Despite a subsidized bond from the American Recovery Act, Santa Barbara County officials won’t move forward with plans to expand the Betteravia Government Center in Santa Maria.
During the Feb. 15 Board of Supervisors meeting, 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino was clearly uneasy about the public’s possible opinion of such an expenditure.
“The last thing [the board] would want is to build a new building, sit in there—what the public would call the ‘Taj Mahal’—and we cut pensions,” Lavagnino said. “What is more important to [Santa Maria] is to spend money wisely.”
Lavagnino added that the current county building is not “the Taj Mahal,” but is definitely usable.
In addition to construction costs, the project would require $110,000 in annual maintenance costs.
County staffer Bob Nisbet, who had pitched the agenda item at the board meeting, was unsure about the project because of the county’s current economic challenge.
Instead, the board decided to make some changes to the current facility.
“[Former 5th District Supervisor Joe] Centeno, a fiscal conservative, would be happy to have his name on this building,” Lavagnino said of the current government center.
The board later voted to rename “Building D,” where board meetings currently are held. The new moniker is the Joseph Centeno Betteravia Government Administration Building. The board also planned on honoring Centeno at a future meeting.
In April 2010, then-County Executive Officer Mike Brown asked the board to reduce the number of meetings held in Santa Maria to mitigate the county’s $90 million-revenue gap.
The new “Building E” would have housed future board meetings. According to a letter to the Board of Supervisors, the current hearing room is “often at or over capacity during board proceedings.” The Board of Supervisors’ current hearing room also doesn’t meet Santa Barbara County’s 2001 Adopted Space Standards. The new building would have housed a boardroom similar to the one in Santa Barbara.
An enhanced computer room was an important aspect of the proposal. According to Nisbet, the computer room would have mitigated any risk associated with the county’s aging machine room in Santa Barbara. But those plans have also been put on hold.
The proposed 13,460 square-foot Building E already had a bid secured, but there was also an extension on the contract to allow investigation of the project.
The $4.8 million in Recover Zone Economic Development Bonds the county secured for the project are now without a home. But because of the state’s refusal to allocate the money to another project that wasn’t claimed in the application, the county will have to find a new project in which to invest the bond.
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 3, 2011.