RALEIGH -- After a month's hiatus, a $205 million project to build a new home for Raleigh's emergency responders is back.
Raleigh's City Council will discuss the Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center Tuesday with something new to talk about: the possibility of building it without raising taxes.
At least, that's the assessment of Raleigh City Manager J. Russell Allen.
Allen sent a memorandum to council members today outlining a plan to finance the building by pulling funds from a variety of sources. It'll require taking out two $100 million loans, delaying some public works projects, and hoping that that sales tax revenues pick up in the city over the next few years to cover $5 million in additional expenses.
The creative accounting pushes back most of the funding decisions until coming years, and will also add to the city's debt load.
It also comes at the Raleigh council is preparing to make $6 to $8 million cuts in its general fund, because of falling sales tax revenue that's left it in a bind for next year's budget.
Council members may also decide to raise water rates for the second time in a year later this summer.
The potential for a tax increase had been the anchor around the Lightner Center's neck, and what sunk it at a March 2 vote where the eight member council deadlocked on the issue. The building, 17 stories high and 300,000 square feet, would be named after Raleigh's first and only black mayor. It would house the city's police, fire, emergency communications and information technology departments.
But it doesn't look like the proposal Allen put out Thursday goes far enough.
"I'm basically still a no right now," said John Odom, one of the opposed council members. "Maybe we just need to sit back and look at it for a year or so."
Odom, the council's lone Republican, has distanced himself from the three other opponents -- Bonner Gaylord, Thomas Crowder and Russ Stephenson -- who have focused their attention to the security of the building and cost. They want the city to start over.
The city has been planning the Lightner Center for several years and have already spent $23 million in designing the building and buying buildings to relocate police to during the planned construction.
Despite the stalemate, the police department continued with its plans to move and have vacated their former headquarters on McDowell Street for offices in North Raleigh.
Mayor Charles Meeker, the Lightner Center's strongest proponent, reiterated his point that building now could mean big savings because of low construction and interest rates.
"The Lightner Public Safety Center is a top priority," Meeker said. "This is what people asked for, to see if we can do it without a tax increase."
Other groups, including the Wake Republican Party and former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Orr of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, have argued that voters should decide the issue in a bond referendum.
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