The Palo Alto Way. City Manager and Council are worried about spending too much money and willing to sacrifice entire floors, yet they want the building to "set a standard for better design" and make a statement about "civic identity". Why can't functional and "nice enough" be enough?

It's not a concert hall, it's a police station.

To those councillors who questioned the need for a communications tower: IT'S A PUBLIC SAFETY BUILDING. Forget your stupid height limit and concerns about neighborhood impacts. No one cares. So glad Holman is ending her time on council this year. Kou has no clue what she's talking about. Ever. DuBois seems nice but is a total NIMBY.

With the new PA police station so close to the SCC North County Courthouse, the former downstairs jail should be reopened for regular usage. Why transport suspects all the way from San Jose to Palo Alto? Besides, all civil cases are now held in San Jose while the criminal cases are heard in Palo Alto (SCC North County Courthouse).

What's the point of bussing inmates from SJ to PA for court appearances?

The scenic route along 101? A waste of gas, time and tax-payer money.

>[Kou] argued that the city should have looked at placing the new building on a city-owned site east of U.S. Highway 101.
Where is this other city-owned site and is the CC seriously considering locating the new Police Headquarters there?

If the new Police Station starts with a budget of $106 Million, you can be sure it will cost much more than that. So does Palo Alto really need to spend $100+ Million a new police headquarters?

Posted by Communication Radiation, a resident of Downtown North

>> To those councillors who questioned the need for a communications tower: IT'S A PUBLIC SAFETY BUILDING.

Agreed.

>> Forget your (deleted:stupid) height limit and concerns about neighborhood impacts.

In this case, agreed.

>> No one cares.

Yes, we do. Because, you can be sure that if the public safety building exceeds the limits, then, developer's lawyers will try to use that to argue that somehow it should apply to their new projects. This must be a one-time exception.

>> So glad Holman is ending her time on council this year. Kou has no clue what she's talking about. Ever. DuBois seems nice but is a total NIMBY.

I could not disagree more. Thank you Holman, Kou, DuBois, and Filseth for helping maintain some level of sanity in this city!

Thank you Dubois for your sincere representation of the voters. It's always sad how developers (usually living in other towns) go after the council members who best represent the folks who live here and act in the best interests of our town. Some people will say anything to make a quick buck at your expense.

Yes we need a radio tower as part of this project. The site selection has already been done so revisiting it would effectively kill the project. Let's not short change this project by removing one floor of the garage as the first floor is essentially the operational hub of the police station and where a lot of the work gets done. Residents and local businesses banded together to support the garage since it helps the local businesses while pulling the cars out of the neighborhoods. If you're concerned about the total number of cars then don't let them park in the residential neighborhoods.

> What's the point of bussing inmates from SJ to PA for court appearances?

Job security for SCC jail-bus drivers. They have to make a living too.

another boring eye sore office building. for $100 million, can't they design something that is special? why are only the older buildings in PA pleasant to look at?

The city should not rush into this . We should have a design contest, where we'll known architects propose designs for the building. Of course, the design will have to be in the julia morgan/birge clark style. A big plus will be if the building can be made to look historic. The council can then decide on the winning design. This has worked for us befkre.

What happened to that $40 million in Stanford funds? Didn't that earn anything in all this time?

The title of the article by Gennady and the Palo Alto Weekly sums up the best solution to addressing the outstanding problems with this project. The new building should simply be Palo Alto Police Headquarters. The administrative functions of the fire department don't necessitate the security and controlled access elements that drive the workflow of the police. The ballooning cost of the project and attempting to recreate today's existing configuration downtown has made this project too complex. It needs to be simplified.

Both Holman and DuBois had thoughtful comments on the 135 foot communications tower that point out a wider problem with the site and the current design. Based on Mr Cullen's remarks at the council meeting, the height of the tower is driven by the microwave radio links to our neighboring public safety agencies. These links are currently maintained by dish antennas at approximately 125 feet atop city hall. It's unlikely that the dishes will be smaller than 2 feet in diameter and be able to meet the FCC's Part 101 requirements for microwave links.

Perhaps for security reasons, the status of the city's effort to move to the regional trunked radio system, SVRCS, wasn't discussed as part of the tower design. However, based on the architectural rendering, it appears that the SVRCS elements currently housed in a hut on the roof the city hall would also move to the new police building and the SVRCS antennas would occupy the new tower at a similar elevation that they currently have atop city hall.

So, one outstanding question that needs to be asked and evaluated is the importance of relocating the 911 and communications dispatch center into new public safety building. Palo Alto Police and the OES would still need a radio tower, of course, but the size could be more modest and likely more resilient in a major disaster. Lots of agencies don't have their 911 PSAP and dispatch center near their police headquarters. Maybe Palo Alto should do the same and keep it downtown.

We appreciate the city's effort in getting the best value for this project and trying to address as many of the outstanding shortcomings in our aging public safety infrastructure. But, it might be simpler and easier to separate some of the elements out of the design and focus on solving the most important problems that surround the police department's physical infrastructure.

We need a new Public Safety building, agreed. I am concerned about earthquake risk (stated as severe in current old location) and reasonable modernity and functionality and security for staff and residents.
I still don’t “get” the horrifically high (projected) cost.
Surely there must be examples in comparable cities. Can’t we learn from these or must everything “be invented here!?”
NO to Council Member Kou’s feeler on placing this building in the Palo Alto Baylands. This is not appropriate; I will strenuously oppose such an idea if pursued.

So ... that really means $200 million, twice as much, when it is all said and done, right ... and take twice as long. Remember the Mitchell Park library? Palo Alto City government seems to have the institutional memory of a dementia patient, so II sure hope we are not using the same company to build the new Police station as the Mitchell Park library.

Posted by Bill, a resident of Barron Park

>> Both Holman and DuBois had thoughtful comments on the 135 foot communications tower that point out a wider problem with the site and the current design.

>> Perhaps for security reasons, the status of the city's effort to move to the regional trunked radio system, SVRCS, wasn't discussed as part of the tower design.

>> Lots of agencies don't have their 911 PSAP and dispatch center near their police headquarters. Maybe Palo Alto should do the same and keep it downtown.

Lots do though, including Mountain View and Los Altos. I don't recall Menlo Park offhand, but, if the duty office/operations center is in one location and the tower is somewhere else, then, you need a very robust link between the two, which is also bound to cost a bundle.

>> Maybe Palo Alto should do the same and keep it downtown.

Do you mean on top of City Hall? Bad idea. It needs to be survivable in case of a strong earthquake.