The long, costly road to repairs

Petaluma motorists have long bemoaned the poor quality of the city’s streets and the county roads leading into town. Crumbling pavement, gaping potholes and lumpy patchwork mean damaged cars and high mechanic bills for Petaluma residents.

It’s a problem that Dan St. John, the city’s public works director, knows too well. A recent report by a regional transportation agency detailing the poor quality of the city’s roads caught his attention. Only a tiny fraction of the roads are in passable condition, he said.

“Sixteen percent (of the roads) are listed as being in good or excellent condition,” St. John said. “Meanwhile, 53 percent of our roads are listed as poor or failed roads. More than half of Petaluma’s roads are at failure.”

The report by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission comes as city and county leaders search for new sources of funds to pay for upkeep of the crumbling network. The 1,382 miles of Sonoma County roads are consistently ranked at the bottom of the state, and Petaluma’s 396 miles of streets rank among the worst in the Bay Area.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors last week announced an injection of $22.4 million to repair some of the major county roads, including several around Petaluma, but officials acknowledge that more funding is needed to fix the entire road network. Officials hope to pass a quarter-cent sales tax measure on the June ballot that will provide a local revenue source for city and county road repairs and make up for flat gas tax revenue and years of underfunding.

In last month’s report, the MTC, the regional transportation agency that rates pavement quality in the Bay Area, gave Petaluma’s arterial roads, such as McDowell Boulevard, a pavement condition rating of 60 out of 100. The city’s residential streets received a 42, while collector roads scored a dismal 39.

“Petaluma was listed at the bottom in the county for the conditions of our roads,” St. John said. “We are worse than many areas of the unincorporated county. You would not expect a city to fall below a rural county area, but we have.”

St. John said the problem would continue to get worse unless the money to pay for improving and rehabilitating roads was not found.

“I don’t want to sugar coat this,” he said. “Our total expenditures for road repair amount to $3 million per year. We need another $8 to $12 million per year just to bring our roads into good condition over the next decade.”

The additional county funding for road repair across the county will rehabilitate roads leading into Petaluma including Corona Road, Bodega Avenue, Ely Road and Skillman Lane. Supervisor David Rabbitt, who represents Petaluma, said the sales tax measure is key to solving the roads problem.

“We’re going to continue to improve our roads if we can pass the sales tax this June,” he said. “If the voters approve the tax, we can add $10 million to road repairs just in Petaluma.”

The measure would raise the county’s sales tax by a quarter-cent for five years. Set for the June 2 election, the tax would allocate more than half of the funds to Sonoma’s cities, while the rest would go to county road improvements. The county and Santa Rosa would spend 10 percent on public transit.

Proposed as a general tax requiring a simple majority vote to pass, the money could be used for any government spending priority. But Rabbitt and other elected officials supporting the tax say they are committed to seeing that the money only be spent on road repair.

“The money would go for fixing the roads,” Rabbit said. “We’ve brought a coalition to the table that we think can make this work.”

The Petaluma City Council endorsed the sales tax measure in February. A coalition of business, environmental and labor groups are also supporting the tax, including Sonoma County Conservation Action and the North Bay Labor Council. However, the Sonoma County Taxpayers’ Association has opposed the tax. The group’s executive director, Dan Drummond, said it was not “credible” to believe that supervisors would only spend the tax for roads.

The Board of Supervisors earlier this month added language to the ballot measure that says the sales tax revenue could be used for public safety and “other essential services,” in addition to road repair, a move some said would make it more appealing to voters, but also more likely the funds could be diverted away from road repair.

But Petaluma City Councilwoman Kathy Miller, who serves on the Sonoma County Transportation Agency, said politicians who want to keep their jobs shouldn’t break their promise to fund road maintenance.

“If you tell people as an elected official that you are going to spend the money for roads, and you want to remain an elected official, you spend the money on roads,” she said.

St. John said he would be happy with any revenues that could help with Petaluma’s road repair needs.

“This would be a small fraction of what we need, but we’ll take it,” he said.