City Council to consider purchase of new helicopters

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published November 13, 2005 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

San Diego city council will consider today a proposal to buy four new state of the art police helicopters at a total cost of $13 million. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

San Diego has negotiated a lease purchase agreement with Bank of America to buy four brand new helicopters. Today council will decide whether to award contracts worth over $12 million to acquire the state of the art choppers and equip them with state of the art specialized equipment, including infra red sensors.

The city manager says two of the police department's existing four helicopters are more than 30 years old, and are getting too expensive to maintain. The four new helicopters have a service life expectancy of at least 15 years and will take seven years to pay off.

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The interest rate on the lease negotiated is not revealed in council documents, but the money to pay off the debt, close to $2 million a year, will come from the police department's budget, which will have to be increased the cover the costs.

The new helicopters would be able to haul 250 gallons of water each, so they could assist the city's other two firefighting helicopters in case of wildfires. Alison St John KPBS news.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.