Published: June 20, 2008 09:33 pm            

Let’s decide

EDMOND — The City of Edmond recently paid $3,200 to Cole Hargrave Snodgrass and Associates Inc. to conduct a telephone survey of 300 registered Edmond voters. The survey sought to determine a larger public perspective on where a proposed $29 million Public Safety Center should be built.

The center will house the Edmond Police Department, the Central Communications department, which includes 9-1-1 services, and the Emergency Management Department. Currently all three departments are in separate locations.

The survey results show that 55 percent of those polled, once it was explained that the cost of the project goes up if the city must buy land, prefer the Kelly and Main location. The city already owns this site and therefore it will help keep project costs down. Fourteen percent of all respondents chose to keep the Police Department in the core downtown.

Of all the myriad projects that city officials could consider, building a new Police Department is clearly an easy sell to voters.

Police officials have demonstrated a true need for better, more efficient quarters. Edmond residents have supported the Police Department’s needs in the past with the public safety sales tax, which helped provide more personnel and upgraded equipment. This city clearly has benefitted from having one of the top police forces in the state keeping it and its residents safe. Our low crime rate is one of the main draws for people to move here.

It’s time to ensure the future success of our police personnel. It’s only so long that employees can “make do” with less-than-ideal working conditions. Our Police Department has done more with less for really as long as can be expected. It’s time for the city to investment in this department.

Taking a survey of 300 people with a margin of error of 5.6 percent is all well and good, but we don’t believe a survey answers the really important questions regarding this project.

The truth is only our city officials and City Council members can answer the most important question — and that is when are we going to pull the trigger on this project?

The council absolutely is right to be concerned with determining the best location and the best price for land that it can garner. However, these elected officials certainly don’t need a survey of 300 people to help them make those decisions. One, this is why voters elected them — to make the tough decisions. Two, they’ve already paid for some of the best advice in the state through the consultants they hired when they started the project. Not to mention having the input from a citizen task force for several months. Why not use the advice already given?

The city and its residents can argue about downtown or not downtown for the safety center’s location from now until the end of time. But the Police Department cannot function properly where it’s located for much longer. Let’s decide where our true priorities lie and get this project off the ground.

        

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