RALEIGH -- Raleigh's City Council pushed back a vote Tuesday on a $205 million project for a new public safety center, the fourth time the council has delayed making a decision.
The eight-member council is deadlocked over the Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center, a project that sailed through earlier council votes with little resistance but became controversial after Raleigh City Manager J. Russell Allen proposed an 8 percent property tax increase to pay for it and $250 million worth of public works projects.
Frustration was evident Tuesday as council members bickered over the project's merits and detractions.
The normally reserved Mayor Charles Meeker bristled when Councilman Bonner Gaylord suggested the city should walk away from the Lightner project and instead use existing city property to build smaller-scale offices to house the various public safety departments.
"You couldn't be more off base," Meeker told Gaylord. Gaylord's proposal, backed by two other council members, would cost the city millions and wouldn't address the public safety needs, the mayor said.
Gaylord had said using the downtown space near Nash Square was "squandering our city's best property." He suggested the project didn't receive enough public input and that the Lightner project was extravagant.
"We have a plan that doesn't make sense to the vast majority of the public and half of the council," Gaylord said.
Raleigh Police Chief Harry Dolan, who listened to the back-and-forth at Tuesday's meeting, said his department needs new facilities, and has been coping with ones that don't offer the security and protection that a police department needs. The emergency communications center, Dolan said, is worse off and leaves emergency dispatchers cramped in space in the basement of Raleigh's municipal building that they outgrew years ago.
"They [Raleigh councilors] are playing a hand that was dealt to them decades ago," Dolan said. "We shouldn't be in the situation we are in now."
Meeker has been the most vocal supporter of the project, while Gaylord has become the most outspoken council member opposed to it.
On Monday, Meeker offered a compromise and suggested moving forward on the Lightner center and putting off most of the public works projects in order to reduce the amount of a property tax increase to a third of the 8 percent Allen suggested. Moving forward now lets city taxpayers take advantage of $50 million in savings from low construction and interest rates, Meeker has said.
Under Meeker's new calculations, a Raleigh taxpayer with a home assessed at $200,000 would get a $20 increase in city taxes, less than the $60-per-year jump that has been on the table up until now. The city is also searching for federal dollars to offset the cost.
Meeker said any property tax increase could wait until 2012. It would be phased in over two years and would be on the books for the 25 years it will take the city to pay off the construction bonds.
The city has already spent at least $22 million on the $205 million project, buying two buildings to relocate the police department during the construction and paying for design and pre-construction services.
Five of the council's eight votes are needed to move forward on the project.
Backing the Lightner project are council members Mary-Ann Baldwin, Nancy McFarlane, James West and Meeker. Those who have voiced opposition are Gaylord, Thomas Crowder, John Odom and Russ Stephenson.
The Lightner issue will be back before the council at its March 2 meeting.
