OVIEDO, Fla. — It’s back to the drawing board for the city of Oviedo after residents shot down plans to pay for a new police station.
Out of the nearly 7500 people who voted, a super-majority -- *64 percent* -- voted no.
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Channel 9 spoke to Oviedo Police Chief Dale Coleman about what comes next.
The chief said they are exploring all options going forward and added that they are pausing for now, but their needs are still here. The biggest need right now he said, is space.
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Last week, Channel 9 showed you the mold and water damage, as well as a lack of space that are limiting what police can do and raising the need for a new station.
“I’ve got one of my crime analysts, she’s actually in what we used to be a closet. That’s her office. And it’s not a big one. We don’t have a training room, classroom big enough to do anything with,” Chief Coleman said.
On Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly rejected a new $47 million police station.
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Now the department is back to exploring all options, including $11.4 million dollars in bonds that passed in 2016 that could be used to add more space.
“I’ve said it from the beginning, I’ll look at anything, I was more than willing to look at the Sears building, to see if it would meet the needs and see what it would do,” Coleman added. “But yeah, I didn’t want and wasn’t trying to make it a shoehorn and make it fit. I wanted to make sure we had the right building for the right reasons.”
Coleman pointed to a new state law prohibiting how police were able to promote the referendum as well as inflation as reasons why the plan came up short.
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“Because in a public forum, people would come up and say we’re for the police department. But that’s a lot of money,” Coleman said.
Coleman told Channel 9 that as far as that new referendum law goes, Oviedo may have been one of the first in the state to test it out in an election cycle.
Oviedo could be a litmus test for future referendums across the state, including the penny sales tax here in Seminole county.
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