Détente?

His gale force bluster reduced to a mild evening breeze, Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim has decided to try a revolutionary tact in local government: He’s considering a compromise. Yes folks, as unlikely as it sounds, the Spa City’s “top cop” has decided to extend an olive branch to the mayor and council he’s worked so hard to ostracize these past eight months or so. In a ground-breaking move, Kim sent a letter to Mayor Scott Johnson requesting they sit down and create a plan to replace the aging police station off Lake Avenue.

Of course, most political pundits would call interdepartmental communications the hallmark of functional government, not some new fangled tact to get things done in a rational way. But this is Saratoga Springs and Ron Kim is…well…Ron Kim. And communication on the most primal level generally doesn’t come easy for him. Ordinarily, he’d fire out five or six news releases to all the major media outlets saying something about the “Nixonian tactics” being used by whatever agency or individual he views as the opposition. So any cordial contact requesting a sit-down discussion is a new and most welcome direction for Kim to be heading.

Incidentally, what exactly makes a bankruptcy attorney moonlighting as a part-time commissioner the city’s so-called top cop? This is a question the cliché-happy copy editors of the Times Union should answer for the Saratoga populous in 500 words or less. To imply Kim has anything to do with the enforcement arm of the city’s Public Safety branch is a frightening prospect indeed.

Fear not, political pessimists and partisan anarchists. This isn’t necessarily a full-blown détente sweeping its way through City Hall. It’s simply the invitation to open the channels of communication, which certainly doesn’t imply they’ll be open once both sides sit down to the table. Take a fellow like Khrushchev for instance. History tells us merely sitting down at the table isn’t necessarily the full solution to what ails you, especially if one side whips off their shoe and starts furiously banging it on the aforementioned table. However, it’s a start, and one Kim should be commended for if he can follow through.

It should be noted that the public safety commissioner really has little other choice than to open up a dialogue about the police station. All of his other tactics have either failed or backfired, leaving him with little more than a sheepish grin and a shrug of the shoulders. First, there was the effort to politicize the whole issue last fall, when the facility was estimated to cost $17 million. That failed, but he somehow gained re-election. At the same time, there was a concerted effort to let the station crumble into the ground and then show how the facility proved a hardship for female cops. The result was a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars, a mere pittance what the actual fix ended up costing.

Along the same lines, Kim complained last year the police were spending thousands of dollars in overtime because the state Department of Corrections wouldn’t allow them to lock the archaic jail cells. The cells now have new locks, installed at a cost of $7,000. Does anyone care to guess how much the police overtime ran before the cells were fixed? Lastly, there was the recent debacle when Kim insisted the city switch its bond for the recreation facility to fund the new police station; a dog-and-pony show he followed with the notoriously touring “failure-ometer” this summer. As it turns out, switching the bond would cost roughly 11 percent of the $8 million the city council allocated for the station.

So there’s not much for Kim to fall back on at this point, other than his own sword; a blade forged in the fires of his own political incompetence. Word is he’s ready to discuss alternate plans of funding, such as the failed lease-buyback concept thrown around last year. What should be discussed is how to reduce the cost of the building to the $8 million that was budgeted. Perhaps this discussion can include new and interesting ideas for the old police station that don’t include a costly expansion of government offices into it.