Back in 2018 when he was running for Fifth District Supervisor Hopland contractor David Roderick made road conditions a campaign priority, saying:
“People say that it's $1 million a mile to pave a road. But it depends on how you are going to repave. Are you going to redo the base? Basically if you do a 2 inch lift that comes out to 70 truck transfer loads of asphalt per mile. At about $150 a ton, that's about $225,000 in asphalt. And where are you trucking it from? Asphalt is the medium we make our roads out of today and I don't see a viable replacement at this point. The problem with asphalt is asphalt plants. No one wants an asphalt plant near them. Just today in Fort Bragg they are repaving the parking lot at Starbucks and that company is actually from Santa Rosa and the trucker is also from Santa Rosa. I'm not sure where the asphalt itself is coming from. How do you repair roads if you don't have asphalt? Asphalt has to be kept at a certain temperature and then you have to maintain a certain capacity to be able to do it for paving. We are talking about county roads now. There are county roads and there are state roads. The state roads are not our jurisdiction. If we want to pave or repair large sections maybe the county should invest in a mobile asphalt plant that we can break down and move so it is not erected in someone's neighborhood forever. And we wouldn't have people complaining about living next to an asphalt plant. I don't want to live next to one either. But if we can say it's going to be here for two weeks and we will bring in all the raw materials and pre-stage everything and get it done — come into an area, pave it or repair it, and move. And prioritize. It has to be cost-effective. But you would save on the trucking costs, you are not paying another company to sell you the asphalt at markup. With the number of miles of road we have in the county it might be a reasonable investment. It also depends on the specifications for fixing the road. Are you going to just put on a 2 inch asphalt layer or are you going to deal with a layer below it? Are you going to put down geo-fabric to support the pave? There are lots of ways to do it. But a 2 inch lift, two lanes wide a mile-long is about $350,000 that way compared to the $1 million people talk about.”
In September of 2023 at their only meeting on the Coast in recent years former Coast Supervisor Dan Gjerde mentioned the possibility of a road maintenance tax, but he said that he doubted such a tax measure would pass given the current economic climate and the low opinion the public has of the Supervisors. Gjerde pompously added that putting a road tax on the ballot would give the public the opportunity to “solve the problem or not solve the problem,” ignoring the fact that the voting public, such as it is, probably doubts that he and his colleagues, given more tax money, would solve anything, much less fix any roads. With the single exception of Measure P (the emergency services advisory tax), the Supervisors have not delivered on a single local ballot measure this century. By suggesting that the public wouldn’t support a road tax, Gjerde essentially wanted to be able to blame the public instead of the Supervisors for the poor road conditions.
In a previous column we noted that a recent survey by the Mendocino Council of Governments indicated that Mendo voters agree with Gjerde's low opinion of the County and the Supervisors, but they would be more likely to support a road tax if it included “accountability provisions.”
But what accountability provisions? As we noted previously, Measure B, the “Mental Health Treatment Act,” promised an “oversight committee” which turned out to be nearly useless. That’s was mainly because the Measure’s text didn’t spell out the oversight provisions and it was dominated by government employees and appointees.
First, any road tax proposal would have to specify that only County roads already identified as needing improvement by the Transportation Department would qualify. This would eliminate the need for long, drawn-out, money-draining transportation planning or permitting, and help to ensure that work begins quickly.
Since repairing or improving existing roads would not need much planning, the wasteful and time-consuming Transportation Debating Society, aka the Mendocino Council of Governments, should be specifically excluded from any funding.
To be truly independent, the oversight committee should be made up of only private citizens preferably with contracting experience, chosen by the County’s Director of Transportation, not the Supervisors. No government employees or supervisorial appointments. To the extent possible, the committee should be made up of two people from each of the four supervisorial districts with unincorporated roads (i.e., excluding the Second District (Ukiah).
At least one of the two members from each district should live on a road targeted for repair.
Oversight committee rules should specify that the committee review the Transportation Department’s existing road assessments and prepare a priority list of roads to be worked on and what kinds of repairs are recommended and why. The committee should also inventory the County’s road maintenance equipment and recommend equipment upgrades or purchases (such as the mobile asphalt plant mentioned by Mr. Roderick above) to increase the department’s on-going in-house road repair capability.
There should be a requirement that all road projects identified by the Transportation Department receive a 2/3 vote of the oversight committee before any work begins.
Annual audits should be conducted by an outside auditor with specific experience in transportation projects.
Meetings should be conducted at work sites when work is underway.
All contracts proposed to be awarded to private contractors should require what used to be called a “make or buy” analysis by the Transportation Department showing why it would be more cost effective to hire a contractor than to perform the improvement work with County road crews.
All contract payments must be approved by a majority vote of the committee.
At least three of the committee members should be contractors or contractor representatives from a construction trades contractor not doing business with the County or the committee.
A 2/3 vote should be required for any contract changes or additions of more than 10% of contract value.
The Mendocino Department of Transportation should designate one senior staffer as a non-voting liaison to the oversight committee.
With the assistance of the Transportation Department, the Committee should produce an Annual Report that includes a list of each project with a description and location, the status of the project, the amount of funds expended on the project, the projected or actual completion date, and the project’s estimated useful life. The committee alone (not the Supervisors) may withhold future project allocations if it determines program funds are not being appropriately spent.
Of course, this being Mendocino County, we doubt anything like these “accountability provisions” would ever find their way into a ballot measure. But if the voters ever approve a road tax measure without them, they shouldn’t expect their money to translate into visibly improved county roads.
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