Panel Supports Plan for New LAPD Facilities

The Los Angeles Police Commission, struggling for a way to pay for revamping the Police Department’s aging facilities without antagonizing city voters, voted Tuesday to approve a sweeping report on the problem and possibly to pursue a $400-million bond measure next April.

The commission unanimously forwarded to the City Council and Mayor Richard Riordan a recent analysis of the facilities problem prepared by Kosmont & Associates, a Sherman Oaks consulting company. That report recommended, among other things, that the city tear down police headquarters and build a new one as part of a first-stage, $436-million improvement program.

The full slate of renovations, to be undertaken over a period of years, would end up costing more than $1 billion.

In discussing the report Tuesday, Larry J. Kosmont, president of the consulting firm, acknowledged that the price tag even for the first phase might raise voters’ eyebrows--”$400 million is a lot of money,” he conceded--but he said it represented the consulting group’s best estimate of the department’s immediate needs.

Commissioner Edith Perez, a real estate lawyer who helped oversee the project for the Police Commission, said the improvements highlighted by the report are badly needed and overdue, but she warned against taking the measure to the electorate until the LAPD can demonstrate that it would spend the money wisely.

To that end, she recommended that the LAPD streamline its real estate acquisition procedures and other operations. Perez expressed optimism that those improvements can be in place in time to push forward with an April bond measure.

“I believe that if the City Council and the mayor’s office truly want these systems in place, they can be in place in time,” the commissioner said.

Other commissioners echoed Perez’s call for improving LAPD facilities, some of which have been allowed to decay for decades. After long delays, renovation programs already are underway at five Los Angeles police stations, a mark of progress for which some officials credit Police Chief Willie L. Williams.

Police officials also acknowledge that they initially were unprepared to manage previous bond measures.

“Back in the old days, we had nobody on the Police Department who had any insight or knowledge or expertise in capital improvement projects,” Cmdr. Carl Cudio told members of the commission. “We went to the voters without a comprehensive schedule.”

This time, however, Cudio and other officials pledged that the department would be ready before it asks voters to support a major slate of renovation and replacement projects.

The next step is the City Council, which will review the report and decide whether it wants to launch a ballot measure next year.

As commissioners met to discuss the Kosmont report, they also were reacting to fallout from news reports regarding their decision to rebuke Williams for selecting a more expensive official car than the ones doled out to other senior LAPD officials. In February, the commissioners privately scolded Williams for upgrading his car from a Ford Crown Victoria to a Chrysler New Yorker; excerpts from their letter to the chief were published by The Times on Tuesday.

Raymond C. Fisher, a member of the commission, stood behind the board’s decision.

“We thought in our judgment that it was the wrong message to send,” Fisher told reporters as he entered the commission meeting room. “He heard our concerns and decided to go forward.”

But Williams, who was out of town Monday, returned with sharp words for the commission and its rebuke of him. He called the issue “much ado about nothing” and noted that he had put off getting a new car until after officers in the department began receiving their vehicles.

Asked by one reporter whether he was living the high life, Williams called that “one of the dumbest, stupidest things that I’ve ever heard in my four years as chief of police.”