Politics & Government

The List: What Needs Fixing in Piedmont

Like houses and cars, cities need regular maintenance to function properly. But they cost more.

There's a wall in the courtyard of Piedmont's 1913 City Hall that is crumbling, possibly in danger of falling over. Visitors to City Hall "should be prepared to run" if it actually gives way, jokes City Administrator Geoffrey Grote. It's on The List.

The Ramona-Ronada Triangle is a traffic-calming project that will receive its finishing touches this fall. It's on The List too.

So are the locker rooms at the Piedmont Community Pool, a makeover of Hampton Park, painting of the Oakland Avenue Bridge, new carpets for the Piedmont Police Department, a new roof for Veterans Hall, better bathrooms at Coaches Field, new playground equipment at Linda Beach Park, resurfacing of many tennis courts, and connecting the Piedmont Fire Station sump to a sewer line.

The city is under orders from Alameda County to "do something" with the underground gas tanks at City Hall, so that's on The List too — one of the cheapest items at only $5,000.

Pretty much every bit of city-owned property —buildings, parks, streets, even sewers — that's likely to need more than the most minor and routine maintenance over the next five years is on The List, which includes some 70 projects that will cost a total of at least $12 million and probably much more.

The List (and we'll drop the capital letters now) is formally the city's Five Year Facilities Maintenance Program, presented to the Piedmont City Council earlier this week.

Nothing listed in the document is new or unexpected. What's new is having them pulled together in one place, so that city officials can get an overview of what needs to be done, what it will cost and where the money's coming from.

The five-year program is an outgrowth of a recommendation made two years ago by the city's Budget Advisory Committee. Committee members said the city needed a special fund for refurbishing existing facilities and should start putting money aside for those projects.

"Too often, it's the new and exciting projects that get funded first," said City Administrator Grote.

This fiscal year, for the first time, the city put money into its new Facilities Maintenance Fund — $450,000 in July of 2012 and an additional $200,000 midyear. The proposed 2013-2014 city budget includes a $400,000 appropriation for the fund.

To make the process more orderly, city council members asked for a comprehensive list of needed repairs and replacements.

The document was prepared by John Wanger of Coastland Engineers, who serves under contract as the city engineer. Grote said Wanger had prepared a similar document for at least one other California city earlier.

The next step is a priority ranking of the projects, Grote said. He and other city staff are preparing a ranked list that will be presented to the council at its June 18 meeting.

Grote noted that everything in the five-year plan won't be paid for from the Facilities Maintenance Fund. To make the list as complete as possible, it includes projects that will be paid from the city's sewer fund, county road funds, East Bay Regional Park District bond monies, state and federal grants, and other sources.

Wanger's complete report is available on the City of Piedmont website here, as one of the staff reports for the city council meeting of Monday, June 3.

At Monday's meeting, council members also received a supplemental report, "Project Cost Listing by Priority Ranking," that groups the projects into four broad categories: critical, necessary, desirable and deferrable. That report, requested by Councilmember Garrett Keating, isn't yet on the city website, although copies were made available to members of the media.  





 


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