The street and sidewalks are smooth, and when rainy days arrived after Christmas, the sewers carried the water swiftly away. This, to a smiling Mendez, is the fruit of her labor.

For more than a decade, Mendez and others on the Gardner Advisory Council have fought to repair the area's long-neglected streets. The Strong Neighborhoods Initiative group, Greater Gardner Coalition lead by chairman Kevin Christman, joined the fight for better streets in Gardner, North Willow Glen and Gregory Plaza, making the repairs their number one priority when setting the neighborhoods top 10 goals.

Delmas Avenue, between W. Virginia Street and I-280, was the first of several streets slated for repair. The Delmas project began on Oct. 11 and was completed on Dec. 22. "Talk about a Christmas present!" Mendez laughed.

Along with completely renovating the street and sidewalks, homeowners had their storm and sanitary sewers updated. In the past, Mendez has watched large ponds develop in the street, and had called to have her sewer unplugged as frequently as twice a week.

Neighboring street, Minor Avenue, also between W. Virginia Street and I-280, will be the next in line to benefit from street repair.

A drive on Minor Avenue may resemble more of roller coaster ride than a cruise through the neighborhood. Deep ponds of water develop on the sides of the road during rainy weather, the sidewalks buckle, and neighbors have coped with sewer leaks for years.

"I'm so glad they're fixing our streets," Minor resident Dolores Urista said.

Urista inherited her home from her father, who had owned the house since 1960. Since then, the street has been repaired only a handful of times, and was never completely redone.

These area streets are particularly bad because of shifting soils in what was once a former swampland, said Christman. An exhaustive soil study was completed before the repairs began to ensure the work had holding power in the shifting soils.

Minor residents are hoping to get a drain in the middle of the street to prevent ponds from forming. On Spencer Avenue, the third street in line for repair, residents are also hoping to take advantage of the street repair to tailor the street to their needs.

Spencer Avenue has been declared one of the top 10 worst maintained roads in San Jose for decades, which prompted Spencer resident Ed Rast to advocate for repair. And the problem is not just at grade. Over the years, garbage trucks have snapped long, overhead phone and electrical lines that have drooped low with age. To alleviate the issue, Rast and his neighbors want to get the street's electrical, cable and telephone lines to run beneath the road. They see upcoming reconstruction of the street as the perfect opportunity to accomplish this change. Tearing up the road and sidewalks to install underground lines would be costly, but since the road work will overhaul the avenue, Rast and neighbors are currently looking into cost estimates for line conduits, which residents would fund themselves.

The neighborhood advocacy for street repairs has generated a lot of community pride in the North Willow Glen area, Christmas said. On Delmas, for example, several residents chose to also renovate their driveways.

After Minor and Spencer avenues are completed, Brown and Prevost streets are next in line. However, the Greater Gardner Coalition has only $875,000 slated for the project and may not be able to complete all seven streets they had hoped to repair. It will ultimately depend on how low the contractors bid on the work.

For Mendez, it was years of work that finally paid off. "It was worth it, all those meetings and all that bickering," she said. "Now when we challenge the next problem, we know what to do."