Leave No Road Behind

By Linda Delehunt

Orinda's greatest natural resource is its real estate. City priorities need to support and enhance real estate values in Orinda. Orinda's real estate values are being put at risk by the City's historical and current unrelenting failure to address Orinda's failing roads. There needs to be a prioritized road plan that addresses the repair of all roads in Orinda with a timeline for completion. Orinda must have a comprehensive plan and budget to address this major problem.

The City's current plan does nothing to address infrastructure road issues and attempts to persuade voters that bond elections currently scheduled 5 years from now and 1 year after current candidates complete their four year term, will provide the solution; the City fails to acknowledge that Identical bond measures have twice failed. Additionally, the City's plan is silent on the repair of residential road priorities. Our deficient infrastructure is a safety issue and puts the very quality of our lives as well as our property values at risk.

The reality is that the City's own task forces have identified that we will need a minimum of $52 million to repair Orinda's roads. The sales tax Measure L on the November ballot touted by the current City Council to repair roads will actually not even generate 30% of the annual $2.2 million needed to slurry seal/maintain current road surfaces. The "bottom line" is that the sales tax solution is really no solution and cannot even provide enough monies to annually maintain road surfaces, let alone accomplish repairs.

While the $52 million repair figure is staggering, we do need to face this figure "head on" and utilize our best collaborative citizen thinking to come up with a plan that is acceptable to Orinda residents and that truly addresses the problem. Past task forces, commissioned by the City have addressed this issue and have developed a number of revenue generating plans which could be utilized together or separately to address Orinda's roads. Valuable citizen work product addressing this issue has been set aside and not utilized. One task force option, a city transfer tax will not impact current property tax bills and would mirror taxes currently in place in Piedmont, Berkeley and Oakland. The city transfer tax is but one viable alternative and City task force analyses indicate that such a tax would provide adequate resources to repair ALL roads. We cannot put off finding a solution to the problem any longer. All viable alternatives need to be analyzed immediately so that we can get the job done.