Editor’s note: This story has been corrected from an earlier form to address an issue with a pronoun and also a quote which should have been attributed to City Manager Alan Flora.
CLEARLAKE— Clearlake City Council had its Regular Meeting, on Thursday, the board heard updates on ongoing city improvement goals such as the addition of a splash pad at Austin Park and financing options to facilitate additional road maintenance projects.
Aiming to improve the local quality of life with improved public facilities, the City Council was asked to approve the purchase of spray park equipment in the amount of $96,379. The City is building a splash pad at Austin Park and is currently soliciting bids for its installation and construction. The equipment portion would be a direct purchase from All About Play Inc., who is an already approved state contract vendor.
“We’re purchasing the equipment. This is purchased through a state contract. We didn’t do competitive bidding separately. It’s a pretty cool project that it’ll be [located] between the dog park and the basketball courts. My hope was that we’d be able to have a grand opening around Memorial Day weekend, but we’ll see if we can get it done quite that fast,” said City Manager Alan Flora, who believes it will be a quick project to complete. “We just have to get the water sewer lines over there.”
The Council has also been asked to consider a cost sharing agreement for the expenses of a community visioning forum. The Community Visioning Forum Planning Commission plans a community forum with the intent of developing recommendations to achieve meaningful action and activity that identify and eliminate barriers; promote local governance that hears and honors all voices; build bridges where there may be walls; foster tolerance, respect, equity and inclusion, beginning with education and culminating in action; promote non-violence and non-violent conflict resolution; and focus resources on the underlying causes and conditions that lead to inequitable resources and justice distribution.
The recommended action is to authorize the City Manager to enter into a cost sharing agreement with the County of Lake and City of Lakeport for the hosting of Community Visioning forums. “In 2011, the Lake County Board of Supervisors approved and presented a proclamation in support of the Lake County charter for compassion that included a call to county residents for renewed respect and compassion. In 2021, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved and presented another proclamation, promoting tolerance, respect, equity and inclusion. As a part of this proclamation, the board committed to host a community visioning forum to add some accountability towards the proclamations brought forth. I am filled with optimism today. We live in a world of deep division, where the only chance of healing and renewal begins with actions taken first within ourselves, then within the local communities in which we live,” said Carol Cole-Lewis, Upper Lake resident and member of the Citizens Committee.
The discussion and consideration of financing options to facilitate additional road maintenance projects was brought forth by Finance Director for the City of Clearlake Kelsey Young. She said that “we have many road projects that as a city we need to focus on. If we move forward with financing, we would be looking at 15 to 18 million worth of projects in today’s dollars. And we’d be looking at large projects in concentrated areas because that’s going to be the most economical, and also at areas that have high density of homes, so that we can have the most impact to those neighborhoods. We’d be adding paved roads over 2,000 residents. We want to make Clearlake a place that people want to come to and feel comfortable being in. This would improve the overall reputation of the city. We want people to be driving around here and liking what they see.”
With no maintenance, Young continued, “these roads would need to be completely rehabilitated after every 15 years.” He added that quick completion of the road projects and ongoing maintenance part of a $19.5 million investment, “we’d have roads that would be lasting about 30 years as opposed to having to go through and reclaim them every 15 years, or having them get into a state a little bit less than what is desirable.”
Over the last several years, the city has discussed the option of financing those projects. Staff has been working with NHA advisors, a financial and policy strategy firm founded to make the process of public finance accessible and understandable for governmental entities and help them achieve the lowest possible cost on various options for financing, and has worked on an analysis of what the city can afford to borrow in order to complete a larger group of projects in a shorter period of time.
“The type of maintenance that we would want to apply to these roads to extend their life would probably be almost entirely contracted out. Maybe we could purchase some equipment to do micro surfacing, but I would guess that most of that would all be contracted out. We will still need to be doing some potholing. That’s not really maintenance that preserves the life of a road,” added, Flora.
