Local leaders look to settle on final repair plan and put their
focus on completing project ‘for the community’ by the end of
summer
Gilroy – City officials expect to sidestep a legal fight over who must foot the bill for shoddy roadwork along Santa Teresa Boulevard, the city’s half-finished western traffic artery, and will focus instead on completing the thoroughfare by the end of summer.
City engineers and representatives of Granite Construction, the contractor hired to widen the 1.7 mile stretch of road from two to four lanes, hope to settle on a final repair plan during a Friday meeting. If successful, work could resume within a matter of weeks after a seven-month standstill, according to Community Development Director Wendie Rooney.
“We said ‘Let’s get the road done, then deal with the cost issue,’ ” she said. “We all believe we need to get the road completed for the community. We want to do it now in the dry season.”
Representatives of Granite Construction could not be reached for comment.
The city ordered the company to halt work in Oct. 2005 after discovering the formation of tire ruts in freshly paved southbound lanes, a sign of early deterioration that both sides agree stems from water penetration. Since then, a long line of orange traffic cones have restricted southbound drivers to a single lane along the boulevard, as city and Granite experts craft a repair plan.
Any solution will require tearing up asphalt and resurfacing pavement along Santa Teresa, between First Street and Sunrise Drive to the north. The most nagging question centers on the extent of repairs. Originally, Granite Construction hoped to isolate problem areas and deal only with those, according to Rooney.
“I think with the analysis we’ve had done, they do see the need for a more comprehensive approach,” she said. “The city’s position is we need to do the entire thing.”
She said a hydrologist hired by the city blamed current problems on rainwater that collected last fall on subsurface road layers, though she could not say if Granite’s experts have accepted that conclusion. She said the water lies beneath the entire 1.7 mile stretch of road and must be exposed, then dried, before workers can resurface.
The thornier question of which side pays for the repairs will be sorted out at a later date, though a temporary compromise may have to be reached in order to convince the contractor to proceed with the work. In January, when officials first disclosed the road problems, they said they had no intention to pay for repairs and warned about the possibility of a protracted legal battle over the issue.
In the months since, both city officials and Granite representatives have downplayed the cost issue while sorting out a technical solution. The company has already collected nearly all of the $7.5-million contract budgeted for the project, leaving open the question of whether the city or Granite will pick up the immediate repair costs or if they will split the bill and argue over responsibility later.
“If the technical people can get things done Friday, then we can start talking about the money,” City Administrator Jay Baksa said. “I’m optimistic that (the roadwork) will be done by summer, especially because Granite has stepped up and said ‘We want to fix this.’ In many different negotiations, that isn’t true.”
