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Sonoma County, the chosen spot of all the earth as far as nature is concerned, According to the famed plant wizard Luther Burbank Diverse County, with 1,010,000 acres of land and 1574 miles of scenic roadways, the county is rightfully famed for its agriculture did a culture, industry

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and recreation as well as for the amazingly successful ethnic and economic mixture of its more than 340,000 residents on for the forward looking philosophy of its local governing bodies. Now we invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in the eighties with your host

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rich McGlinchy, get everybody. Majesty, join us. On this edition of 1980 we're gonna talk about a very, very important subject to all of us. We're gonna talk about road roadways and bridges in Sonoma County, and this is a very, very important thing for you and I,

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and it enters our daily life. Many times we're gonna be talking to Donald Don head on the left of your screen. He's the director of public works for Sonoma County. And on the right of your screen is David Robertson, the supervising civil engineer and of the

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roadway operations division. I should say right there I got to get that whole title in. And that's long done before we get into the actual question and answers about roads, which I think are very important here, have a little background on him. A little background on

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Don head. Okay, I'm a native Sinama County. I was born and raised in Petaluma. I heard you were hatched. Well, that's, uh, I've heard worse, actually. Uh, do it. And, uh, I went to school pedal Emma on. I graduated the University of California at Berkeley. Then

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I came to work for the county immediately thereafter, And I've been in the public Works department 39 years and I have been in my present job about 27 of those 39 years, and something that Don had probably will not mentioned himself is that there are approximately

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3403 counties in the United States, and most of the challenges, if not all of them have a public works director, And this gentleman was a few years back, was voted one of the 10 outstanding public works directors United States. And I think personally, that's quite another

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David Robertson. A little background about you. I was also raised in snow my county. I went two goals in snow my county. And, uh, I received my bachelor of science degree in engineering from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. I came directly from the

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university to work in the public works department of Sonoma County, and I worked there for the past 14 years. This must be a fascinating place over there. People come right from college there and stay there. All right, Don, we're gonna be talking about roads on this

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department and maybe the best way to start with you. You've been with the department being a head of department for 27 years, one of the accomplished in road construction. Let's say, over the last 30 years, well, we build a lot of roads and a lot of

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bridges and snow account a couple of things I'm proud of, Uh, you take back 25 39 years. Most of the bridges we had in the county where timber bridges were going through and replace those painfully one step at a time. We're down that we now have

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three timber bridges laughed. A timber bridge has a a short life span on. It has to be frequently replaced. So we're down. We have three Timber Bridge was left on the entire county road system. One of those is under contract and the other two we have

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in the budget. So that means that we're going to get rid of our weight limits. Oh, on the bridges. This is how many bridges do we should say? We have a total about 380 only three that they're still remaining in. Would one under on going? I

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want to get rid of those load limit signs on the bridge. Well, we have an awful lot of miles of arterials and that sort of thing. What do we have in the county? We have a total of, uh, 1000 pointer, 50 miles of road on the

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county road system that we're responsible for. That's we put them end end. That's halfway across the United States from here to Chicago, for instance. Now what kind of roads are those two different doctor? Well, we have a classic definition. I guess we have collectors and arterials,

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which were the main rose and we have residential streets, rural roads in the county that generally all two lane roads. Sort of a lot of murder, a little bit narrower than a two lane course. But generally speaking, we have two lane roads, most of which are

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paid. We only have, actually the unpaved roads of cinema counter somewhat unique. We have Willow Creek Road over by the coast and the cruise rant, and that's about 45 miles. That's not paid way. About two miles up on the Cruise Ranch Road, which goes through a

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park, all the rest of the county road system is paid all year. Surplus on well done. You know, I'm no usually this, and we hear this a lot of problems with roads, and certainly that's not true. In Sonoma County alone, it's all over the state. But

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how have we come to the current position of not seeming to pay for roads? Rhoda People's We go well happen. Okay, well, I guess you divided into two things. Improving roads for capacity, safety improvements. Things of this nature are are one thing. Their capital improvement. Uh,

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we get grant money submissions from the federal, the state sub dividers make contributions people to geothermal industry contribute money to the road program. Of course, our general fund, our gasoline tax, all of those kind of things where what we're emphasizing today is the maintenance of our

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1450 miles road system. This is where we're hurting. Funding is limited for the maintenance. And if you go out and build a new road and literally let it fall to pieces for no maintenance, that's poor economy. We see these things every day. What we're doing is

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we're not funded properly for maintenance we're using up. The resource is that we have they're gonna have to be replaced. That deterioration is accelerating. We're falling behind when we shouldn't be falling behind. We made the initial investment and we're not keeping it up. And that's put

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us in this spot. Money wise. One of the things that responsible partly for this while aren't part 13 of about 10 years ago, I imagine had some effect, did it not well. The only way that would have an effect would be the amount of the general

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fund that the county puts into the road program. And of course, that has been drastically reduced a za result of Prop. 13. The other things that have happened, we have the same things that everybody else have. One. Is it simply cost more for the road today

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than it did 10 years ago. Inflation. We have more traffic on the road. They have to be built to a higher standard. They cost more money to build it, and our funding has been the same or less in dollars. Then we had 10 years ago. So

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we've called about every rabbit out of every hat that we could find. We're in trouble. You just right out of rabbits. Um, David, let's get over here to you for a minute. Some of your informative charts are there. What's the makeup of the current road system?

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The, uh, it's normal kind of road system is broken down into, uh, areas that Don has already spoken on. The arterial and collector system is the main routes in the county, and there's 450 miles of those, and the residential streets are the completed subdivisions with the

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structural section. There's 200 miles of those the mining rural roads with structural section. There's approximately 100 miles of those, the last category on the chart. We show patch on patch rural roads or there's 700 miles of roads out there that do not have a structural section

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under him. They're built up over the ages by patching on top of patching. So we have approximately 50% of our roads that are built to a standard and 50%. That's its build up over the last 50 years. Okay, how much money is involved in maintaining our

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roads and where does it come from? And then maybe how is it spent? Okay, I have another chart here that shows where the money comes from. People talk quite a bit about highway users Taxes the gas tax in the motor vehicle in lieu tax. The bottom

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line in this chart showing Ah, $4.4 million in 1984 $4.5 million in 1985 4.7 and 86 4.8 in 87 an estimated 4.9 next year, uh, shows the income to the road department to maintain roads. The top of the chart shows $10 million has been spent in

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1984 to actually maintain those roads and 7.9 in 1985 and so on. Down the line you can see the progression of actual expenditure is downhill. The difference between the difference between the the gas tax revenue and the actual expenditures is made up by discretionary funds by

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the Board of Supervisors. It's the distance between here and here is made up of motor vehicle fines and forfeitures, um, from courts and made up of general fund money, which comes in property taxes. And it also made up the top portion have to meet up by

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federal reimbursement for storm damage. So we were able to get some federal reimbursement for storm damage because of the damage we had in 82 86. The the expenditure of the money is on the next car for the next one we are currently expending On the fiscal

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year 86 87 we spent $9 million. How do we spend that money? We spend approximately 40% of the money on the road surface. Everybody is uniquely concerned about the pavement in the ride quality and how much the apostles are affecting their card. So way we have

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a definite amount of money we're sending towards the road surface. But that's not the entire story. As faras road maintenance is concerned, you can see we spent crocs 18% on great in giants that his cleaning ditches and placing Colbert. We spent another 14% fixing slip out

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from storms and building rock walls and walls that that all, uh uh, you're wiped out when the storm happened. The really, uh, important item is the cutting of brush and terming of trees for traffic safety and mowing grass for fire protection. And we spend a $1,000,000

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a year taking care of the vegetation, especially in the western half of the county. We also spend $600,000 year, 7% on signaling striping and stenciling, putting in signs to warn the public. And these are items that are very important. We cannot reduce this. The number of

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signs in the county has moved from 7000 to 11,000 science in place. We also spend 1/2 $1,000,000 a year moving debris from the roads. It's the slides, and we also spend ah, $300,000 maintaining bridges and placing guard role that gets damaged. We have Ah, miscellaneous item

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in the last for fencing and right away improvements. So it's Ah, it's easy to see that jury The money 60% of money is not spent on the road surface that you drive on. How much is that figure out to do a day? The expenditure in this

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budget year was $35,000 per working day. What, $35,000 a day? Sounds quite love going. Uh, that was quite a few rows sport. How there's 1450 miles a road. We have one man for every 10 miles of road. You can spend a lot of money out on

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the road. You can spend it effectively, but a typical day that we're paving, that we would have a contractor in tow put an overlay on a road. We've had someone put up a much is 3000 tons in one day, and that runs out to about $90,000.1

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paving operation in one day. It's, ah, intricate thing to say. Well organized. Listen, what is the road system we haven't seen Omagh County worth in today's dollars. Maybe I should ask it this way. What would it cost to rebuild the system we've got today. Well, this

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would be a calculated guess, but the mileage that we have, we think that asset is where something over a $1,000,000,000. We have the 14 and 50 miles of road, which were saying in the 7 to $900 million range than the 360 bridges, which are anything from

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$200,000 upto 10 million. So this well over a $1,000,000,000 investment present work, even the condition that they're in it's worth a $1,000,000,000. Roads are a real problem throughout the state, and one of the things will get into a little bit. Maybe that's not a problem there.

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Challenge way don't have problems with the kind of way have challenge. Uh, what I shallot. Uh, how much have we spent, Would you say over the last 30 years on the road program? Yeah, Well, I'd say that, uh, probably 0 250 to $300 million. That includes

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construction, maintenance, everything in the last 30 years. Why are the roads deteriorating so much faster today? Done than they did? I know there's more people, for one thing, but why specifically well, uh, arose starts deteriorating the day that you build it. In other words, it is

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simply starts wearing out the pavement oxidizes and, uh so I would say that it's a continual aging process. If you build the road properly, you should overlay the thing every 20 years, and it would keep it in tip top shape. That's what they're designed for. We

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keep really close track of that. Why are they wearing out? A couple of reasons you can accelerate the deterioration of their heroes instead of a 20 year life cycle of meetings pre operation. By increasing the traffic on it. The, uh, we try to design for the

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really rough weather we have. There's drainage in traffic. Of the two things that get around. We have some drainage problems where it's difficult to hold up. But I would say the rapid increase in the count in the traffic and the amount of trucks that we have

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we're in a very busy growing. And I would say on urban type county, we've, you know, uh, turned the corner. You look at our, uh, subdivisions, that air going in in Sonoma County in the Windsor area alone to something like 5100 lots we have on the

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books. Well, don trucks I know are heavy and some of these really great big trucks reading Ready. And they traversed many of our roads back and forth constantly. How did they break up? The road is simply the weight and then moving the impact on the road

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A road is like any, uh, any structure material? A two by four something them or loads their repeated loads builds up a stress and they deteriorate. Uh, don hat. How does the road actually deteriorate over time that is described the process a little bit to us,

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Aziz. We can understand it. And then what's the best time to overlay a road? Hey, well, the best timeto overlay the road is prior that you can successfully dio and I'm not trying. That's not a a silly answer. But what you have to do is to

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carefully evaluate the road when the deflections get to a certain point. Uh, then you should overlaid. If they exceed that point, then you should reconstruct the road. Uh, typically ah, road has structural section has rock over the sub grade and it has a certain amount of

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asphalt on the top. The asphalt has strength of about 2.5 times the rock. You know, you've made the investment in the asphalt. It gradually starts deteriorating. What that value goes down to its equivalent to rock. It will drop from 2.5 to its ultimate case down toe

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one. So you've thrown that thickness of asphalt away, so what you want to do is to catch it at precisely the right time. Then you could make an economical overlay, which is probably about 10% of the cost of reconstructing the road, and that takes pending at

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the appropriate time on. That's one of our problems. That's that One of our problems that seem to be our biggest problem. The the cost of roads is basically born, I think, by my gasoline tax. Isn't it done? We get most of our money. I would say

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that that's a well, at least half of our money comes from gasoline tax, the other half from General fund contribution, and, uh, that makes 100%. But that's we also get a lot of contributions. Developmental fees. Developers of the private industry has shouldered the wheel they're coming

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in and making contributions were building all the roads out the airport at the present time with an assessment district. Santa Rosa Avenue is, which were advertising next week, a big part of its an assessment district where the abutting property owners are paying for it. They make

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a substantial contribution to the road system, which is increasing. All right, we're gonna pause right here and let's station bring our audience of public service announcement after which will return. We'll talk more to Don Head and David Robinson about the roads in Sonoma County, the condition

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they're in and perhaps what the future holds for roads. We'll be back with you in just a moment. First. Need messages. This is Father John Cruise, director of Hannah Boy Center. Please listen to a good friend of our boys. This is Jodie Marsh on. I'd like

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to talk to you about Hannah boy Senate in some oma California here for more than 1/4 of a century, hundreds of problems Disadvantage Western boys have been given a special care. They need it so bad. Please help this vital work by given generously Toe Hannah Boys

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Center, Sonoma, California retinitis pigmentosa. RP is a puzzle. It's a hereditary eye disease that causes blindness mainly and Children and young adults. We're searching for the cause of RP and a way to treat and prevent it. Stopping RP takes research and education, and that's the purpose

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of the RPI Foundation fighting blindness. Please help us because fighting RP isn't a game. It's saving a child site. Call toll free 1 806 38 23 100 Welcome back to a very, very important program. We're gonna be talking to gone ahead, and David Robinson Samora about

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the roads in Sonoma County and the Bridges. We're going to find out what's happened up to date and what's going to be having in the future, both through the charts that David showed us earlier in the program and what dogs had to say. We found out

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that that's a tremendous costly problem or program to keep our roadways operating, and we have more and more people coming in all the time. We have a greater strain on the highways. It's really it's really tough, and these guys have the job of trying to juggle

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everything, don't you? All right, David, let's go to you. What is this thing called pavement management? Well, as Don was saying, the roads deteriorate over time on a kind of a standard basis, where they start deteriorating rather ah, flat deterioration on the 1st 10 or 15

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years. Once they got to 15 to 20 years, they start deteriorating more rapidly as soon as the break up of the payment accelerates. So we know how roads deteriorate. So we go about systematic method of inventory in the roads in the system. We actually put a

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crew in the field. The crew investigates the road in samples 10% of the surface and counts cracks and deterioration and weathering and surface deviations and general deterioration of the road. And we put that information in the computer and come up with a payment condition index and

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tells us where that particular stretch of road is on the failure curve of road. We use that information to rank the roads and in general, decide which roads are the best candidates for overly. We're doing this current. What? You're what You're in the worst shape. That's

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correct. Well, it's not the worst shape roads that we're gonna overlay. We're gonna overlay the roads that we can successively over late and keep the level of service up. The worst road would have to be ground up in repaved we use. A large machine would come

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in and we grain the pavement up and we re pave it. There's always 1% of the roads that are continually falling to pieces, so we have to grind up and repair. We call it rehabilitation. The charts I have on the left want to show payment management

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that What is that Payment management tell you about the current roads? Okay, the the current road system we talked about first the arterials and collectors of being 450 miles of road. A strategy underpaid management would be to work on 11% of those roads every year. So

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then the long run you would keep that full 450 miles viable and servicing the public. In order to do that, you would have to overlay on the first line 15 miles of that road a year. At a cost of $2 million you'd have to seal code

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initial 30 miles to hold it in check, and you have to rehabilitate grind up in repave another five miles at a cost of $1,000,000. The total cost for just the arterial system, which is only a small portion of the county, is $3.5 million just for the

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pavement to keep the level of service equal what it is today, the second chart he's also shows payment management on the rural roads and residential streets of the county. The these roads are majority, um, do not have structural sections, so we're holding him in a holding

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pattern there patched and their seal coated with ah chip seal. And in order to hold them at the existing level service, we need to do 160 miles of that per year at a cost of $2 million. There always is the portion that takes undue wear, and

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we have to really rehab and pay that portion eight miles per year at a cost of a $1,000,000. So the total cost for the rural roads and residents streets is an additional $3.1 million just to pay the surface every year. This is required to keep the

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existing level service the total need, then for the surface only portion of the roadway is $6.6 million a year to keep our 1450 miles of pavement in good condition. This is what the public perceives when they drive down the road. The condition of the pavement. The

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the problem. Being you have to go back to chart, too, is that when the public wants the roads in the condition to stay the same, we have to have the dollars to do that. The current budget we should showed another chart show that 40% of the

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dollars, or about 3.6 million, is being put into the surface. That leaves a shortfall of about $3 million per year to keep the surface and good quality the upper right hand portion. This chart shows the need line. The need in any one given year for road

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maintenance, including all activities, would be $12 million. The current let me stop. You need $12 million to keep the roads up in the county on an annual basis, right? That is correct. That is not to make anything better. That is solely to keep the roads servicing

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as they are servicing today. Okay, sustained mediocrities that is correct. The so we're short. We're not even meeting that obligation is what we're stating today. We're about 3.5 a little more meaning short of year in current budget. That predicted budget for 88 89 which is next

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year's fiscal year. We predict we're only gonna spend $8.3 million on the roads. All right, we're down to just about a couple of minutes. Yet I wanted to ask a couple of things done here. Done. If we doubt about 3.5 $1,000,000 a year from from meeting

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are our needs. What are our alternatives? There's a gasoline tax, the best alternative or what opinion? The gasoline tax is the best alternative and would be collected when you buy the gas. It's absolute pay as you go program we're not. That would give us sufficient money

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to keep up our road system. We're not borrowing in the future. We're not incurring a liability. And our existing system, we've looked at all of we looked at sales tax, the latest proposal, the bond issue, things of this nature, what they are our spurts in. We

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need a continuing source of revenue that we can count on so that we can spend in the most efficient manner, in my opinion, gasoline taxes by far the most equitable way of doing it. Gentlemen, our time has escaped. Donald. Thanks. You're determined. Yeah. Joins us again.

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And David. Thanks for coming, Lady General. We've been talking about the roads in Sonoma County, and they're very, very important to all of us. The need for roads is greater than ever. Because of our population, these gentlemen and their department are doing the very best they

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can. I don't have enough money to do all of the job, and we're scrambling and trying to do what we can to keep our roadway system existing. It may come to the fact that gasoline tax increases probably the only way the county of Sonoma and the

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state of California is going to be able to meet the need for roads in the public in the future. My name is Richman. When a TV programme of Saddam account in the eighties, I'll be back with you next week with other members of the Taliban government

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of the county government, family or a related agency. Until that time. Good bye. Good luck to each and everyone. You know