Council Funds a Larger Police Helicopter Hangar, Then Examines Why It Wasn’t Budgeted

Pasadena’s City Council voted 7-1 Monday to appropriate $900,000 more for a police helicopter hangar and to award a construction contract of up to $1,641,875 for a 5,000-square-foot building at the Police Department heliport.

Councilmember Rick Cole cast the only no vote, saying the added cost was beyond what the council had budgeted and that members learned of it only two months after going through and closing the capital budget process in June.

The discussion that followed turned repeatedly not on the building’s merits but on when the council learned the project had grown in detail and cost — and on what a council can do about a capital project by the time it arrives on the dais as a construction award.

Councilmember Jason Lyon voted yes and served notice that he would not do so again.

“We did know in June because we had the bid. And so we need complete and timely information,” Lyon said. He said he found it frustrating to face motions “where there’s no real choice to be made,” where the council is “forced to vote one way because we have a deep investment… we at least need to see that coming.”

The winning bid was dated June 1, 2026.

“I will vote yes, but there’s coming a time when I’m not going to,” Lyon said. “So I really want to put a stake in that.”

No total cost for the hangar project was stated Monday, and the funding was not broken out beyond the $900,000 appropriation.

What the council approved

The council awarded a construction contract to Elegant Construction, Inc., for a prefabricated steel structure and site work at the Police Department heliport facility, for a total not-to-exceed amount of $1,641,875. That figure includes a base contract of $1,491,875 and a $150,000 contingency for change orders.

The same action amends the fiscal year 2027 Capital Improvement Program budget by appropriating $900,000 from the unappropriated fund balance in the Public Safety Augmentation Fund to the Mobile Operation Center project.

Councilmember Tyron Hampton made the motion and Councilmember Justin Jones seconded it.

Mayor Victor Gordo asked for objections, noted Cole’s, and declared the motion passed 7-1.

The item had been pulled from the consent calendar for public comment. It had gone before the Finance Committee at a special meeting that began at 3 p.m. the same day, where Cole abstained.

‘A flaw in our process’

Cole said his objection was not to the building itself. He also said he was not casting aspersions and did not believe anyone had withheld the information on purpose.

“I am not opining on the merits of a 5,000 square foot replacement building for our aviation division of the police department,” he said. “I am, however, deeply troubled by the transparency on this.”

Cole said the council did not hear about the added capital cost when it earlier approved the purchase of what he described as eight or nine million dollars’ worth of new helicopters — two quieter, more fuel-efficient Bell aircraft replacing three aging ones — a case he said he supported at the time on economic grounds.

“This is a million dollars more, $924,000 more than we had budgeted. We just went through the capital budget process in June, right? That’s two months ago,” Cole said. “It’s only now when we’re going to award a contract for an extra $924,000 that we learned that the project scope is significantly expanded from replacing a [2,100] or 2,200 square foot building to a 5,000 square foot building.”

Cole called that “a flaw in our process,” and said late information leaves the council “having to basically rubber stamp what’s come through the system instead of having the ability to allocate resources.”

He said the council’s job is to oversee “a $1.5 billion budget of our taxpayers’ dollars,” and that he had received a “very responsive and appropriate” commitment from the city manager to do better in the future.

Staff points to a 2023 report

Rivas asked staff to explain why the larger hangar had not been incorporated into the Capital Improvement Program before Monday. She said the CIP had referenced the need for a new hangar for several years under the mobile command center project, and that what was now before the council was a bigger building to accommodate more helicopters.

Interim City Manager Matthew Hawkesworth said he had pulled and reread the staff report from when the council authorized purchase of the prefabricated hangar, and that the report outlined both the original smaller hangar and the transition to a 5,000-square-foot building.

“So that part was disclosed when the original hangar was purchased,” he said.

He said the gap between 2023 and 2026 stems from the need for additional site improvements, which he said is what was driving the cost before the council.