Council Watch

Road repairs set to begin within weeks

City is planning to spend $10 million on streets over the next five years

By Cecily Barnes

Bumpy roads in Campbell will soon be a thing of the past. Within a matter of weeks--pending City Council approval on April 6-- a contractor will be awarded $3 million to dig up and repair streets throughout the city. This effort is part of a larger $10 million, five-year-long road improvement project that began last year.

Neighborhoods between Budd and Sunnyoaks avenues, and between Hamilton Avenue and Bucknall Road, will receive the next surge of treatment, with nearly 100 streets scheduled for repair. Last year, nearly the same number of roads were similarly overhauled.

"In many cases, we went in and actually ground down the streets to a lower level and replaced the pavement completely in those areas," says city manager Bernie Strojny. "Then they laid down a fabric that holds the asphalt together, and then asphalt over that. It was like the street had been completely repaved."

Pollard Road will also be improved as part of a joint agreement between the cities of Los Gatos and Campbell.

"If you go into Pollard right now there are numerous areas where there is cracking; this will make a smoother and safer driving surface," Strojny said.

The city of Campbell drafted its Street Maintenance Project last year to improve hundreds of roads throughout the city before they got too bad. Subsequent money from the half-cent sales tax that voters approved in 1996 with Measures A and B added to the pot of money the city had already set aside. A portion of Measure B funds totaling $810,000 will be used for the upcoming road improvements this year, and another $810,000 will be used in the future.

"The first year of the program was recently approved by the county board of supervisors," said director of public works Bob Kass. "We're getting half of the money this year, and the other half next year."

While $10 million may seem like a lot of money to spend on manageable streets, Strojny assures that it's better to be proactive than reactive.

"Streets are like anything else, if you catch them when deterioration is occurring you can avoid a long-term cost that will be much higher," Strojny says.

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