Vote Delayed on Emergency Communications Center

A long-delayed plan to build a new emergency communications center was put off for another week Wednesday as members of the Los Angeles City Council questioned why police and fire experts who once wanted to place the facility in Westchester want to spend millions more to have it downtown.

“I get the impression that you can argue it both ways at your convenience,” Councilman Marvin Braude told acting LAPD Chief Bayan Lewis, and other city employees. “I’m not sure your convenience is worth the price.”

At risk of having the project rejected, backers of the downtown location agreed to postpone the council vote for a week--missing a June 1 deadline--to try and persuade skeptical lawmakers in the interim.

Lewis, Fire Chief Bill Bamattre and mayoral deputy Kelly Martin have endorsed a plan to build the facility just south of police headquarters, on 1st Street between San Pedro and Los Angeles streets, at a cost of $19.3 million--$2.3 million to $3.2 million higher than the price tag for a similar project on the Westside.

Officials say the downtown location is critical so that all the city’s emergency operations personnel will be close together in what is referred to as a “sneaker net” that allows employees to run from one office to another in the case of a breakdown of telephones and computer networks. They propose building a fire dispatch center next to the police site.

But when voters approved a $235-million bond measure to build the 911 center and other police facilities five years ago, some of the same experts said it was crucial to place the dispatch center outside downtown to guard against having all emergency facilities threatened by an earthquake or a terrorist attack.

“I’m having trouble [understanding] why it was so important to have it there a couple of years ago, and now it’s so important not to have it there,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. “The financial costs of this are still troubling to me.”