By Brooklynn Wong
The city has taken the next step in establishing its Navigation Center, a homeless shelter in the industrial center in the northwest corner of the city.
At the most recent Buena Park City Council meeting, City Attorney Christopher Cardinale spoke about the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the North Service Planning Area (SPA) Navigation Centers, and the Council ultimately approved it.
This is a 20-plus page document that essentially gets all the involved cities on the same page, spelling out expenditures and expectations.
The amount that Buena Park owes will be covered entirely by Homeless Emergency Aid Program (HEAP) grant funds. The city applied for the funding and received $6,412,300 last fall.
The total cost to the city to acquire the site and construct the center will in the end be $7,515,070. Between the HEAP funding and SB2 funding, the costs will be covered, and the “numbers aren’t a hit to our general fund,” said Cardinale.
He said the MOU is a “somewhat flexible document” in terms of estimating the operating costs.
He reflected on the “undertaking of large proportions” that the Navigation Center has been, and said this was a step in the right direction. City Manager Jim Vanderpool praised Cardinale for spearheading the MOU and for getting the cities of the North SPA to come together on this.
