Safety bond gains support

Former Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini says she'll never forget Aug. 11, 1999 — the day a tornado tore through Salt Lake City, killing one man and injuring more than 80 people.

"We had the crisis center set up in this crumbling building," Corradini said, gesturing to the nearly 50-year-old public safety building at 315 E. 200 South. "We started talking about replacing this crumbling building way before that tornado. It's time to replace this building."

Corradini was among the past and present city and county officials and law enforcement leaders who gathered at a press conference recently in support of Salt Lake City's $192 million public safety bond.

The event was sparked by recent criticism about the hefty price tag for the bond, which, if Proposition 1 passes on Tuesday, would cover the cost of five new public safety structures at three locations — including a new public safety building with an emergency operations center. The bond would raise property taxes by about $175 per year on a $300,000 home.

"The time is now to get moving forward," Corradini said. "There's nothing more important than public safety."

In addition to Corradini, former U.S. Sen. Jake Garn, who served as mayor of Salt Lake City in 1971-74, and former Police Chief Rick Dinse support the bond proposal.

Garn said former Police Chief Dewey Phillips complained of having inadequate public safety facilities in Salt Lake City as much as 36 years ago, a gripe later adopted by Dinse during his tenure from 2000 to '06.

"When I first got here, I recognized the deplorable state of these facilities," Dinse said. "It took this long for us to put a proposition before the community."

The bond calls for a new public safety building, an emergency operations center and a combined parking/evidence storage structure to be grouped as a downtown public safety campus. It also would pay for a new west-side fire station and training center in Glendale and a combined east-side police/fire public safety facility in Sugar House.

"The infrastructure of public safety needs these improvements," Dinse said.

The most vocal criticism of the bond has come from members of the Salt Lake County Council. Councilman Joe Hatch has said too many extra projects are attached to plans for the new public safety building and are unnecessarily driving up the bond's price tag.

Hatch and fellow county Councilmen Randy Horiuchi and Jim Bradley also have called for more discussion about an emergency operations center. Hatch has said the city needs to consider all of its options, including an integrated countywide emergency communications system instead of a stand-alone operation.