GILROY
– County supervisors and transit agency leaders may decide this
week whether to place Highway 152 traffic safety improvements
planned for the front of Gilroy Foods – one of the city’s largest
private employers – in a continued holding pattern due to lack of
funds.
GILROY – County supervisors and transit agency leaders may decide this week whether to place Highway 152 traffic safety improvements planned for the front of Gilroy Foods – one of the city’s largest private employers – in a continued holding pattern due to lack of funds.
Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer is concerned that a potential decision to defer the project could mean that the chances of finding money to fund it in the future will be slim. He hopes county leaders will bite on a proposal to allow some locally generated tax revenues – which would otherwise go to a countywide pool – to stay local and be channeled into the project.
“It will be very, very difficult for us to see any future money, and that’s why we have to fight for whatever money we can right now,” Springer said last week.
While there have been no votes cast yet, District 1 County Supervisor Don Gage said Friday that having the project on the deferred list doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t get done. He doubts Springer’s proposal will fly politically, but Gage said he is concerned about funding the 152 project and is working on another, yet-to-be-disclosed angle to secure the money.
“I’m pursuing other avenues of funding,” he said.
At issue are roughly $11 million in traffic-flow and safety improvements along the Pacheco Pass Highway – including road and bridge widening work and a new signal and turn lane in front of the Gilroy Foods processing plant.
The package of improvements are one of several countywide – including South County – funded by the Measure B half-cent sales tax transportation program voters approved in 1996.
Some Measure B projects – such as the long-awaited U.S. 101 widening – have come to fruition. But program officials say declining sales tax revenues in the sluggish economy – plus the loss of and uncertainty about other state and higher-government matching funds – are threatening to at least delay construction funding for other parts of the program.
Under a revised priority system that could go before county supervisors and leaders of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority next month, the 152 project is one of five highway projects – worth a combined $48 million – where program staff are recommending construction be deferred because of the declining revenues.
If the 152 project stays on that list, Springer doubts the money will be found in the future.
“There will be clear fights over the use of future state and federal transportation improvement moneys,” he said. “The areas with more political clout will take the money.”
While Springer said the scuttling of the 152 project now in question would not threaten major city east-side commercial development, he said it could impact Gilroy Foods, where officials have been waiting for the improvements for years.
“If they continue to have these traffic and safety concerns in front of their place, one must ask what is the viability of them continuing to live with these issues they’ve been living with for years and now will just be worse because of the development along 152 and increased traffic to and from the Central Valley?” he said.
Bob Cates, director of operations at Gilroy Foods, said Friday that the lack of improvements won’t hurt the company’s viability here. But the project is still very important to the plant, which employs 550 people on-site during peak times.
“We’re going to stay here whether we have to fight traffic or not,” he said. “But is it a safety hazard and is it a major concern for us? Very much so.”
During the Memorial Day holiday, the company had to summon the California Highway Patrol to help drivers exit the plant, Cates said. In times when the CHP wasn’t there, he said it took some passenger cars over a half-hour to be able to leave – let alone tractor-trailers.
And with 152 a commuter thoroughfare to Los Banos, accessibility is bad nearly all of the time – and is getting worse because of the nearby commercial development, he said.
