Should Raleigh build the Lightner Public Safety Center?

Every Monday, Matthew Eisley faces off against a guest columnist on a topical issue. This week's topic: Raleigh's planned Public Safety Center. First up, Mayor Charles Meeker.

We need the safety center now

By CHARLES MEEKER
Raleigh Mayor

For the past two years, the Raleigh City Council has planned a modern Public Safety Center. As we have become a larger city, our needs have changed since the 1950s, when the current police facilities were built.

The Public Safety Center will house the 911 system, traffic control, information technology and other essential city services.

It also will be the command center for the police and fire departments.

In today's environment, public safety centers need to be secure locations in which to work. This requires different structural elements, redundant utilities and secure telecommunication links.

Raleigh's police chief, fire chief and emergency communications director have repeatedly stated the city's need for the new center. They helped prepare the work program for the center, as well as its design.

The current economic recession has reduced the center's construction costs by an estimated $20 million. If the city can gain an interest rate similar to that achieved by Wake County on its new courthouse, an additional $30 million in interest costs can be saved.

A key challenge is how to pay for the center, since no one wants a tax increase now.

The City Council has requested staff information about deferring any adjustment in the city's tax rate for at least two years, paying for half the cost from sources other than the property tax, and postponing proposed facilities for sanitation and street maintenance.

Public safety is the top priority for every community. Raleigh leaders need to work together to build the center, which we need in order to protect our citizens.

Charles Meeker is Raleigh's five-term mayor.

Build it leaner - and later

By MATTHEW EISLEY
Staff writer

Somewhere between Cadillac and Yugo lies the best destiny of Raleigh's precariously planned Lightner Public Safety Center.

Now, during The Great Recession, is not the time to raise property taxes to pay for a new high-security, 17-story home for the Raleigh Police Department, Fire Department, 911 Center and computer headquarters, as Mayor Charles Meeker and City Manager Russell Allen propose.

But ditching the plan and renovating the city's 50-year-old police department building, as favored by a trio of City Council members - two of whom initially OK'd the Lightner - isn't smart, either.

The center's rather lavish plan suffers design flaws and extravagances that should go. But replacing our aging, squat, dumpy, ugly police station is one of its chief upsides.

I suspect most Raleighites would support the center if it were simpler, cheaper and delayed a few years until we're sure we can afford it.

There's danger in overbuilding - and underbuilding. Raleigh's City Hall, which opened in 1983, was built too small. I doubt the Lightner Center is too big. But it's too fancy, too pricey.

And I think it's a fundamental mistake to try to make the building a hardened, high-security citadel and an open, inviting public space.

The plan includes a nonessential public viewing theater for the 911 center and a public café - yet, incredibly, no security screening for visitors. Can you say, "bomb in a backpack"?

And since the building shouldn't have heavy public traffic, why does it need public art?

Slow it up, slim it down, make a stronger case for it, and I bet public support will rally. Yes, even if in a citywide bond referendum.

Matthew Eisley edits The N&O's North Raleigh News and Midtown Raleigh News.