The mayor's new budget funds park accessible to disabled children

Lincoln 'uplights' will have to wait for traffic study to be completed

By Chantal Lamers

Mayor Ron Gonzales made his message loud and clear in his June budget released on June 6: Improve the quality of life for the people who live and work in San Jose.

According to Dave Vossbrink, the mayor's communication director, most of the requests from council members shared a common thread. The mayor and council members want to make children's walks to school safer, commutes faster and access to neighborhood parks easier.

Willow Glen residents will get their fair share of improvements from the new budget. The mayor budgeted $200,000 for the Lincoln Play For All, a first-of-its-kind playground in San Jose that's designed for use by disabled children.

Although playgrounds should be handicapped-accessible under state law, that doesn't mean all disabled children are able use them, District 6 councilman Frank Fiscalini said in his budget request.

The Lincoln Play For All will be located at Curtner and Lincoln avenues, next to the Willows Senior Community Center.

Fiscalini says city staff has been working on a design for the new playground that incorporates successful design features of similar playgrounds in nearby cities.

District 6 has already set aside $450,000 from its own parks fund to build the playground, covering most of the $650,000 total project cost.

"We are very pleased with the funding for the park," said Michelle McGurk, Fiscalini's chief of staff.

District 6 staff also requested $480,000 for a pedestrian safety project on Lincoln Avenue, but the mayor's budget didn't include funding for that project. Instead, the mayor reserved $1.5 million to support council members' requests for traffic-calming citywide.

Mayoral Budget Director Joe Guerra, said the money will be allocated to designated projects after a year-long traffic-calming study is completed by city staff sometime this winter.

McGurk says she's confident some kind of pedestrian safety improvements will be made in Willow Glen once the study is finished.

"These projects are already in an urgent category," McGurk said. Once the study is complete, the reserve fund for traffic-calming measures will be available, she said.

If the District 6 pedestrian safety project had been funded, the project would have included three pedestrian-activated crosswalk light systems, called "uplights," that use small, bright lights embedded in the pavement along the crosswalk. When pedestrians enter the crosswalk, sensors detect the pedestrians and flash the lights to alert oncoming traffic.

Vossbrink said there has never enough money to meet every single request from council members. "You can't do everything in the same year," he said.

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