By M. Scott Carter

Transcript Staff Writer

MOORE — Having lived through two natural disasters, city officials here want to be prepared for a third.

And it’s going to cost about $10 million.

With the city’s aging public safety system already outgrown by its population, city leaders are asking voters to help upgrade the system with a temporary, one-half cent sales tax.

“Our city’s infrastructure is underfunded,” Moore City Manager Steve Eddy said recently. “And while we are seeing lots of new dollars from a growing retail trade, those funds aren’t enough to make big purchases like a $3 million fire station.”

Eddy, speaking at a public forum about the tax proposal, said the funds from the tax increase would be “used solely to fund improvements to the city’s police, fire and public safety departments.”

Those changes, Eddy said, need to be made.

“We’ve used a lot of our growth revenue to pay for improvements to water lines, better streets and other issues. But we can’t fund these big purchases (police, fire and public safety improvements) out of growth revenue dollars.”

Eddy said city officials chose sales tax as the way to generate additional revenue so the city could take advantage “of the many, many thousands of others who would help us pay for it by shopping in Moore.”

The increase, he said, would cost residents about $4 extra per month and would push Moore’s total sales tax rate, including the state’s portion, from 7.5 to 8 percent. The tax would expire in 2011.

Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis — who voted in support of the proposal — said council members began discussing the need for a better public safety system “right after” the May 3, 1999, tornado.

Following that tornado, Lewis said community leaders grew concerned about possible damage caused by future storms. “We had several discussions about what would have happened if that storm had hit our police department. If that had happened it would have been huge; we wouldn’t have been able to respond.”

That discussion along with Moore’s rapid growth, pushed council members toward some type of revenue increase.

“We’ve outgrown many of our emergency facilities,” Lewis said. “Our police building is really outdated, it was originally built to hold 15 guys, and now we have more than 70.”

Both Lewis and Eddy said about $6 million of the revenue would be spent to upgrade the fire department; $2 million would fund police department renovations; and another $2 million would be used for the emergency management department.

Fire department improvements include:

• Construction of a fourth fire station, possibly near South 19th and Fritz Boulevard, $1,581,000.

• Equipment for the new fire station, $973,000.

• Furnishings for the new fire station, $213,000.

• Relocating two existing fire stations, $2,203,540.

• New furnishings for the relocated stations, $246,278.

• Architecture and engineering costs, $232,000.

• Station 2 workout and administrative offices, $120,000.

“Because of our growth we need a fourth fire station,” Lewis said. “Plus, we’re looking at evenly spacing out our other fire stations to improve response time.”

Lewis said leaders also are discussing the possibility of moving Station 3 eastward, toward South 34th and Sunnylane. “But nothing has been decided yet,” he said.

While fire department improvements would use more than half of the revenue, $1,915,000 would go toward renovating police headquarters and purchasing new equipment.

“We’re talking about gutting the existing police building and starting over,” Lewis said. “Our police department has way outgrown that building.”

Police department changes include:

• Renovating of the existing facility, $1,200,000.

• Purchasing new equipment, $450,000

• Architecture and engineering costs, $85,000.

The remaining $1,995,000 would be used to construct, furnish and equip a new emergency management facility — probably under the headquarter’s fire station. In addition, city leaders want to spend about $250,000 to purchase and equip a mobile emergency command post.

“Our old mobile unit is pretty worn,” he said. “We got it from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and it’s been well used. It needs to be replaced.”

Another $425,000 would be used to purchase 800mhz radios for the department, with about $1 million set aside as contingency funds.