GILROY
– County supervisors and transit agency leaders may decide next
week whether to place Highway 152 traffic safety improvements
planned for the front of Gilroy Foods – one of the city’s largest
private employers – in a continued holding pattern due to lack of
funds.
GILROY – County supervisors and transit agency leaders may decide next week whether to place Highway 152 traffic safety improvements planned for the front of Gilroy Foods – one of the city’s largest private employers – in a continued holding pattern due to lack of funds.
Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer is concerned that a potential decision next week to defer the project could mean that the chances of finding money to fund it in the future will be slim. He hopes county leaders will bite on a proposal to allow some locally generated tax revenues – which would otherwise go to a countywide pool – to stay local and be channeled into the project.
“It will be very, very difficult for us to see any future money, and that’s why we have to fight for whatever money we can right now,” Springer said this week.
While there have been no votes cast yet, District 1 County Supervisor Don Gage said Friday that having the project on the deferred list doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t get done. He doubts Springer’s proposal will fly politically, but Gage said he is concerned about funding the 152 project and is working on another, yet-to-be-disclosed angle to secure the money.
“I’m pursuing other avenues of funding,” he said.
At issue are roughly $11 million in traffic-flow and safety improvements along the Pacheco Pass Highway – including road and bridge widening work and a new signal and turn lane in front of the Gilroy Foods processing plant.
The package of improvements are one of several countywide – including South County – funded by the Measure B half-cent sales tax transportation program voters approved in 1996.
Some Measure B projects – such as the long-awaited U.S. 101 widening – have come to fruition. But program officials say declining sales tax revenues in the sluggish economy – plus the loss of and uncertainty about other state and higher-government matching funds – are threatening to at least delay construction funding for other parts of the program.
Under a revised priority system that could go before county supervisors and leaders of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority next month, the 152 project is one of five highway projects – worth a combined $48 million – where program staff are recommending construction be deferred because of the declining revenues.
If the 152 project stays on that list, Springer doubts the money will be found in the future.
“There will be clear fights over the use of future state and federal transportation improvement moneys,” he said. “The areas with more political clout will take the money.”
While Springer said the scuttling of the 152 project now in question would not threaten major city east-side commercial development, he said it could impact Gilroy Foods, where officials have been waiting for the improvements for years.
“If they continue to have these traffic and safety concerns in front of their place, one must ask what is the viability of them continuing to live with these issues they’ve been living with for years and now will just be worse because of the development along 152 and increased traffic to and from the Central Valley?” he said.
Bob Cates, director of operations at Gilroy Foods, said Friday that the lack of improvements won’t hurt the company’s viability here. But the project is still very important to the plant, which employs 550 people on-site during peak times.
“We’re going to stay here whether we have to fight traffic or not,” he said. “But is it a safety hazard and is it a major concern for us? Very much so.”
During the Memorial Day holiday, the company had to summon the California Highway Patrol to help drivers exit the plant, Cates said. In times when the CHP wasn’t there, he said it took some passenger cars over a half-hour to be able to leave – let alone tractor-trailers.
And with 152 a commuter thoroughfare to Los Banos, accessibility is bad nearly all of the time – and is getting worse because of the nearby commercial development, he said.
“We’re all for the development, don’t get me wrong…” he said. “But if we’re going to do that and then dry up the money to make the improvements down here and get the stoplight in, that’s not right.”
Springer wants supervisors to agree to dedicate more of the local sales tax revenue that’s generated from new east-Gilroy shopping centers specifically to Gilroy improvements, instead of into a larger overall Measure B pool.
While that won’t necessarily generate the $11 million necessary by the time Measure B expires in 2006, he said it could help pay for at least a part of the project. And he notes the city and local developers are already ponying up a “significant” $5.5 million in local funds for other work along the highway.
“Maybe we could do it by separating the project into two phases,” he said. “We may have to find additional money to put behind it, but it would certainly be a major chunk (covered by the new, locally dedicated tax revenues).”
But Gage said that probably won’t go over too well in the countywide competition for funding.
“It’s a great idea, but he’s not going to convince anybody,” he said. “There are a bunch of projects all over the county, and they’re all going to be vying for any money that comes in.”
Gage said he is concerned about the project and is working on an alternate funding solution, but can’t disclose details at this point.
“I’m working on something now,” he said.
And if the project appears on the deferred list, it doesn’t mean it – or the other projects on the list – are being scuttled, he said.
“It doesn’t come off the list, and we don’t add anything new to the list,” he said. “If we get more tax revenue from sales tax, we’ll start adding those back in (for construction)…
“I think (voters) understand that the sales tax revenue went down and there’s not much we can do about that,” he said. “Those projects were all based on the amount of money we projected to gain, but since that’s changed a little bit we have to pull in our horns.”
