The public is invited to witness Marina’s crumbling public facilities firsthand.

Erik Chalhoub here, back in the 21st century after time-traveling in Marina yesterday evening, April 23.

I joined a tour of Marina’s city hall and police/fire station on Hillcrest Avenue, led by City Manager Layne Long, Police Chief Randy Hopkins and interim Fire Chief Mark Sweeney. It was the first in a series of tours and workshops (the next taking place tomorrow, April 25 at 10am) as city leaders gather feedback from residents on what they want to see for Marina’s public facilities.

The city is also preparing to place a utility users tax on the November ballot to raise the estimated $50 million needed to construct a new city hall and police and fire departments.

Our first stop on the tour was a trip to the 1970s—the city hall and council chambers are portable double- and triple-wide trailers that have been combined over the decades since they were built in 1975.

In the chambers, where the planning commission was meeting to consider a permit for a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Marina, Long said making upgrades to the facility is just not feasible. What may be a $1 million project could easily balloon to $5 million as construction crews find more maintenance needs when they dig into the building.

“We don’t want to make a bad investment in a building we know we have to tear down,” Long said.

The city hall building itself is in the same crumbling state—one participant on the tour immediately noticed a surface crack on a roof beam upon walking inside. And it is cramped. Despite less than 10 people on the tour, we found ourselves bumping into each other through the narrow hallways, looking at office spaces originally designed for one person but now split into two or three cubicles, with some employees even sharing desks.

We then fast-forwarded to two decades in the future, touring the 1993-built police and fire station, where I recognized a television set from my childhood. Despite being newer, it shares the same issues with city hall: confined spaces with no room to expand to meet the needs of a quickly growing city. 

Sweeney noted that emergency dispatchers know to give firefighters a few extra seconds to respond, as they have to run down a narrow staircase (without bumping into the police officers going in and out of the building) in order to get to their engines. When seconds matter in response times, it could be a life-or-death situation, he said. 

The planned utility users tax is the city’s second recent attempt at a measure to fund new facilities. A bond measure in 2024, despite getting 60 percent in favor, failed to meet the 66-percent threshold.

While two locations have been floated for a new city hall—Vince DiMaggio Park and Monterey-Salinas Transit’s vacant property next to the bus station on Reservation Road, with the former generating controversy among many residents—Long stressed that the upcoming utility users tax measure is not about selecting a site. Rather, it’s to see if Marina residents are willing to fund new facilities, and if it passes, a public process will commence to decide on a future site.

Take part in a tour (more are scheduled for tomorrow, April 25 and Thursday, April 30) and share your thoughts with city management.