 million cost of building a new 911 Center, compared with leasing at the current $144,000 a year, my paper says "Don't build a new 911 Center."

That would reduce the size of the proposed police facility to 123,000 sq. ft., but this is still way too large, since the Task Force recommended 75,000 to 106,000 sq. ft. — which included a new 911 Center.

Plus, I show in the paper that assuming the past rate of growth of the Salem police force, 1.3 officers per year from 1977 to 2016, there only would be 20% more officers in 2045, while building a 75,000 square foot police facility would double the size of the current 38,000 sq. ft. Police Department, a 100% increase.

This shows that the Task Force and its consultants were correct to recommend a much smaller police facility than the obese 148,000 sq. ft. "full meal deal" (as city councilor Steve McCoid put it).

In fact, the same Chicago consulting firm that later worked with City officials behind closed doors to come up with the supersized 148,000 sq. ft. proposal that went against the recommendation of the Police Facility Task Force told the task force that a 70,000 to 100,000 sq. ft. police facility is what Salem needs.

In the December 2, 2014 minutes of a task force meeting, we learn that two consultants from the DLR Group were asked questions by task force members.

Here is the question where the DLR Group consultants said, "A 70-90,000 or 100,000 square foot facility would be in the range of what we'd expect to see for a [police] department of Salem's size with its complexity of offerings."

But after the DLR Group got a hefty several hundred thousand dollar contract to refine the task force's recommendations, that 70,000 to 100,000 sq. ft. police facility ballooned to 148,000 sq. ft.

(The reason isn't growth in the number of police officers over 30 years; the DLR Group said this only accounts for 8,000 sq. ft. of the 148,000 sq. ft., based on an outrageously large assumed growth of 2.4 officers per year — about double the 1.3 officer per year historic rate of growth.)

Which is strange.

Another consulting firm, Mackenzie, also met with the task force. Mackenzie has designed 20 police facilities in the northwest, including four in Canby, Keizer, Beaverton, and Albany. The March 11, 2015 minutes of the task force report that the Mackenzie consultants said: "For the current need [in Salem], we would recommend a range of 73,000 – 106,000 square feet."

So I say in my paper that a 75,000 sq. ft. police facility which doesn't include 10,000 to 25,000 sq. ft. for a new 911 Center seems perfectly adequate for Salem. This was the size of the police facility that the Mayor and Police Chief were pushing for in 2014, when a City of Salem FAQ document said:

A right-sized and properly designed Public Safety facility for our community needs to be about 75,000 square feet in size spread over no more than three floors to function best in keeping Salem safe. At this size, the critical functions located in off-site leased spaces can return to a centralized facility with some room for growth over the next 30-40 years.

Thus City officials, and the City's own consultants, previously have agreed with me and other critics of the 148,000 sq. ft. proposal that 75,000 sq. ft. is a proper size for a new Salem police facility. 

I now refer you to the paper I wrote to learn how it would be entirely possible to build a 75,000 square foot facility AND make the Library and City Hall earthquake-safe for $60 million — saving both lives and about $20 million if voters reject the $82 million bond measure for a supersized police facility alone. 

(In 2017, City officials and the Salem City Council, which will have three newly-elected councilors, can work with Salem's citizens to come up with a better police facility proposal that will be approved by voters.)

The construction cost numbers are sort of complex, so read my paper to find out how, to quote my final words, SALEM CAN DO BETTER.

Download How to reduce the cost PDF

The entire paper is in a continuation to this post if you don't want to download it.