Oviedo leaders will head back to the drawing board to chart a new plan after voters strongly rejected a ballot referendum this week that asked if the city should borrow up to $35.5 million to help pay for a new and larger police headquarters.
“There will be a Plan B. But we just don’t have it yet,” Council member Jeff Boddiford said. “We got to do something. That building is in bad shape.”
It would have cost an estimated $78 annually for every $100,000 of a property’s taxable value to pay back the proposed 30-year bond, according to the proposal. The tax rate, however, would have been calculated every fiscal year, depending on property values.
“We’re all going to come together, along with our financial advisors, to come up with some viable alternatives,” said Patrick Kelly, Oviedo’s assistant city manager. “It did not fare as well as we had hoped. And we are disappointed.”
Other Oviedo officials said they were surprised at Tuesday’s outcome, as residents often support funding law enforcement needs. There was no clear organized opposition toward the referendum, and few people turned out to public meetings to protest the tax increase, officials said.
Still, nearly 64% of votes cast on Tuesday rejected the bond referendum, including Mayor Megan Sladek, who voted against the plan after hearing from residents questioning the expenditure.
It was the second time in the past seven years that Oviedo asked voters to borrow money for a new police building.
In 2016, voters approved a somewhat similar referendum in which Oviedo would borrow $11.4 million to build a new police station near City Hall off Alexandria Boulevard.
But even after securing voters’ approval to borrow the money, Oviedo did not move forward with the plan after a city-commissioned study a year later showed the police headquarters would actually need to be 42,000 square feet, or more than double the size being proposed at that time.
That would come with a much higher price tag.
Currently, with just under 40,000 residents, Oviedo’s population is expected to soar to more than 50,000 residents in 15 years. And the police department needs at least 20 more sworn officers to meet that growth, according to officials.
Police officials have long said that space is so tight in their current 11,000-square-foot station — built in 1990 — that officers often share cubicles. There is a lack of storage space for evidence, no area for the K-9 unit, and little space to bring in new crime-fighting technology.
A new public safety building of 47,000 square feet would meet the police department’s needs, City Manager Bryan Cobb told council members last July. It would cost nearly $47 million to build such a facility.
The $35.5 million proposed bond would have been added to the approved $11.4 million to meeting the costs of the larger station, according to officials.
Oviedo could, instead, look at moving its police department and some other City Hall functions into the empty 120,000-square-foot, two-level space, formerly occupied by Sears inside the Oviedo Mall, according to a proposal pitched by Kevin Hipes, the mall’s development director.
The city could either lease the space or purchase it, according to proposals. Oviedo would pay for the costs of renovating the mall space to accommodate the police department.
Sladek, who voted against the latest bond referendum, said she “shudders” and called it “mind boggling” of the city borrowing a total of nearly $47 million.
“It’s real money,” she said. Sladek voted in July to place the referendum on Tuesday’s ballot to give voters a chance to decide the issue.
Sladek, who resoundingly won reelection Tuesday, noted that the city never seriously investigated whether it would make financial sense for Oviedo to purchase the land and the old Sears building on the mall property.
“I want to do the math,” she said. “We have never paused long enough to get creative. Is there a way to do this with less taxes and less bonds? To do it in a less traditional way and accomplish the same goal?”
But Boddiford rejected the mall proposal.
“The mall is in rough shape,” he said. “And to retrofit the Sears building for a police department, it’s a lot of money.”
Oviedo Police Chief Dale Coleman did not return a request to comment on the referendum.
mcomas@orlandosentinel.com
