A BIRD’S EYE view of the planned Civic Center Revitalization project (City of Garden Grove).

A recent editorial in The Register claimed that Garden Grove simply couldn’t afford the bond issue to finance the construction of a new police facility (with adjacent parking structure) and a new park in what’s called the “Civic Center Revitalization” project to the total cost of $152 million.

Why not? Nearly every school district in the area has successfully floated bond issues over the last decade, and they now have the new classrooms, stadiums and underground infrastructure to show for it (assuming you can see underground).

Just a few years ago, a smaller bond issue financed the construction of a modern fire station on West Street to serve the booming hotel district one block over on Harbor Boulevard. 

Now, it’s only fair to point out that the school bonds were supported in part by modest increases in property taxes, and the civic center project’s debt service will come from the municipal budget.

It’s been pointed out that Garden Grove can count on enough cash for that need for the next five years, but cannot predict reliably beyond that. 

But no one can reliably predict much of anything that far ahead. Will there be another pandemic? A Great Recession? Tornados? Dogs and cats living together?

The planned police center is a big meal, I’ll agree. But the task of law enforcement has become increasingly complex, diversified and technological. The GGPD is growing – thanks to Measure O – and at the same time, it’s a challenge to recruit officers in a world in which fewer and fewer people want to go into the profession.

A gleaming new cutting-edge facility will not only help the GGPD perform its crime-fighting responsibilities better, but will help the city get its pick of new talent.

A few paragraphs above I mentioned how difficult it is to predict the future, but some things remain easy wagers. The Register has been opposed to nearly every public project that you can think of. If it had been around in centuries past and had the influence, there’d be no Great Pyramids, Panama Canal or Golden Gate Bridge.

So that’s a hard “no” from the Register. But as a Marine sergeant once said, “It’s easy to be hard, but it’s hard to be smart.” This project looks like the smart move.