What now for the Esplanade? Council has laid that decision over for after the election – cute, eh?
The real issue on Esplanade is the collapsing infrastructure – buckling, incomplete sidewalks, lack of crosswalks, high curbs that force wheel chairs out into the street. It’s an outrage that a city the size of Chico, with a payroll of over $28 million dollars, another $12 million on pensions and health benefits, would look like this.
Cycling through my neighborhood I encountered a sink hole. Notice it’s already been patched at least once, quite recently.
A few years ago, former Mayor Ann Schwab make a big deal over the new “Hwy 99 Bike Trail” through town. You can see part of it from the freeway. The purple light poles and other “art treatments” – stuff like, thousands of dollars for boulders shipped in from the Eastern US – ran almost a million dollars.
What you can’t see is the section that runs through my neighborhood. Cal Trans wouldn’t grant access on the freeway overpass, so the trail leads back into the neighborhood, winding down one street and up the other, using a series of stenciled white bicycles to lead the eager traveler to and from Bidwell Park. The actual trail was resurfaced, but, as you can see in the picture above, the surrounding streets were left to rot.
As you can see, the resurfacing job follows the purple signs. I wonder what each sign cost.
Every now and then a citizen complains and a city works truck comes out to patch holes with “slobbers” left over from other road jobs. Those patches only seem to exacerbate the pothole – within a week it’s back, even bigger.
I remember sitting in a meeting at which then-Finance Director Jennifer Hennessey explained that the gas tax fund – money that is supposed to be dedicated to fixing streets – was routinely bottomed out paying salaries Downtown. That seemed sketchy to Mark Sorensen before he was mayor – now he has sat by as city staff has manufactured ordinances allowing “cost allocation” – meaning, if a staffer attends a meeting in which the gas tax is mentioned, their salary for that meeting comes out of the gas tax fund. As well as the PG&E bill for that meeting, etc.
You see the streets sit and rot, but City of Chico employees continue to collect their paychecks, as well as pension and benefits payments.
It’s no better in the county, according to county Public Works Director Mike Crump (Enterprise Record, Letters, 5/4/16)
It was great news reading about all the road work Caltrans is doing locally, including the resurfacing of Highway 99 in Chico and constructing passing lanes on Highway 70 south of Oroville that are all important, but what about our local roads? We can all see (and feel) our local streets falling apart in front of our eyes.
Cities and counties have been measuring the condition of our roads and bridges and the news is not good. With the existing California gas tax funding formulas, there is a clear downward trend in our local road conditions projected over the next 10 years unless our state legislators begin to address this issue.
Here in Butte County, where I am public works director, on a scale of 1-100 with 100 being excellent, our local road pavement condition index (PCI) is an “at risk” 66. We (cities and county) need more than $65 million per year over the next 10 years if we are to bring our roads up to a good condition with a PCI over 70 and this does not include the needs of our bridges, traffic signals or sidewalks. Last year, unincorporated Butte County could only afford to spend $2.5 million to resurface 25 miles of our 1,000 miles of paved roads we need to maintain. If future funding to maintain our local roads is not addressed soon, we can expect many more of our roads to fail. Please log onto savecaliforniastreets.org for more information and cool maps.
— Mike Crump, Oroville
Mike, or “John” Crump as he is listed on the county payroll, made $168,000 in 2014, and took a $28,000 benefits package. The county spent over $118 million on wages in 2014, with another $35 million going out to retirement and health benefits. All that money spent on wages and benefits – what do we have to show for that? A bunch of fat employees driving to work in their new vehicles – a lot of them provided by the tax payers (who also pay the gas tax to fill them up) – over shredded roads.
Is Crump looking for us to tax ourselves further to pay more in wages – his wages have creeped up over $20,000/year in the last 10 years, while, as he admits, our roads “are falling apart in front of our eyes.”
This is what keeps employers out of the North State – our backwards, corrupt, over-fed public workers and our sagging, neglected infrastructure.
Chico Taxpayers Association 