HomeMy WebLinkAbout3/1/2023 Item 3, Schmidt
Richard Schmidt <
To:Advisory Bodies
Subject:REOC Communication
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Revenue Enhancement Oversight Commission 3/1/2023
Agenda Item 3
Dear REOC,
Please do not allocate the $1.6 million to this project that staff requests.
This is a seriously bad, evil, unnecessary project (among other it things deprives disabled persons their civil rights and
good access to their homes, while providing dangerous bicycle infrastructure for cyclists) that is also on a fiscal runaway.
When recommended by the bicycle committee, the cost was pegged at about $800K, when first presented to the council
just over $1 million. The cost estimate kept creeping up till just months ago the publicly-revealed cost was $3.4 million.
(The cost kept rising despite removing costly features of the original plan, like a sidewalk on the west side of Broad
which necessitated extensive grading and tall retaining walls.) Now bids are nearly double the estimate of just a few
months ago.
Clearly this project needs a fiscal diet that forces the city to do what it should have done long ago – make a less costly
project that better serves both cyclists and affected neighborhood residents (who in a city poll registered 74%
opposition to the adopted plan!). Fortunately, there are many alternative strategies for the Lincoln to Ramona section
that are both better and less costly.
Meanwhile, as this bad, unnecessary, unreasonable, costly project moves forward, the most serious bike issue in the city
– the repeated cyclist fatalities on Foothill between Broad and Ferrini -- goes unaddressed. Why isn’t the city asking you
for funds to fix those killing grounds, a serious life-and-death issue, instead of funds for this confection?
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Your committee could render a great public service by saying NO. In so doing, you would join the Planning Commission,
which opposed the current plan and suggested alternatives better for both cyclists and the neighborhood.
Since you might not be familiar with the nitty-gritty of this issue, allow me to do a very brief summary.
• The project on Chorro and Broad involves removal of more than half the street parking (all the parking on one side,
some on other), leaving fewer parking spaces than currently required for resident use. This leaves a parking deficit which
is being made worse by new state housing law (no off-street parking, more units, more resident cars – something we’re
already experiencing in my block of Broad with intensified development and removal of previous on-site parking at
Broad/Murray and on Broad near Mission). This is an old neighborhood, most houses lack good off-street parking and
some have none at all. That’s why taking away street parking is such a hardship, especially for the elderly and disabled,
of whom there are many. (Census in my block of Broad, my side of street only: 9 houses occupied by seniors of which 5
have people with disabilities.)
• To which the city has responded we should not worry, we’ll be able to find a parking spot within 1,000 feet of our
homes, which may be “inconvenient” for the disabled! You think? This is typical of the disrespect, contempt, and
unkindness with which the city has treated concerns of neighborhood residents. Can your committee stomach that sort
of meanness and underwrite it with funds? I certainly hope not.
• Meanwhile, the vaunted bicycle facilities are stupidly dangerous, making riding less safe than at present. The two-way
cycle track designs on Chorro and Ramona are of a type rejected by experienced bike cities like Davis, and boisterously
denounced as unsafe by the world’s best bike facility designers like Copenhagenize whose blogger says, “The bi-
directional cycle tracks we see in emerging bicycle cities can't possibly be put there by people who know what they're
doing. . . If someone advocates infrastructure like this and actually believes it is good, they probably shouldn't be
advocating bicycle infrastructure.”
• To get in and out of those cycle tracks requires the putative 7-year-old users to make dangerous diagonal clear-across-
the-street maneuvers through three high-traffic intersections, one of which leads to a freeway ramp.
• Since the project is based on abstractions rather than realities of cycle use and needs, it doesn’t go where the mass of
cyclists coming out Chorro from downtown are headed – Cal Poly – but instead cuts over to Broad, which is used daily by
only a few dozen cyclists. So the route itself makes no sense in that it poorly serves the actual cycling population.
So why appropriate more money for such a loser of a scheme?
Please tell staff NO, you do not approve.
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Thank you.
Richard Schmidt
PS. Something in your staff report caught my eye and made me do a “say what?” The report refers to a July ‘22 “overall
project budget of $5,033,455,” and I’m thinking that I follow this very closely and I’ve never before seen that number.
Later in that sentence I see reference to “the Publicly Disclosed Funding Amount of $3,375,000.” That’s a number I’m
very familiar with, the “approximately $3.4 million discussed last fall. But what is this report telling us, that the city has a
publicly-disclosed cost, and some other secret non-public cost for its projects? Isn’t everything supposed to be publicly
disclosed? And if so, why would we be given $3.4 million some months AFTER the city was talking $5 million elsewhere?
I don’t get it.
Also, I don’t understand the math in the staff report. We’re told there is currently a balance of $4,505,856 in the project
account, and an additional $3,114,104 is needed, which suggests a project cost of $7.62 million, which is $1.55 million
more than the bid. I sure hope you understand this better than I do.
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