Several residents who live near Hale Avenue, which will soon become an extension of Santa Teresa Boulevard, say the road project will create graffiti-laden sound walls, divert business from downtown and take away a neighborhood feature where children play and dog walkers stroll.
They also say they were duped by real estate agents when they bought their homes who downplayed the project, saying the extension would likely never happen.
The residents are opposing the decades-old plan to extend Santa Teresa Boulevard. The $14 million extension project's first part will begin in late 2009, and will extend Hale Avenue south of Main Avenue, snaking through mostly empty fields and across Dunne Avenue, then intersecting with DeWitt and Spring avenues. The complete extension plan is to have Santa Teresa run as a continuous and mostly four-lane route from Tilton Avenue to Watsonville Road.
Redevelopment Agency funds will pay for the project. The extension is intended to provide a north-south alternative route, diverting motorists from Monterey Road as downtown development begins in earnest.
Frank Manoccio bought his home on Viewcrest Lane, which is within 600 feet of the project, in August. "I was told by the selling agent that it was a project that would never happen," he said, adding he didn't understand why city officials would approve building more roads, when they were having trouble finding the money to maintain the roads they already have. Council has moved $115,000 from the general fund to the street operations fund to cover street maintenance costs in the upcoming fiscal year, due to a shortfall in that fund.
Public Works Director Jim Ashcraft said for 40 years the city has owned 30 to 40 percent of the land that will be used for the road. Santa Clara County and the city have not allowed building on the remaining privately owned property because the Santa Teresa project was outlined in the general plan.
Greg Del Carlo said the only people supporting the extension at a community meeting about the project were the engineering company representatives and the landowner. "The citizens were entirely against it," he said.
Del Carlo said he didn't see a need for the extension in light of Butterfield Road's extension east of Monterey Road. "Santa Teresa is a needed arterial," Ashcraft said. "The need has always been there and we finally have the money to build it."
City staff budgeted $4 million on the extension's design and acquisitions in the 2008-09 fiscal year budget. Staff projects to spend another $10 million to construct the first segment of the road during the 2009-2010 fiscal year.
Ashcraft said the need has been identified as recently as 2000, in a traffic study that accompanied the city's general plan update. He added another traffic study is underway to update the road plans, and the study's findings will determine whether or not to build the whole extension as four lanes or just two.
"We're not going to move the project forward until we get that new study," Ashcraft said. The study will be finished in a couple of months and released in September or October, he said.
Ashcraft said that, "all of the public who showed up at the public meeting, none of them said the Santa Teresa roadway was a surprise. They just assumed it would never get built."
City Manager Ed Tewes said traffic studies show community growth has necessitated traffic alternatives east and west of Monterey Road.
Natalie Everett Natalie Everett covers education and city issues for The Times. Reach her at (408) 779-4106, ext. 201, or neverett@morganhilltimes.com.
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