ATL Standard

City of Atlanta Statement on the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center Budget

The projected budget for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center's construction stands at roughly $90 million. The Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) has pledged to generate approximately one-third of this total through philanthropic initiatives and another one-third via a private loan and new market tax credits. Neither the price tag for the center nor the City of Atlanta's portion of the cost has doubled or ballooned.

There are two separate pieces of legislation passed during the previous administration that deal with the construction and the lease-back of the training center. The first piece of legislation, which passed in September 2021, was for the lease-back. The second was the resolution that unanimously passed in December of 2021 for the funding of the construction of the training center.

In December 2021, the Atlanta City Council unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing the Chief Financial Officer of the City of Atlanta to identify funding sources up to $35 million for the training center. Now that the CFO has identified the funding sources, City Council is being asked to consider an allocation of only $31 million to support the construction of the center—less than the previously authorized amount.

The remaining portion of the training center’s cost relates to the lease-back of the property to APF and does not involve an incremental, additional or new cost to the city’s taxpayers.

Why not? The City of Atlanta has and continues to pay more than $1.4 million each year for leases to use other facilities for public safety training. These locations are scattered around the city and metro area and are not optimal for public safety training. The City Council authorized these budget items years ago.

The legislation now before Council would eliminate the bureaucracy of the City paying various lease holders for suboptimal training facilities across the metro area. It allows the City to consolidate its current multiple lease payments for Atlanta Fire Rescue Department (AFRD) and the Atlanta Police Department (APD) locations and provide a far superior physical space where these departments can train together. Notably, it potentially also will reduce the City’s current annual lease payment from $1.4 million down to $1.2 million, a $200,000 annual savings or a $6 million savings over 30 years.

In summary, the $1.2 million budget-neutral lease-back payment to the APF, together with any extra rental income generated from public use of the facility will exclusively be used to cover the center’s operational and maintenance expenses, as well as the principal and interest of APF's $20 million loan. This is a reallocation of funds that saves the City and taxpayers money.

Once completed, the new Atlanta Public Safety Training Center will be owned and operated by the City and will be designed specifically to provide the highest quality training to our first responders, including de-escalation and anti-bias skills and techniques.

We know transparency and clarity around the process and budget for the training center is an important part of continuing to build trust in our neighborhoods and with the City of Atlanta. In the coming weeks, the Dickens Administration will continue to engage with the community and answer questions about the training center.

Original source can be found here.