At their Oct. 24 meeting, Atascadero City Council finally authorized spending the money to fix roads that remain damaged from early 2023’s storms.
“This is an item to specifically help repair streets that are still damaged from the last set of storms,” City Manager Jim Lewis said at the meeting. “And I would like to highlight that this does include an allocation for the Del Rio Road repairs.”
The $250,000 will specifically come from the city’s capital project funds to help move the projects along quicker and ensure they are repaired before the next set of storms hit. The projects include $75,000 for the Del Rio Road repairs and $25,000 for Santa Cruz Road.
While the council unanimously approved the funding under the pretense that it would eventually be reimbursed under state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds for storm recovery, some members were concerned about how temporary the repairs might be.
“One of the elements mentioned in this item is the repairs on Santa Cruz Road, and since the repairs are along the slope and that can be tricky to do, can you ensure to us that the repairs being done are going to lead to long-lasting success?” Councilmember Susan Funk asked.
Lewis said the repairs would be done in such a way to ensure the project was not only long-lasting but an improvement over the way the city had previously done work there. He also explained to the council that the initial repair efforts for the Del Rio Road hit several delays when the city put calls for construction bids out on the project.
“We had two companies interested in taking on the project, but because they were so busy, we ran into issues with pricing, and it was just outrageously expensive,” Lewis said to the council. “This road is very well traveled and very important so we want to have it repaired.”
Lewis said he expects the project to be a collaboration between the city and CalTrans since the stretch of the damaged road falls under partial CalTrans jurisdiction.
“The way this is set up is so the city can do a little bit of this work that falls within our area and then subcontract out the rest to people who do things outside of our wheelhouse,” he said. “We have a plan to attack this work and complete it before Thanksgiving. We think with this funding we can complete that.” Ī
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 5, 2023.