|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Responding to changing economic circumstances, Mountain View is looking to strike a careful balance between tightening its belt for leaner times while still planning to fund hundreds of infrastructure projects to keep the city running.
The city is in the middle of its annual review of its Capital Improvement Program, a multiyear plan that lays out infrastructure projects and funding priorities over the next few years. Mountain View’s needs are high, but its funding sources are far less robust than they were, even from just a year ago.
Rising inflation rates and higher construction, labor and material costs, coupled with declining revenues, have cut into funding sources for capital projects, according to a study session report presented to the City Council on April 9.
With more than 300 projects in the pipeline, the city plans to defer some projects to free up funding for others that are close to completion or ranked as a higher priority. The city also has identified a critical need to invest substantially more in pavement projects, after receiving a report that its roads were deteriorating.
The city’s Pavement Condition Index has slipped to 67, approaching the point of rapid deterioration, and has been declining every year since 2021. To maintain its roads, the city needs to improve its baseline pavement funding from $5.8 million to $8 million each year, according to the council report.
But the plan to shore up more money by taking away funding from active transportation projects, which focus on improving pedestrian, bicycle and public transit experiences, received pushback from community members, who expressed their discontent at the council meeting.
Mountain View resident Cliff Chambers questioned why the City Council was prioritizing pavements projects to the detriment of active transportation. “I think we need to take a step back and try to have a correlation between the CIP projects, and particularly ones that are going to be deferred, and have an evaluation process that evaluates the bigger picture,” he said.
Responding to these concerns, council members provided direction to city staff to find a way to restore the active transportation projects, which would cost $1 million.
Council member Lisa Matichak supported the restoration, but noted that road re-pavements were beneficial for bicyclists too. “The number of emails we’ve received from people riding their bikes on El Camino and having their rims destroyed… is not good. And I certainly don’t want to see our roads become like El Camino Real,” she said.
Council member Lucas Ramirez asked city staff to reexamine the possibility of bringing back another deferred project – a protected intersection at El Camino Real and Castro Street that would include Castro bikeway improvements. The estimated cost was $3.8 million, with council members backing the proposal in a 4-2 vote.
Looking to save money, the City Council unanimously supported a proposal to defer plans for a traffic light installation at Hope Street and Villa Street, a project that would cost $1.7 million. The installation was based on a cost-sharing agreement with a hotel project, the Robert Green Hotel, that likely will not be developed anytime soon, according to city staff.
The council report identified other cost savings with the closure of two transportation projects in the North Bayshore area. Google has terminated its plans for a major office development, known as the Google Landings, which the city approved in 2020. There was no discussion about Google pulling back on the development at the council meeting, but the report attributed it to hybrid work schedules and more flexible commutes that has compelled companies to rethink office needs.
The council also sought to restore a plan for putting utilities underground during the construction of an affordable housing project at 1020 Terra Bella Ave. The project was initially anticipated to cost about $1 million but has since ballooned to $2.7 million. The report recommended dropping the project and redirecting the funds to active transportation improvements in the area.
Mountain View resident Albert Jeans pushed back on the cut, framing it as an equity issue. “I don’t think it’s really fair. These future residents, of course they’re not here to talk to you about this, but this area is not that great. I can see the freeway overpass in the background. It’s a kind of aging industrial area, and I think the city should really try to pretty it up for the future residents,” he said.
City council members unanimously agreed, while also supporting the idea of putting in a more rigorous framework to evaluate future projects based on equity principles.
“I do think it would be worth spending some time over the next couple of years… figuring out what do we really mean by equity?” Ramirez said. “How do we invest funding accordingly, based on our desire to make sure neighborhoods that maybe historically haven’t seen the level of investment that we would like, get a little bit more attention and projects that help underrepresented communities thrive.”
We’d save a solid amount of money by cutting the downtown street closure from three blocks to two blocks or even one block. If there’s ever a time when we’re again flush cash, they could be re-added.
This apparent bad break – cash wise – might be a lucky backdoor to revitalizing that area… those store closures in the Castro blocks east of California simply frame an ominous vibe, and I feel for the lost business owners.
(Since the advent of the empty storefronts vibe, I’ve tended to take out of town guests to the downtowns of Los Altos or Palo Alto, both of which feel like prosperous, impressive places… as does the last block of Castro by the tracks. But the three-block street closure always felt to me like it would turn out to be a bridge too far, which of course is what did happen.)
Let’s take the cash crunch an opportunity to clean up at least one self-inflicted mistake.