Tigard’s city leadership is mounting its final, late-in-the-game, communitywide pitch for a $150 million bond to build a joint building for the city’s police and public works departments.
Aside from distributing direct mail and staging community events showcasing the project, top leaders made their case in a climactic interval of the city’s State of Our City Event on April 13 in Tigard’s Broadway Rose Theatre.
Mayor Yi-Kang Hu cast the project to build the new facility on a 9.5-acre city-owned site on Southwest Wall Street near Hunziker Road as “one of the most important long-term investments our community is considering.”
“This proposal is about ensuring our emergency responders and public works teams have the facilities they need to serve Tigard safely and effectively for decades to come,” Hu said.
Voters will determine the 30-year bond measure’s outcome in an election on May 19, when they decide whether to annually tax homeowners in the amount of 76.5 cents for every $1,000 of tax-assessed home value, not market value.
A video screened during the event showed Hu with Police Chief Jamey McDonald and Public Works Director and Acting City Manager Brian Rager standing on the proposed project site, where Hu said, “We hope to build a safe, modern building for our first responders in our police and public works departments.”
Rager said the building would feature a public-works emergency operations center resilient enough to “support emergency response after a major storm or natural disaster – and it would be designed to function on its own for up to seven days in the event of a large-scale emergency.”
If the bond does not pass, Rager said, emergency operations will remain housed in a building that falls short of seismic code and lacks a generator.
“That is so critical,” Hu said. “It’s the foundation that our first responders would need to be out in the community helping all of us when we need it the most.”
If voters pass the bond, McDonald said, “construction would start right away.” McDonald said city growth has aggravated longtime needs for better facilities for emergency services for many years, especially those for adequate storage space.
“This new building would …have enough space to securely store all of our criminal evidence on site – which is something we don’t have now,” he said. Hu added that the city now rents public storage for evidence, which “is not a best practice.”
The new facility also would have sufficient space for training officers, who now instead go to other cities, such as McMinnville, for training, McDonald said.
Hu and Rager stressed that the new building would offer a yard space large enough for large public works trucks, so Hu said, “we can better protect those expensive pieces of equipment.”
“Yeah, some of our sewer and stormwater trucks cost $700,000 a piece – and they should be kept inside to extend their lifespan and better prevent ruptures in freezing weather,” Rager said.
As it is, Rager said, Tigard public works teams who are maintaining streets and water systems, responding to storm disruptions and supporting emergency operations “often meet outside or work in spaces with tarps functioning as walls,” Rager said.
All in all, the new facility would help the city continue to recruit high-quality, diverse employees, Hu said. “Right now, that’s a challenge, especially because most of our neighboring cities have modern facilities that are really attractive to potential employees,’’ he said.
Existing facilities, McDonald said, lack adequate locker space, especially for women, and have “leaky roofs, security challenges and other hazards.”
“Tigard,” Mayor Hu said, “we have an opportunity to prepare our city for the future and ensure essential services are ready when they matter the most – now and decades into the future.”
