Photograph by Robert Scheer
Chris Whitehead (left) and Jim Torre, employees of Jones Brothers Enterprises of Santa Rosa, worked Thursday on widening the curb of the Pierce Road bridge.
A pothole at the Saratoga-Fruitvale intersection that several people at April's Town Hall meeting complained about will be fixed later this year, according to city officials.
The glitch in the road, which some motorists say they feel when turning left from Saratoga Avenue onto Fruitvale Avenue, was created because a sub-pavement fabric placed on the road when it was last resurfaced was mistakenly left there, according to Public Works Director Larry Perlin. The motion of vehicles making turns has forced this material to bunch up over time like a piece of paper. Perlin says the pavement can be reground this summer when the city makes several previously planned improvements to that intersection including moving the crosswalk, extending the sidewalk, and adjusting the signal.
Elsewhere in town, the new Pierce Road bridge has just been completed. The old bridge needed an emergency shoring up a couple years ago, says Perlin, because the creek had widened and deepened over the years, leaving the bridge without anything to anchor in.
This $450,000 project fell two months behind schedule because of last winter's storms, says Perlin. He says some residents have questioned why the city planned the work for the winter, but he believes the old bridge would have failed and become impassable during the storms, forcing a
longer closure if work on the replacement had not been begun. The city is tentatively planning to replace bridges on Quito Road in the summer of 1997.
Another planned project is the planting of trees in the median of Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, budgeted for $150,000 and slated for completion this fall. And as part of its ongoing effort to meet new federal standards for handicapped access, the city will be improving access to the stage and building special seating in the Civic Theater in August when the facility is vacant.
The city did about a dozen capital improvement projects this year for $1.1 million. It came in under its $1.3 million budget because it postponed several projects to the next fiscal year. There are currently seven projects planned for next year, with a proposed budget of $611,000. Perlin does not anticipate any major new projects until park improvement plans, currently being discussed, are made final.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, May 22, 1996.
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