Item A: City Council Priority Issue - City Hall Complex

Home Browse Search

City Hall Complex – Police Patrol Options of the staffing study presently underway. The most important facility-based components of the neighborhood-based community policing plan are EPD’s public safety stations. Eugene presently has four public safety stations – City Center, University, Bethel, and Monroe Street Station. The public safety station is the physical face of community policing in Eugene. These small storefronts are open to the public and provide reception, information, report taking, and neighborhood meeting space. Each is staffed by a Public Safety Station Manager. Officers do not deploy from the public safety stations, though they often use them to write reports, meet members of the public, and for breaks. This is particularly observable in the new Monroe Street Station, which is the first “expanded” facility developed under the new neighborhood-based community policing concept. It is multi- functional in that it includes the district command offices, crime prevention, and Safer Schools offices. Future public safety stations (new or expanded) will continue to include this multi- functional concept to maximize both effective use of space as well as improve overall service delivery to the neighborhoods. The most significant need for an additional public safety station exists in north Eugene – the Cal Young and Harlow neighborhoods. EPD’s planning includes a request for a public safety station addition in north Eugene in the FY09 budget. The facility will incorporate the multi-functional concept modeled by the Monroe Street Station. Regardless of the final City Hall option selected, EPD recommends a public safety station be incorporated into the new City Hall design to serve at least the immediate downtown area and visitors to City Hall. Whether this facility would replace or augment the City Center Station remains a decision for the future. In summary, there is no particular community policing value in locating the main police patrol facility at the new City Hall. Neither is there a detriment, at least from a community policing perspective. There are, however, significant operational, cost, and design differences which are discussed in the next section. Operational (and other) considerations EPD’s identified space need requirements represent a significant percentage of the total area for a new City Hall. With its associated functions, patrol requires approximately 20,000 square feet of non-public space for briefings and report preparation, locker and equipment storage, and storage related to vehicle parking. There has been some concern expressed about City Hall design concepts that include police patrol functions on the ground floor of the building. This is particularly challenging in the half-block option. This challenge can be addressed by either moving the patrol offices to another floor (other than the ground floor) of the City Hall building or moving patrol offices entirely off site. The smallest ground floor footprint associated with EPD that should be considered is a lobby consisting of the new public safety station. Police Records, which is the most frequently publicly-accessed function of EPD and is open 24/7, should either be located in the main public safety station lobby or by open stairway and elevator immediately accessible to the lobby. The remainder of EPD’s functional units can be located on any floor of a new City Hall. In terms of serving the public, there is no reason to locate patrol on the ground floor of a City Hall building and the latest designs have been modified to reflect this change. From an operational perspective, however, separating the patrol offices vertically from the parking Page 2 of 4