Another Week That Wasn’t

City Manager Dennis Wilberg’s Aug. 13 insider newsletter (“The Week That Was”) addresses the topics of pot and potholes. One paragraph describes a resident getting busted for a marijuana-growing operation on Via San Jose, and other information is about the city’s pavement maintenance projects.

With a city election on the horizon, Mission Viejo’s deteriorating streets have become a hot topic. The cracked asphalt in front of residents’ homes is now the cracked asphalt in front of voters’ homes. Council incumbents would like a fresh coat of slurry applied prior to the November 2 election.

Here’s an assessment from a reader commenting on another blog. Mission Viejo resident Steve Caporaso writes: “The city’s 7 year cycle of ‘repairs or slurry’ was fine when the streets were new, but after 25 or 30 years they need complete regrind and the powers-to-be forgot about that. Beautiful Mission Viejo won’t stay that way without funds to keep the basic infrastructure in shape. Sure could have used the Float $$ now. Good thing elections are around the corner.”

Read the article and other comments at http://missionviejodispatch.com/budget/letter-pavement-ratings-bogus/#comments

When the occupants of city hall changed the maintenance cycle, they got it exactly backwards. They should have shortened the cycle to compensate for aging pavement, but they increased it from five to seven years. City hall has approximately 150 employees, and many of them are engaged in coloring character posters, planning festivals and creating other events that have nothing to do with essential city services. Streets and infrastructure? The city’s top administrators don’t live in Mission Viejo.

Instead of addressing residential streets in poorest condition, Wilberg in his Aug. 13 newsletter writes, “The Civic Center asphalt parking lot is receiving a fresh coat of sealing and refreshed striping this week. The Public Services Department coordinated the efforts in advance with the many affected City staff, City Hall and Library patrons to determine the least intrusive days for the efforts to occur.”

Anyone who was stopped for years in the daily gridlock of the Crown Valley Parkway project might ponder the careful consideration city staffers gave to preventing their own inconvenience of the “parking lot intrusion” while they’re on the payroll. Wilberg refers to the parking lot project as preventive maintenance. Meanwhile, taxpayers can put up with deferred maintenance of residential streets.