Critics of Raleigh safety center seek a delay

Voters should decide whether to write a $205 million check for a new public safety center and have their taxes raised for it, a handful of local conservative leaders said at a news conference Wednesday.

The call for a citywide referendum, and pointed criticism of the Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center, a proposed 17-story glass tower, come less than a week before the RaleighCity Council is scheduled to vote on the downtown project at its Tuesday meeting after two previous delays.

"They're supposed to go to the public for a vote," said Bob Orr, a Republican and former N.C. Supreme Court Justice who heads the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law.

Orr said he thinks that Mayor Charles Meeker and the seven other members of the council don't have the power to push significant debt on Raleigh taxpayers without getting approval directly from voters.

Meeker, a Democrat and strong proponent of the Lightner Center, has said politics should be kept out of the debate and that the council has the right to go forward with the project. Waiting to go to voters during the May or November elections for a decision could cost Raleigh taxpayers dearly in the long run if the city misses out on current, relatively low construction costs and interest rates, he said.

"Delaying construction of the public safety center for 10 months could cost Raleigh citizens as much as $50 million," Meeker said. "That is a gamble I'd prefer not to take."

The news conference, which included the conservative Wake County Taxpayers Association and the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, echoed a call this month from the Wake County Republican Party to have a bond referendum about the Lightner Center.

The Lightner project, named after Raleigh's first and only black mayor, has become an unanticipated hurdle for City Council members, who have been bombarded with dozens of letters from citizens expressing support for and opposition to the project. Last week, Kevin Coggins, director of the Greater Raleigh Merchants Association, asked council members to delay Tuesday's vote. John Odom, the lone Republican on the City Council, is a past director of the association.

The project has attracted controversy primarily because approval means giving a green light to an 8 percent property tax increase; however, city staff members are researching whether the cost for taxpayers can be offset by fees collected from developers. The tax increase could also be pushed back to 2012.

If the full tax increase is phased in, property tax on a home with an assessed value of $200,000 would be $60 more a year for the duration of the 25-year loans.

Russell Allen, Raleigh's city manager, said the tax increase also pays for $250 million in public works projects, including locations for city services such as street, parks and vehicle maintenance and a new solid waste plant in East Raleigh.

The building designs call for a 17-story, 300,000-square-foot building to house the city's police, fire, emergency communications, traffic operations and information technology departments.

The current police headquarters, a 50-year-old building that went up when former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms was on Raleigh's City Council, would be razed to make room for the Lightner Center. The $205 million price includes the building, as well as the purchase and retrofitting of two other buildings to put police and outfit the new center with furniture and technology, including a needed update of the city's emergency communicators operations.

Services like that are needed, said Ed Williams, a longtime Raleigh resident and retired state worker who wrote to council members in support of the project.

"The police are what I count on; the emergency communications people are what I count on," Williams said.

Williams said he's fine with paying more taxes, as long as the council doesn't reach too deeply into his pocket.