OVIEDO, Fla. — The city of Oviedo is revising its pitch to voters to ask for more than $20 million in taxpayer money to revamp the city’s police headquarters. 

Last year, more than 60% of voters voted against the referendum that would have allowed the city to borrow up to $35 million for the proposed Public Safety Building Project.

The initial 47,000-square-foot project was supposed to cost $47 million, but the city council has cut the size and cost for the project.

Council members adopted ordinance 1745 on Monday, July 15, “calling for a referendum election to issue bonds” that do not surpass the estimated $20.4 million needed to construct the new building, plus the $11.4 million that the agency received in a 2016 referendum.

Oviedo’s police department has remained largely unchanged since its construction in 1990.

However, Police Chief Dale Coleman said they have installed internet cables over the last few years where officers work.

“There’s one, two, three, four wires coming down where there’s another cable box. Why? Because now we have laptops and computers in here,” he said.

According to Coleman, the 11,000-square-foot police building was not designed to accommodate how police work is conducted today, and does not meet the growing needs of the department.

“If I want to meet with the whole department, we have to go somewhere else. There’s nowhere in this building that I can even meet with half of them,” he said.

He said his 81 officers have nowhere to train, nowhere to host community members and nowhere to sort through evidence.

“This is also where we currently have to package property and evidence. So somebody may be packaging drugs down here and somebody may be having lunch over here,” Coleman explained as he gave a tour of the squad room.

He’s hoping voters agree to an increase in property taxes in a referendum that would allow for new police headquarters.

Coleman said the cost of renovating the building is the same as building a bigger establishment from scratch.

“The way this building’s built, it doesn’t renovate well. Plus, if you look at this stairwell here and a couple other things, we are not ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant,” he said.

The new proposal calls for a 28,800-square-foot building and includes a 10,000-square-foot shell for future expansion.

Some residents react to the proposal

Despite the police department’s needs, not everyone in Oviedo feels the same about whether this should be on the Nov. 5 ballot.

For some residents like Danny Chiriboga who has lived here since 1989, a cut to the project’s cost still won’t make a difference.

“I just don’t want to pay something, more tax, you know? There’s enough in Oviedo. I don’t think it would benefit me personally,” he said.

Others, like resident Zoraida Cintron, say they are ready to pay extra tax dollars to help the police department.

“I’m retired. I’m on a budget, but that is something that I’m definitely willing to support,” Cintron said.

Coleman said he’ll respect whatever voters decide in November.

But he says that if the referendum doesn’t pass, that he will do everything he can to keep fighting for this project.

“It doesn’t give us everything we’d like to have in a building if we were to put it all out there, but we would be leaps and bounds of where we are today,” he said.

Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said she’s against putting this issue on the ballot this year.

She said she would rather support an alternative plan proposed by city staff that would put the referendum on the ballot in November 2025.