With the recent turmoil at the Santa Maria Police Department, is now the ideal time to build a new police station?
According to four out of five Santa Maria City Council members, there’s no time like the present. On March 6, council members voted to approve two contracts that would allow the construction process to begin.
The future location of the new police station is the corner of West Betteravia and South Blosser roads. The city bought the former industrial building from the Lockheed Martin Corporation in 2008 for $13.8 million with the intention of making it into a new police station.
The city leased the building to Lockheed Martin over the next three years for a total of $2.8 million. That money has been set aside to make improvements to the building.
Former police lieutenant Mike Cordero was the sole dissenting voice at the March 6 meeting. While Cordero agreed that the police department needs a new home, he feels the department is in greater need of more police officers and that the money set aside for the project should be used to hire more staff.
“Not once in my career do I recall a building chasing someone down the street,” he said.
The building that the police department currently occupies was built in 1954 and has long since been outdated. According to a previous staff report, the need for a new police building was identified in 1991, with the estimated cost of constructing a new building totaling $40 million.
Councilmember Bob Orach referred to the current station as a “dive” at the meeting and said the process of finding a new home for the department started too long ago to just stop now.
The city awarded Bakersfield-based JTS Construction Company a $1.2 million contract to structurally retrofit the new building’s walls so it meets public safety construction requirements.
BFGC IBI Group was awarded a $366,300 contract to make improvements needed to transform the building into a police station, such as a new communications center, an evidence room, offices, an interrogation room, a crime lab, bathrooms, and more.
This article appears in Mar 15-22, 2012.
