The Bond Issue: Part Two

• By GREG GARLAND
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 1, 2009 - Page: 1A

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

This is the second of a four-part series on the Nov. 14 bond issue:

• Sunday: Who pays the tab? How the 9.9-mill property tax and half-cent sales tax increase will affect people who live, shop and do business in East Baton Rouge Parish.
• Monday: A close look at plans for infrastructure improvements — drainage work, a new public safety complex, new Parish Prison and similar projects. What’s included in the tax package and why.
• Tuesday: Examining plans to expand the River Center and build parking garages to attract more convention business and promote economic development. Will the strategy work?
• Wednesday: The Alive project — the educational, recreational and scientific research venue on the Mississippi River. What are the potential benefits and potential costs for taxpayers.

---

Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff isn’t joking when he uses the words “beyond deplorable shape” to describe the police department’s headquarters on Mayflower Street.

That was driven home, LeDuff said, when a 50-pound chunk of the building that houses the department’s training academy recently came loose and crashed through the ceiling into an unoccupied area of the facility.

“Our building was great as a school when it was built in the 1930s,” LeDuff said. “It wasn’t built to be a police station. She’s an old girl and she’s getting tired. She’s not able to do what we’re asking her to do.”

If voters approve a $901 million tax package on the Nov. 14 ballot, plans call for a new public-safety complex to be built near Baton Rouge Metro Airport that would serve as headquarters for city police and the Sheriff’s Office.

The complex is part of $534.7 million in infrastructure work that includes building a new East Baton Rouge Parish Prison and juvenile services facility, consolidating municipal departments under one roof, synchronizing traffic lights and clearing and widening canals to improve drainage.

The projects, which account for about 60 percent of the total tax package, are probably the least controversial elements of the capital improvements plan that was put together by Mayor-President Kip Holden.

Most of those who have publicly spoken against the tax issue because they dislike certain elements of it — particularly downtown development projects — concede the need to address the community’s deteriorating public infrastructure.

The public-safety complex would be built near Metro Airport at a cost of $92.5 million, providing city police and the sheriff’s office with modern office space and a joint training facility for law enforcement officers.

The new headquarters would   consolidate the city police department’s administrative and investigative staff under one roof and allow it to better coordinate crime-fighting efforts, LeDuff said.

Patrol officers would remain stationed in four precinct building around the city, working in the neighborhoods from those outposts, he said.

The Mayflower Street building was supposed to serve only as a temporary headquarters for the police department when it moved there in 1989, but that has turned into a 20-year stay, LeDuff said.