City considering selling Public Safety Building

A vision of a Orting Public Safety Building started in the late 1980's and concluded with the completion of the building in 2007. The voters of Orting rejected a bond to build the PSB. The council then voted to take out general obligation bonds to fund the project. The voters of Orting then voted to join Pierce County Fire District 18. So, currently the fire district leases roughly half of the PSB from the city. The fire district has given notice to the city that when the lease expires in December of 2015 they will not be renewing the lease. The fire district has informed the City of Orting that they would like to purchase the PSB. Fire District 18 (Orting Valley Fire and Rescue) has tendered a offer to purchase the building that is well below market valley and per a council member "a insult."

Currently the city is paying $100,000.00 per year to pay off the bond. The City of Orting (taxpayers) owe $1,080,000.00 in principal plus $482,020.50 in interest. If OVFR purchases the PSB the city may also have to pay a early pay-off penalty. If the penalty is in the neighborhood of $18,000.00 that would roughly leave a balance of 1.5 million. Speculating that OVFR has offered purchasing the PSB for 2 Million dollars that would give the city a net of $400,000.

If sold the city would have two options with our police department. The most distasteful option would be leasing the space the police department is in back from OVFR. Commercial property leases in our are ranges from $10-$20 per square foot. Giving OVFR the benefit of the doubt let's say they only charge the city $2.00 per square foot. That would cost the city $10,000.00 a month to rent 5000 square feet of the PSB. As stated earlier the city is currently paying $100,000.00 to pray the bond. The city would now have to budget a additional $20,000 per year to lease space for our police department.

The second option would be to build a new police station. Now remember we only netted $400,000 from the sale of our PSB. In our region commercial buildings average $170.82 to build. A new 5000 square foot police station would cost about $854,100.00 to build. Add the cost of the property, studies, city staff time, permits, etc it will exceed 1 million dollars.

Two other facts to consider. OVFR collects $2.86 per thousand of assessed property value from a tax base double the size of Orting. The City of Orting collects $1.60 per thousand of assessed property value from residents of the city. Point being is OVFR has the financial resources to build they're own fire station.

Second fact, the City of Orting needs a permanent building for our public works department. In my humble opinion it makes financially more sense to let OVFR build a fire station and to rename our Public Safety Building to the PUBLIC WORKS / POLICE STATION.