The town of Patagonia has abandoned plans to reinstate the town marshal’s office and will continue to contract with Santa Cruz County for policing and law enforcement.
“It was too expensive to bring the marshals back,” town manager Ron Robinson said after the Town Council’s Sept. 9 meeting.
Robinson had raised the idea of bringing back the marshal’s office in March when the Town Council approved the Early Actions Community Investment Funding Agreement with South32. One of the six Patagonia-specific projects in the agreement was up to $300,000 for expansion of Town Hall to accommodate the marshal’s office.
The expansion will still occur, but the additional space will be used for the town court and sheriff’s office space.
Mayor Andy Wood said the town’s cost for contributing to the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System was prohibitive. “That is super expensive if we have local law enforcement,” she said.
The county’s budget law enforcement costs with Santa Cruz County are $445,977 for the current fiscal year. “We’ve had the same cost in our law enforcement for the past four years,” Robinson said. “We’ve paid the same bill. They haven’t raised it. So we’re good.”
The Council approved a $79,990 proposal from CPE Consultants for design and engineering of the Town Hall expansion. Robinson said concept drawings will be presented at a joint meeting of the Council and Planning and Development Committee in the first week of October. Construction could begin soon after plans are approved.
The Council also approved two other items that were part of the Early Actions agreement: $286,000 for design and engineering of a five-duplex affordable housing project, and $138,700 for design and engineering of a daycare center. Both projects are on Harshaw Avenue.
Only design and engineering for the housing and daycare projects were included in the Early Actions agreement. Actual construction would be Phase Two, which would begin after a Community Protections and Benefits Agreement is finalized. Robinson said he submitted proposed costs for the projects more than a year ago, but those may have increased in the meantime.
“We may be doing what I call value engineering,” he said. “That means we’ll take the plans, we’ll bid it out, and then we’ll find the contractors that work with us to reduce the cost by changing the product or how we go about building it. That’s the way we do a lot of our jobs here, just to get it within budget.”