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Survey explains safety center 'no' vote(The Edmond Sun, Okla. Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 19--EDMOND -- A majority of Edmond residents would prefer using a sales tax to fund a new Public Safety Center, a new survey shows. Mayor Dan O'Neil began exploring how to best fund the proposed $31.5 million Public Safety Center after voters rejected the property tax proposition supported by the City Council. The city had 300 registered voters surveyed Nov. 10-11 to learn why the Public Safety Center proposition failed. Sixty-two percent of respondents to a City of Edmond survey said a new Public Safety Center should be funded through a sales tax increase. O'Neil expects the City Council will adopt the sales tax option for the next ballot initiative. "That's obviously what will be different about it," O'Neil said. "It's a question of what changes there are and how long to finance it." Sixty-two percent of survey respondents also indicated they voted against the proposition on Nov. 4. City residents voted against the center 24,121 to 15,268, according to the County Election Board. This proposed facility would bring together the Edmond Police Department, the Central Communications Department and the Emergency Management Department in one building. The Edmond City Council had chosen Barnett Field at Kelly and Main Street as the site for an 83,000-square-foot Public Safety Center. Only 3 percent of respondents thought the proposed building was too large. The current downtown police station's 22,000-square-foot design is obsolete for a burgeoning city of 75,000 residents, according to a 2005 needs assessment study. Police Chief Bob Ricks said the Police Department still lacks modern equipment to solve crimes properly. The new police department would improve on the existing facility by being designed for the privacy of victims and witnesses. The current building's configuration poses a threat for victims of crime who may pass by an alleged perpetrator being transported through the facility. "They've already been abused once. We don't want to have a situation where they feel like they're abused again," Ricks said in September. "...We've had situations where all of the sudden they're running right into the person they've accused of raping them." Of those survey respondents who voted against the proposition, 78 percent noted Edmond probably does need a new public safety center, but this particular plan was not the right approach. Financial issues need to be resolved. Location and size will be brought to the discussion, O'Neil said. Only 4 percent said their decision was based on a bad choice of location. The majority of the respondents, 56 percent, indicated the ad valorem funding plan is why they voted no. The remainder of those who voted against the center said they did so because of the economy, the project was too expensive, the project was not needed or taxes were too high. Nine percent had miscellaneous reasons and two percent did not know why they voted no. Fifty-one percent of all respondents had read or seen campaign materials in favor of the Public Safety Center proposition. The largest population of "yes" voters, 19 percent, had read newspaper articles about the Public Safety Center. Another 18 percent of "yes" voters had seen yard signs favoring the ballot initiative. Of the 48 percent of respondents who had encountered campaign materials against the proposition, 51 percent said they had seen yard signs urging a vote against the proposition. Regardless of how people voted, 44 percent of the survey respondents stated property taxes should be reserved for funding schools, while 3 percent said the property tax increase would be too expensive. "We're getting a lot of encouragement from people involved in the opposition," O'Neil said. "We've got to do it right (this) time and make sure citizens can support this project." The survey was conducted by the national research firm CHS & Associates and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percent. [email protected] -- 341-2121, ext. 114 To see more of The Edmond Sun or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.edmondsun.com/. Copyright (c) 2008, The Edmond Sun, Okla. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |