- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Del Lago residents ask for city’s help with streets; Lakeport City Council to discuss road projects in workshop
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Residents of the Del Lago Homeowners Association went to the Lakeport City Council meeting this week to ask for immediate attention for their neighborhood’s deteriorating roads, a matter expected to come up in a Friday council goal-setting session.
Several association members attended the Tuesday evening council meeting to speak on the topic during public comment.
In a letter to the council dated March 10, the association’s board of directors noted that homeowners have waited for critical repairs for several years to streets including Via del Lago, Montana Vista, Via del Cabana, Mariah and North Main.
“For over 40 years, nothing has been done to maintain the City streets running through Del Lago except pothole filling,” the letter explains.
“After reporting numerous times that many of the potholes have now eroded to dirt, we have been told by city officials that tax funds have been earmarked for these streets and that we would be in line to receive relief for their dangerous conditions. So far, he only ‘repairs’ made have been to fill the deep potholes with loose material which disappears after a couple of days. This leaves our residents back where we started, facing many conditions which could cause pedestrian falls, etc. (all of which opens to possible lawsuits) and our city spending more money on ‘lost’ materials and staff-power,” the letter said.
The letter concluded, “As Del Lago residents and Board members, we petition the City to repair/possibly replace the City streets that run through Del Lago.” It was signed by the association’s board of directors.
Meg Harper, the association president and one of the letter’s signatories, read the letter to the council. “We have 80 homes in our association,” she said, noting it's a very large tax base.
Harper said the city is spending a lot of time and money filling potholes, adding that the roads aren’t just for residents but for walkers who make their way through the neighborhood. She asked the council to put Del Lago on the priority list.
Dave Stimmel said he’s owned a home in Del Lago for 20 years. All of the streets have a sidewalk on one side of the street.
He and other residents shared photos of the conditions.
Val Schweifler also shared photos of the situation. She said she appreciated staff coming to fill the potholes, but said the patches are gone in just a few days.
Lakeport resident and business owner Nancy Ruzicka said that 45 years ago Del Lago was created as a “planned unit development,” which allowed for higher residential densities and recreation facilities such as a playground, swimming pool and marina.
At the time she said it was built to the highest quality standards, and noted that several parties were involved in its development, including her company, Ruzicka Engineering.
She suggested an assessment district could help address the pavement situation, but asked the city to come up with a solution soon.
Del Lago residents had asked for the discussion to be on the Tuesday agenda and, when it wasn’t, instead decided to speak during public comment.
City Manager Margaret Silveira said it will be a topic at a special goal setting workshop for the council, which takes place beginning at 9 a.m. Friday at Lakeport City Hall.
Mayor Tim Barnes said he had recently driven the association’s streets on his motorcycle, “and my back still hurts.”
A drive through the neighborhood later that night confirmed very rough pavement and resulted in a tooth-rattling ride.
Schweifler told Lake County News in a followup interview this week that the association members knew the city’s budget process is coming up – Friday’s goal-setting meeting helps set priorities for the annual budget – and so they had wanted to get their request before the council ahead of that in order to be considered.
Schweifler said that many potholes have been down to dirt, not even baserock, for a decade.
Tracing development’s record
Public Works Director Doug Grider told Lake County News that he and city Building Official Tom Carlton spent time this week trying to track down a record of when the city took Del Lago’s streets into its road system.
While the record is kind of vague, he said they found documents from the early 1970s indicating that the city accepted Del Lago’s improvement plans. “If the city accepts their improvement plans, then basically they’re accepting their design,” he said.
There also was a letter that stated that the city was going to take Del Lago into the city road system, but Grider said they hadn’t actually been able to find the recorded acceptance.
“I guess we really have to put this in perspective,” Grider said, explaining that when Del Lago was built, there were not nearly so many regulations on streets and sidewalks – including Americans with Disabilities Act requirements – as there are now.
“If you go back to when this was all done, I’m sure that they were doing it for what was the standard at that time,” Grider said. “Unfortunately, that’s nowhere near the standard of today.”
Going back to that time frame, Grider said it wasn’t particularly unusual to take such roads into the city system. However, practices have changed in some areas. Grider – a former county of Lake construction engineer – said the county hasn’t accepted any new roads into its system for about 20 years, taking the position that developments have to have mechanisms in place to cover their own infrastructure.
“I’m pushing for that here,” he said of the city of Lakeport, where they have continued to take in new streets. “But that really needs to stop, just because we can’t afford to maintain what we’ve got.”
Paving and budgeting challenges
The Del Lago neighborhood’s concerns illustrate the city’s challenges with balancing limited funding sources with safety needs and residents’ expectations of better infrastructure.
Grider said he is sympathetic. “I completely understand where they’re coming from and their frustration because it’s mine, too,” he said, explaining it’s hard to look at deteriorating road conditions and not know when he can fix them.
Grider and his staff are known for doing a lot with a little, and have been aided by the city’s sales tax measures.
Even so, with costs going up every year – and a challenge in getting contractors to bid on local jobs due to competition – he said they can do less every year with the combination of city funds and grants, which usually require a substantial match.
“We go after all the money we can. It’s not free money,” he said, explaining that local matching funds are required, the competition for the funds, the amount of paperwork and management, and the cost benefit analysis, which makes it hard for smaller communities like Lakeport – with fewer residents and daily trips – to compete with bigger jurisdictions.
“Is there an easy solution? No,” Grider said.
He said the city’s pavement condition index, which has a scale like school grades, hovers in the “D+” or “D-” range. To bring the entire city’s road conditions up to the “C” category is estimated to cost about $40 million, which he said, realistically, is probably never going to happen.
However, because of innovative approaches the city has taken to its roads, “our road index has been defying the odds,” and is holding steady in condition while other areas are noting declines. “For me, that’s huge,” he said.
Regarding what could be done for Del Lago’s streets, Grider said he thinks they could mill and overlay them. He’ll be getting together with Paul Curren, the city’s enginer, next week to look at the situation.
Grider said he thinks it will require some new pavement. “I don’t have any costs at my fingertips yet. We’re still working on that.”
In the current fiscal year, the city also will be doing a paving project on Lakeshore Boulevard from Lange Street to the city limit, Grider said.
At the same time, the city has some other big projects coming up that will draw on the available funds, including a full reconstruction of South Main Street from Peckham Court to the city limits, a project in next year’s road budget. He said that road, an important entry point into town, gets 15,000 trips a day and if it’s not fixed, people will soon be driving in the mud.
They also starting to assess Forbes Street, repaved from Clear Lake Avenue to Martin Street about 10 years ago as a $1 million federal stimulus project. Grider said it’s starting to show duress and could requires as much as $500,000 in road surface treatment work.
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