As the debate goes on regarding a Grand Junction “Safety Center,” it's time to consider an alternative to our fragmented local governments and service providers.

Why not combine the Grand Junction Police Department and the Mesa County Sheriff's department into a metropolitan police department? Combining the two police departments would immediately reap efficiencies. A single patrol unit, detective group, combined administration, and labs and forensic operations would save the taxpayers dollars. Such a metropolitan police department would follow similar patterns to the cooperative efforts that have already been created with the Grand Valley Regional Transportation organization, the Grand Junction Drainage District, and the Cooperative Planning areas (“buffer strips”) between Grand Junction and Fruita and Palisade and Grand Junction.

Future Grand Valley metropolitan services could be expanded to include a metropolitan parks, recreation and open space district, metropolitan road maintenance district and other metropolitan services. These services could be more efficiently managed on a metropolitan scale rather than our current fragmented service districts each providing their own service which often is overlapping and duplicative.

How would such a Metro District be funded? Each local government could contribute an annual amount proportionate to their population and the district itself could assess its own tax, allowing the local governments to lower or eliminate their taxes for these services.

The Grand Junction area qualified as a Metropolitan Statistical Area after the 1990 Census based on the area's population of more than 100,000 with a central urban population of 50,000. Now is the time to provide metropolitan services for its population.