It took Fremont and Union City more than a decade to agree on building Route 84. Now it looks like it could take just as long to build it.
Cost estimates for the road, which would span from Mission Boulevard in Union City to Paseo Padre Boulevard in Fremont, have increased from $136 million in 2004 to $211 million.
That means the project now has a big, fat deficit. And to plug it, the Alameda County Transportation Authority needs about $43 million either from the state or from the cities.
Fremont mayor Bob Wasserman said Fremont’s not chipping in. “What I would say is if that’s going to be the contribution then you’re going to be waiting a lot longer than 2013 to finish that project,” the mayor told county planners. “We don’t have that type of money.”
As Wasserman alluded, the project is scheduled to be completed in 2013. But, if there’s not enough money the project could be built in phases or delayed altogether.
The road, which will help motorists travel from I-880 to Union City’s proposed high-rise housing development, has always been a sore spot between the two cities. Union City wanted a new road going all the way to the freeway, but Fremont objected.
Not only is Dumbarton Rail way underfunded, a new study concludes the proposed rail line linking Union City and Redwood City won’t generate as many riders as first thought.
In 2003, when Bay Area voters approved money for the project, the ridership estimate was 11,700 by 2030. The newest estimate is 5,900 by 2035.
Ridership projections for all major transit operators are down from the 2003 projections.The reason is a change in data inputs and assumptions used in the forecasts, according to a report submitted by Dumbarton Rail Project Manager Paul Matsuoka.
Next week, MTC considers transferring $91 million of money earmarked for Dumbarton Rail to the Warm Springs BART extension. The transfer would likely set back Dumbarton Rail a decade.
Union City Mayor Mark Green said that Albany, Emeryville and Oakland are getting county grants to put stickers on the big green bins alerting homeowners to put their food waste inside. Right now, Dublin is the only Alameda County city with the sticker, Green said. Union City might try to get a similar grant.
In Union City, some people put the little green food bin on the curb rather than dumping into the big yard waste bin, said Councilman Richard Valle, who runs the non-profit that handles the city curbside recycling.
I wrote in a story this Sunday that no one expects competitive elections for city council or mayor in Union City this year because in 2010 all three incumbents will be termed out. Well, maybe not.
Richard Valle, one of the three council members slated to get the boot in 2010, said he plans to propose a ballot initiative that would revise the term limit law and also adopt a city charter that would allow for district elections.
The district elections part was the bigger surprise. From covering Union City in 2006-07, it seemed the one thing that binded the political establishment (besides the Lions Club) was the sense that old-timers needed to get past their loyalties to Decoto or Old Alvarado, which merged to form Union City 49 years ago.
More than anyone on the council, Valle, who was raised and still lives in Decoto, has faced the wrath of die-hards, who identify more with Decoto than with Union City.
Conventional wisdom is that New Haven school board members will jump over the council when the incumbents are termed out. Valle said no one on the current board lives in the historic, heavily Hispanic Decoto District, and that has him concerned. He said he won’t push this until after November election, and he would still need the support of other council members to get it on the ballot.
Once again, I spoke too soon. Union City voted two weeks ago to prohibit restaurants from using Styrofoam containers. But on a second vote Tuesday night, the council reversed itself. Manny Fernandez swiched sides, and the ban failed on a 2-2 vote.
Richard Valle recused himself since he runs the non-profit that handles recylcling for Union City.
Kind of interesting that in the past few months Union City has backed down from a Styrofoam ban after business interests voiced their opposition to it and Fremont backed down from a Styrofoam ban, plastic grocery bag ban and higher hotel tax hike under similar circumstances.
Union City might be the All-American City and Fremont might be the healthiest city for men, but one quality that seems to bind their city council’s is caution. Maybe they made the right call. Still, both cities dipped their toes in the pond of making a bold statement on the environment, but, in the end, neither one wanted to make a spash.
As reported last week, the New Haven school board ended up holding a special meeting last night to appoint a new chief business officer to manage the district’s $104.4 million budget.
The new guy is Ted Hood, who comes to the Tri-City from the West Contra Costa Unified School District, where he was senior director for bond finance and, at one point, had served as an interim CBO and interim director of information technology.
I’m still trying to score an interview with Hood, who will start his new post July 23.
It’s a Union City July 4 tradition for council members to drive around town, sometimes with the police chief, to check on all the illegal fireworks. But Mayor Mark Green and Jim Navarro got a little more than they bargained for driving around in a convertible last Friday night on Chimney Lane.
“We were threatened actually,” Navarro said. “A bunch of teenagers, they warned us we should have our top down because they’re going to throw something at us.”
Green was not pleased. “We need a different plan in 2009 on this,” he said. “Several locations that we’ve gone to, it’s gotten worse.” One popular site for illegal fireworks, he said, was the city’s own corporation yard.
Police Chief Greg Stewart chimed in say that people setting off illegal fireworks actually had friends out with radios alerting them when patrol cars were passing through. “As cockroaches do they scurry back into the darkness when officers were around …”
Here’s a video of my favorite Union City pyro-wizard. He taped fireworks to his skateboard.
Union City is about to ban Styrofoam take-out food containers used by restaurants. The council approved a ban last month on a first vote, and is scheduled to make it official tonight.
Fremont considered a similar ban earlier this year, but four council members opposed it. In Fremont’s case, city staff members issued a report that a Styrofoam ban wouldn’t help the environment much since the city doesn’t collect recyclable containers at most restaurants. Also the Chamber of Commerce wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the ban.
Union City’s Chamber, which gets $40k a year in public funds, kept its mouth shut about the Styrofoam ban, and city staff members recommend it.
Fremont Councilmember Bob Wieckowski, who pushed for the Styrofoam ban in Fremont, said he would push for it again after the November elections. “This fight is not over yet.
According to the Fremont report, 14 California cities have Styrofoam bans, not counting Union City, who’s ban goes into effect July, 2009.
One month after the Santa Clara County Grand Jury issued a mostly critical report on the Dumbarton Rail Project, the Alameda County Grand Jury has issued its own report. The grand jury didn’t say the project should be scrapped, in fact it didn’t really say much at all. It did express concern that “funding projections for this project were significantly understated in the voter guide.”
If it is ever built, the rail line would send trains from Union City’s BART station across the Bay to the Redwood City Caltrain Station and then to San Jose and San Francisco. With money tight, the plan is now to complete a rail line from a future station in Newark to San Mateo County.
The Grand Jury didn’t think that would accomplish much, and said that turning Union City’s BART station into an intermodal transit hub (BART, Dumbarton Rail, ACE, Capital Corridor) should be a county priority. That is already Union City’s top priority.
To see the grand jury report, click here. The Dumbarton report starts on page 35.
UPDATE: City managers in Newark and Union City say that that the possible fire department merger is geared more toward providing better service, not reducing costs.
I’ll have a full-length story on this in tomorrow’s paper. Union City’s council is being asked to approve a study on combining its fire department with Newark’s. Both cities have some budget issues and this would them help save money.
Union City, you may remember, had contracted out its fire services to Fremont several years back, but then reclaimed its department when its finances improved. Fremont was furious because it had put a lot of resources into serving both cities only to have Union City pull the plug before its contract expired. At the time, then-Union City Manager Mark Lewis said Union City could provide fire services for less than what Fremont would charge it. He was wrong, and the divorce is still a touchy subject for both cities.
