Dear Red Phone,
“In reading the Friday, April 6 paper, (the story titled “Pretty upgrades for downtown in the works”) when is the City going to realize there is more to the downtown area besides Fourth and Fifth streets? Some of the merchants have been there for more than 25 years and they are ignored from Fifth Street to Sixth Street. I think this is very unfair for the city to do this. They should pay more attention to the other streets that have had business all these years. Thank you very much.”
Dear reader, the following is a response from City Administrator Tom Haglund. We hope you find this helpful:
“The proposed work mentioned in the article that the red phone caller is referring to is located on Fourth and Fifth streets one block directly to the west of Monterey. This work is the progression of similar work completed on Sixth Street directly east and west of Monterey. The section on Monterey between Fifth and Sixth streets has already received the enhancements of wider sidewalks with brick accents, decorative pedestrian level lighting with banners, decorative trashcans, tree grates and benches. In addition, this section has received hanging flower baskets, enhanced planting, background music, security cameras, artwork as well as a new paseo, currently under construction, that links Monterey to the Eigleberry public parking lot. Improvements have been made to the Monterey streetscape from Fourth to Ninth streets, primarily utilizing grant funds. The work on the Fourth and Fifth side streets mentioned in the article is also dependant on the city receiving One Bay Area Grant (OBAG) monies to fund the project.”
Tom Haglund can be reached at (408) 846-0202 or via email
at***********@ci.us
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