After police building vote fails, question remains: ‘What now?’

The years-long process of finding a way to fund a new public safety building in Oviedo will continue after a referendum asking voters for millions of dollars in bonds was roundly rejected for the second year in a row.

After 64% of voters rejected $35.5 million in new bonds in 2023, 59% rejected the revamped request of $20.4 million on Nov. 5, putting city officials in the position of again trying to figure out what, if anything, can be done to fund a police/public safety building in need of repair or replacement. 

The voting results for the public safety building bonds. The 2023 results are on top, the 2024 results are on bottom (Images from voteseminole.gov)

“I’m not thrilled,” Oviedo Police Chief Dale Coleman said. “It didn’t go our way. We’re disappointed it did not pass, and now the question is: how do we go from here to get the voters to understand and approve a building that we need?

“I don’t think we’ve gotten our message out effectively enough for people to understand why we need the building,” he said. “Once people have taken the tour, I think it becomes much more evident of why a building is needed.”

Tours of building were offered during city-hosted town halls on the referendum in 2023 and 2024.

Had the general obligation bonds been approved and used, they would have had to be paid back over 30 years through property taxes. They would have been combined with $11.4 million in voter-approved bonds available to be used from the 2016 election. 

An explanation of how much residents should expect to pay annually based on the taxable value of their homes for the bonds (Image courtesy of the City of Oviedo)

City officials are now raising questions about the large back-to-back requests of voters and what the future holds for the building — and the Oviedo Police Department.

Was the initial $35.5 million too big an ask? Was it a mistake to ask voters two years in a row? Are voters saying no just to property tax increases or a new police building as a whole? What happens now?

“To be honest, I don’t have a great answer,” Council Member Natalie Teuchert said. “I will say there’s no plan that’s been floated out there as far as what our next steps are. Personally, I don’t think we should wait until the next election season to do something about it.”

While the initial $35.5 million ask led to sticker-shock for voters, the city had its reasons for that amount, though they may be regretting it now.

A rendering of the site layout for the proposed new complex (Image courtesy of the City of Oviedo)

”I think we looked too far down the road,” Coleman said. “We were looking for, effectively, a forever building where it should meet the needs for growth for literally the next 40, 50 years. And I don’t know that you can project that far because we don’t know what we’re going to be doing in that time.”

While voters approved the $11.6 million in 2016, it was almost immediately determined to be insufficient to fund a new building, Mayor Megan Sladek said. However, she said she has heard frustration from residents about the process itself.

A cost breakdown for a potential new police building (Image courtesy of the City of Oviedo)

“Nobody believes the price,” she said. “People just do not believe that it’s $1,000 a square foot, and that is an eye-popping figure. It is difficult even for me to believe this, even though we saw the numbers, [voters] also rejected it [in 2023] and then magically it’s $15 [million] cheaper. So [voters say], ‘What if we [reject] it again? Is it $15 million cheaper this time?’”

And therein lies the conundrum city officials find themselves, because, while many who have seen the state of the current public safety building agree it is insufficient to house the police department, they have now spoken loudly that they do not want to pay the price the city says it will cost to construct a new building. And with every passing year, building costs continue to rise.

Potential options

But what are the options after resounding rejections in consecutive years?

One option, which Sladek has proposed in the past, is to use part of the money the city will receive from the one-cent infrastructure sales tax, which 73% of voters approved to extend through 2034, to pay for the bonds.

The city is expected to bring in about $51 million over the next decade through the one-cent sales tax, and has a long list of infrastructure projects included in its plans. If the city went that route, using the current proposal for the additional $20.4 million needed for the new building, about $2.3 million of the projected $5.3 million in annual revenue would go toward paying down the bonds over a nine-year period.

While this would keep residents from paying higher property taxes, it could put much-needed projects in jeopardy.

“Personally, I am not in favor of doing that,” Teuchert said. “We use it for our roads, we use it for our sidewalks, we use it for our infrastructure, and that’s what it’s for.”

Sladek, however, does not see much of a conflict with using a portion of the funds to pay for the bonds.

“There are things on [the project list] that I don’t think we should do,” she said. 

Among those Sladek does not deem as necessary are new restrooms at certain city facilities and the repaving of certain roads.

“Do we have to pave roads as often as we do?” she said. “We’re doing some things that don’t feel fiscally responsible by just spending the money because there it is, and we have a timeline where we have to spend it all or allocate it for spending under the rules.”

Even if this were to pass, it does not mean residents would not be paying more in other ways. Using the one-cent sales tax money for the police building would most likely lead to an increase in water and sewer rates, Sladek said, as it will most likely not be able to be subsidized with the sales tax.

“That will possibly, probably, result in slightly higher water, sewer and stormwater fees,” Sladek said. “But will it be so much tighter that it’ll be more than if we had charged the property tax bond, the tax increase needed to fund the bonds with property tax? I don’t think so.”

Another option is to continue finding cost savings in the construction of the building, and cutting things from the request that may not be absolutely necessary.

“My current plan right now is how do we get something usable, functional and high quality that might not be the shiniest thing on the street, at a much lower cost than what we’re asking for,” Teuchert said. “I want to find ways to lower the cost, actually get a design that’s more feasible, and I want to present something the average person could read and be like, ‘Yeah, that seems reasonable, and we can swing that right now.’

“I want a reasonable solution,” she said. “I don’t want a stunning police department. I want a functional one that serves our citizens, serves our staff, gets the job done at a reasonable cost. How we get there … we’re going to have lots of discussions about this coming up.”

What comes next?

Sladek said city staff is working to ask voters directly why they may have voted against the referendum and what would make them support it.

“Maybe the answer is nothing,” she said. “And if the answer is nothing, then we need to make sure that people realize that if we refuse to house our police department, that is a de facto choice to stop having one and to outsource that to the [Seminole County] sheriff. 

“Nobody likes it when I say that out loud, but now that we’re on our second round of rejection of funding a new building, we are getting to the place where we may have to have that talk very frankly,” she said.

Coleman said that if the city is to ask for additional funds again, he could see it at a smaller footprint. The 2024 proposal was for a new 28,800 square-foot building and an additional 10,000 square feet of shell space that could be finished at a later date, costing a total of $32 million.

“Council was the one that put the shell on there, and I was very thankful for it,” he said. “My next [ask] would probably be the square footage we need, which would be about 28,000-30,000 square feet … for the job we foresee that we can do for the next, probably, 10 to 15 [years] at a minimum. 

“What I don’t want to do is get in a bind and short change, where you build it and it’s not adequate when you build it,” he said. “That wouldn’t be acceptable.”

Only time will tell if voters would approve that.

“We will look at what other funding sources we could use that maybe we didn’t go this route this time that may be advantageous,” he said. “Getting everybody on board to wholeheartedly support it in city government, that would be beneficial to this.”