Petaluma officials eye new funding for pavement

The city will fix three streets while looking at state, local tax revenue to do more.|

Petaluma officials Monday greenlighted a contract to resurface three main roads, a $726,000 project that comes as the city looks forward to an influx of new revenue after a massive state infrastructure funding plan narrowly passed in the Legislature earlier this month.

The microsurfacing maintenance project will extend the life of pavement on a part of Ely Boulevard South as well as a section of Lakeville Street and South McDowell Boulevard. Construction will begin in May and is slated to be completed by August, according to staff reports.

The work will roll out as Senate Bill 1 is expected to generate $5.4 billion annually over the next decade by increasing the base gasoline excise tax by 12 cents beginning Nov. 1, assessing a transportation improvement fee based on the value of vehicles and increasing diesel excise and sales taxes. Projections show Sonoma County receiving as much as $20 million annually, with between $1.1 to $1.38 million funneled to Petaluma and between $10.2 and $12.70 million for county roads. Petaluma’s current street maintenance budget is about $2.5 million.

Dan St. John, the city’s director of public works and utilities, cautioned that the additional funding won’t be a silver bullet for fixing the city’s roads, but will instead pave the way for projects focusing more on corrective maintenance than total reconstructive work.

“When you have limited funds, you protect what you have,” he said, adding that the city will continue to seek grant funding to bolster its spending ability. “If you have a house that’s ready to fall down and a house that you can save, you spend the money on the house you can save. You’re not going to rebuild the house that’s falling down. It’s the same thing with roads. We’re going to try to protect the fair and good roads that we have.”

City Manager John Brown said that while the influx of money is a welcome boost, it falls short of the amount needed to overhaul the city’s network of streets, consistently ranked among the worst in the Bay Area.

“It certainly isn’t going to be enough to solve the city’s deferred maintenance problems,” he said.

City Councilman Mike Healy said the bill provides a “reliable, permanent funding source.

“It adds over a million dollars a year that we can spend on streets and it restricts it to street repairs,” he said. “And it get us a significant chunk of the way toward where we need to be when it ramps up in another year. People will notice more construction.”

Planners will also seek money from SB 1 to wrap up the widening of Highway 101 from Petaluma into Marin County. Highway 101 through the Novato narrows is considered a “designated congested corridor,” making it eligible for funds from a $250 million pot. Executive Director of the Sonoma County Transportation Authority, Suzanne Smith, said regional partners will likely ask for “tens of millions” from the program.

Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt, a member of various regional transportation boards, called the funding an “immense help” in meeting local needs, like paving, bridge and culvert repair, and flood control.

County officials also tentatively plan to ask voters to extend Measure M, a quarter-cent sales tax voters approved in 2004. Groundwork is being laid to place the measure on the 2018 ballot, potentially looking to increase the tax to a half-cent after the measure expires in 2024, City Councilwoman and SCTA member Kathy Miller said. If passed, the measure could funnel more than $100 million to Petaluma through 2045, in addition to funding Highway 101 and Highway 37 projects, Miller said.

“If it’s just extended, you’re going to see the status quo,” she said. “To really see a tremendous improvement, it’s going to require it being raised.”

As the future of Measure M takes shape, Brown said the council will hold an April 24 workshop to consider possible options for boosting its own revenue sources, which could include another stab at a tax measure. Last year, attempts to bring a 20-year three-quarter-cent tax for road repair to Petaluma voters fizzled after late polling results indicated that the support for the measure fell short of the necessary two-thirds threshold.

Talks of the measure, which would have been a special tax that channeled revenue specifically to infrastructure, came after the 2014 failure of Measure Q, a general tax measure targeted at roads. Measure A, a similar county roads measure, failed in 2015.

A combination of funding from SB 1, Measure M and city sales tax could give officials the power to tackle more projects, Brown said.

Healy said he’d be “willing to hold back” on pushing for a sales tax increase for roads if Measure M moved forward to the ballot with the funding boost for local projects, but said he’s “open to conversation.” Miller said she’s also looking forward to exploring the city’s options.

“We’re just going to have to sit down and look at what we’re going to get from SB 1, what we could get from Measure M and … see what our remaining need is and go from there,” Miller said. “There are several measures to look at, tax, transient occupancy tax and some other things. It’s not just roads. We’re facing a deficit starting in a couple of years.”

Mayor David Glass said that while SB 1 will have a positive impact, the city “can’t rely on the funds as a cure.”

“I will keep an open mind and look at every single option on April 24,” he said. “It clearly behooves us to start accomplishing something.”

(Contact Hannah Beausang at hannah.beausang@arguscourier.com. Press Democrat reporter Derek Moore contributed to this report.)

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