Vallejo dispatchers to move to new portable buildings outside police HQ

VALLEJO – The Vallejo City Council voted Tuesday to install new portable buildings next to the current police headquarters to house the city’s emergency dispatch center instead of the location that city staff had previously selected at the waterfront police building.

The councilmembers unanimously supported adding new portable buildings at the site of the current headquarters at 111 Amador St. rather than three other options presented by city staff.

“I’m for the portables,” said councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz. “ Amador Street is the way to go, financially, just every reason points to that direction.”

In June the council approved funding for the purchase of emergency call center equipment for the dispatch center with the intention of installing it at 400 Mare Island Way, the controversial waterfront police building where several other police divisions are currently located. The staff report stated that the council had “authorized and directed” them to move the facility to that location.

However, community members have long opposed moving the police headquarters to the prime waterfront location because it appeared to reward a department with a long record of violent policing. 

When the Council approved moving the dispatch center to the waterfront, community members questioned whether there were possible violations of the state transparency laws in the decision because it had never been approved at a public meeting. 

Two weeks later, city staff withdrew the decision, claiming that they were still considering other options. 

During Tuesday’s council meeting, assistant city manager Terrance Davis  presented a comparison of four locations for the dispatch center.  

Davis said that 400 Mare Island Way was the least expensive option at $840,000 and the second least expensive option at $946,000 was to purchase portable buildings and install them in an empty area of the parking lot at 111 Amador. 

But Councilmember Rozzana Verder-Aliga pointed out the additional equipment costs presented in later slides showed that the 111 Amador location ultimately worked out to be the least expensive option. 400 Mare Island Way required additional equipment costs of $1.5 million but because of the proximity to existing equipment 111 Amador’s added equipment costs came in at $1.13 million. 

The council also considered the fire station on Mare Island but security issues, the significant redesign needed and equipment costs drove the price of this location up to nearly $3 million. The last option, a police building at 2 Florida St., also came in at a higher price due to security and design costs. 

Davis said due to supply chain issues the dispatch center equipment order will not be ready to install for another 12 months and the cost of the equipment had gone up significantly since the council originally approved the funding. He said that funding already allocated to the construction of the new police station may cover some of the equipment costs, otherwise staff would be looking to find funds for the equipment during the mid-year budget process.

The presentation also examined a number of other advantages and disadvantages of each site including defensible space, utilities, antenna access, necessary upgrades to building equipment and the overall accessibility of the sites.

Loera-Diaz expressed her preference for the location beyond the issues of cost or infrastructure. 

“I think that any other police entities moving to the waterfront is a big mistake,” she said. “Because we want to get to the goal of bringing everybody back to Amador so we can start to do something with that building that is aligned with visiting and tourists and everything that prime property downtown does.”

Mayor Robert McConnell asked if staff could communicate with the Mare Island Modular Construction Company Factory OS to see if their modular units could be installed and later incorporated into the finished police headquarters.