By Santa Cruz Sheriff Phil Wowack
The relocation and consolidation of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office is a project I have been working on for some time.
In preparation for the building of a new Sheriff's Office, I began looking for grants and other funding sources to finance the project. Over the past six months, my staff has worked with the County Redevelopment Agency (RDA) to determine if RDA funds could help finance a new Sheriff's Office. In this process, my staff and I attended a host of community meetings designed to get public input on the use of RDA funds. Public safety was one of the top concerns for mid-county residents who attended each of the RDA meetings.
In those meetings, community members identified the relocation of the Sheriff's Office to a mid-county location as a priority for the RDA.
On Tuesday, Nov. 10, the County Board of Supervisors held a redevelopment agency board meeting at Live Oak Elementary School. At that meeting the board voted unanimously to adopt a five-year plan for the use of RDA funds which included a proposal to move the Sheriff's Office to the Live Oak/Soquel area.
Being designated as an RDA priority was a major step toward securing the necessary funds to build a new sheriff's facility.
Why Move the Sheriff's Office?
The relocation and consolidation of the Sheriff's Office is not a new idea and its move had been the dream of the three sheriffs who preceded me. The administration and operations bureaus of the Sheriff's Office have been located at the 701 Ocean Street building in the city of Santa Cruz since the early 1970s.
Since moving to the Ocean Street facility there have been a number of attempts to move sheriff's operations into a stand-alone facility, closer to the population we serve. Each of those previous plans was shelved due to budget constraints or a shift in policing priorities.
The Sheriff's Office patrols some 400 square miles of county land serving the roughly 135,000 residents who live in the unincorporated jurisdiction. As mentioned, the bulk of Sheriff's Office staff is headquartered inside the city limits of Santa Cruz, which is not centrally located.
Additionally, inefficient and limited space at the Ocean Street building forces the Sheriff's Office to utilize five different worksites to house various investigations, forensic and patrol services. The consolidation of these services would significantly increase efficiency in operations and improve our service to the community.
Live Oak and Soquel are home to the largest concentration of county residents — some 33,000 people live in the mid-county area. This area also generates the majority of our calls for emergency and other safety services. Locating sheriff's headquarters in the mid-county area would obviously decrease response times to emergency calls and increase efficiency of patrol services.
What's Next?
The next step in the process is to begin working closely with various county departments on a proposed facility design and a site location. This will help determine the best location accessible to county residents, the size of the project and establish a timeline for construction.
Once a project design is written it will be presented to the community and the Board of Supervisors for approval. It is my desire to have a proposal ready for publication in early 2010 and, if approved, have the project complete within five years.
I realize such a timeline is ambitious, but I am very encouraged by the community excitement that this project drew in the RDA meetings. I am also very optimistic given the overall support of the Board of Supervisors. I am certain that a relocation of the Sheriff's Office will be a great benefit to all county residents. A mid-county location will improve community access to services the Sheriff's Office provides for the residents of all districts.
I would like to personally thank County Supervisor John Leopold, RDA Director Betsey Lynberg and their staffs for their organized and professional work in developing the RDA's five-year plan. They brought some 500 Soquel and Live Oak residents together at community workshops and listened to residents concerns about public safety and other matters concerning the RDA.
I would also like to thank those residents who involved themselves in the RDA process and became part of the future of their community.
Stay tuned for more information about the progress of this project.
