Opinion: City Council throws road repairs under the bus
By Steve Kubby
What is the real budget for fixing our streets and how much will the South Lake Tahoe City Council be spending this year on badly needed road maintenance and pothole repairs?
Much has been written lately about the “new” City Council and its commitment to fixing our broken roads, which have gone virtually unfunded for 15 years. In fact, Nancy Kerry, the South Lake Tahoe public affairs and communications manager, recently responded to a column I wrote saying, “The City Council and city manager have for the past many months been stressing the importance of fixing the city’s streets. It is inaccurate to say otherwise. The City Council as a whole and each individually are on the record of stressing the importance of fixing the streets, advocating for the fixing of streets. The city has recently adopted a five-year financial plan where throughout, the importance of fixing the streets and improving the built environment are declared priorities.”
Really? That’s great to hear, but what does that actually translate to in budgeted dollars?
According to Jim Marino, engineer with the city, it will take $5.2 million a year for 25 to 30 years — just to get the streets up to par. That was back in 2009 and since then the City Council has done nothing to address this rapidly escalating unfunded liability. What was once repairable, is rapidly becoming so damaged that it must now be replaced. Every year we delay incurs even greater liabilities and destruction of our infrastructure.
So what percent of that figure will the City Council be spending this year? It’s not easy to find the answer. Buried in the Capital Improvement budget is a budget for the “declared priority” of fixing our streets.
So, what is the real budget for fixing our streets? It turns out that the City Council has not even budgeted a tiny fraction of the $5.2 million a year for 25 to 30 years just to get the streets up to par. No, this “declared priority” of fixing our streets will receive a total budget of $100,000 or about 2 percent of what is needed. Furthermore, despite the “Five-Year Financial Plan,” there is no actual budget for spending any more than 2 percent next year or the next five years.
Now, after 15 years of criminal neglect, the best the City Council can do for the “declared priority” of finally addressing this escalating unfunded liability, is to budget 2 percent of what is needed?
Our streets are not going to fix themselves. Every year we delay adds millions of dollars of debt to our community, our business and our homeowners. Either the citizens of this wonderful town demand a full budget to fix our streets or we can expect further economic decline for what was once a great destination resort. It is time to face the reality that you cannot have a world-class resort with Third World streets.
Frankly, if the City Council cannot even come up with an adequate budget to fix our crumbling roads, then it is worthless and should be dissolved.
Steve Kubby is a resident of South Lake Tahoe.
Too bad Kubby does not understand his ranting is not paying for better streets.
Just like Bill Crawford he has no solution just negative remarks maybe because he was not elected by the voters
Seems a little early to start the political stumping for the 2012 election but with all the opinion articles Kubby is publishing in this and “the other” newspaper I guess he wants to ensure that his name is front and center with the local electorate. I’m already tiring of his rhetoric with no viable solutions, and we still have so much longer to go until November 2012!
I absolutely will not be running for city council in 2012. Instead, I will be campaigning with a former superior court judge and deputy police chief of the LAPD for a new statewide voter initiative that we registered with the Attorney General last Wednesday. So I have nothing to gain by taking on the unpleasant task of explaining to my fellow citizens how the city is cooking the books and incurring millions of dollars of unfunded liabilities each year.
I believe whether or not Mr. Kubby runs for a City Council seat in 2012 is something that remains to be seen. With regard to his “explaining” unpleasant matters to the citizens of South Lake Tahoe, I think his comments are his opinion only and are not necessarily “fact” as he claims them to be.
These are merely my opinions.
Perfect example of a sore loser trying to keep the attention on himself, we don’t need your constant complaining Kubby. Why don’t you get in there and join Clean tahoe and clean up the streets and neighborhood if it matters so much to you. You get nothing out of this ranting? Sure you do, we see that you get all this attention thinking you’re smarter than everyone else. You have to ‘splain’ it us little folks cuz we couldn’t possibly understand what’s going on without you ‘splainin it to us. Thanks though for reminding us or ‘splainin to us how the city is now focused on streets and its finances. whew. I wouldn’t da known that without you helpin me understand.
Ya’ll need to chill. Mr. Kubby is merely pointing out a huge problem we have in this town. Maybe if more people we’re as involved as he seems to be we’d have a better community. Since when is indifference to a problem a better solution than discussing said problem
I did not vote for Mr. Kubby so this is not an endorcement. That being said I want to say that while it seems that he is going after the counsil he does show us that instead of going after city employees who are the “front lines” and who’s hands are tied about these issues, maybe we should be looking at the big guys who “tell” the public they are doing “this” and then turn around and tell the employees forget what we said to them. Do this instead and SHUT UP ABOUT IT. It’s your city and you deserve the best for your tax dollars. NOT mis-leading information that points fingers away from the REAL issues. Okay off the soap-box now. Thank you
Dude – I personally find Mr. Kubby’s methods of conveying his messages condescending and think the contents are misleading and his “solutions” not viable. I don’t think criticism alone is a solution but that discussions which are rational in nature are what provides the impetus toward realistic solutions.
The man does point out a good fact and something that needs top priority for the future of this community. He is pointing out the lack of funding by the council to deal with a problem with rising capital costs and annual inflating repair by continuing to delay future repairs. This is not going away… I dont see why anyone would bash him for this… He sounds like a passionate informed community member rallying for what is needed and right. Didn’t appear like a political move at all to me. And even if it was.., whats the problem? Hes right… No one offered anything of substance in the comments… I personally agree with him…
GO KUBBY!!! i own a business in this town and i am very concerned with this ridicoulous city council!!! FIX OUR ROADS I DONT PAY TAXES FOR NOTHING!!!!! This city will crumble and dissappear very soon if someone does not step in and take control of these major problems facing our city! I am half tempted to leave this town because of all this mis led spending by our city in places we dont need to spend it! for example narrowing the road out to Angora, that is simply ridicoulous we need to spend that 40 million on POTHOLES AND CRUMBLING STREETS!!!!!
There is not enough money to go around for all the things we deem important. And we all want someone else to pay for everything.
We all need to pay for the roads if that is what we want. How about raising gas 10 cents (or more) per gallon and ear mark it to local or county roads?
Our country is in a financial mess that is beyond a simple solution. And it is each and everyone of our own faults. Until we quit the blame game, we will wallow where we are.
Aloha
Hey Les, I did not want a parking garage and I did not want a convention center! Please take my road repair money from those loser projects!!
Or a Airport or ice ring, boat ramp that doesn’t work very often!
This is the one issue that both Steve Kubby really agree on. Most of the time, I will agree, Steve is puffing hot air, in more ways than one (ha, ha) but he really has a point here. We need to talk more about the roads and we need to make it a priority. It may sound like complaining but you can also look at is as promoting an agenda which desperately needs some promoting. I will promote this agenda with you Steve because I really believe that if more people mobilized and said our roads are a priority and we are willing to pay for them, and we said this to City Council over and over that maybe they would listen. I believe that we need to start from the ground up here in South Lake Tahoe and that means fixing the roads first. The amount the City budgets for repairing and maintaining roads is a joke. How bad will they get before we get a wake up call that we can not continue down this path forever. Thank you Steve for bringing attention to this issue.
I feel it is a sad state of events when a citizen speaks their opinion and is put down by a bunch of people who just sit at their computers and do nothing. You may not agree with Mr Kubby on issues but please stop with the negativity. At least he is standing up and trying to change things. The down playing is what keeps most people from speaking out.
Alice, do you see any alternative to bankruptcy? When you add in all the unfunded liabilities from retirements, deferred maintenance and unresolved litigation with the Crater, the City of South Lake Tahoe appears to be close to $1/2 billion under water. As a CPA, your opinion about the solvency of the city would be valuable. It seems to me that only by declaring bankruptcy can we free up the TOT funds and direct them to street repairs. Also, I suspect the $5.2 million estimate by the city engineer is at least 50% short of actual costs. What do you think?
Seems to me that if the City doesn’t see the necessity of fixing the enormous potholes in our roads, they should get the bill for torn up tires caused by these potholes. We recently had to replace all 4 tirs on an all-wheel drive vehicle after tearing a sidewall falling into one of the famous Ta-holes!
Let’s hold Kubby to his word that he is not going to run for a seat on the City Council again! He is a legend in his own mind, and as much as I respect this publication, I believe Kubby is being given a platform to preach and condescend to a community that needs to pull together to solve a lot of problems. A once in awhile op ed piece is fine – a weekly dose of pontification is not.
Mr. Kubby,
Here are some suggestions, either get involved or stop your childish bickering, all you do is write these articles blasting others and never ever offering any soultions.. At this point I really wish you would just go away.
You kiss butt to the City Manager and City Council when things seem to go your way, then when they dont, you create these outlandish claims that they are going to kill mj paitents, they are corrupt and unethical, with no evidence. You rarely if at all are at or engaged in City Council meetings or any community service groups around town, like I said I never see you at ANY community events or service clubs and I attend most on a regular basis. You accuse Hal Cole and my father (Tom Davis) of what you amount to criminal activity for the convention center project when again you have no real clue what you are talking about, Tom was not on the City Council when the convention center project was being proposed, didnt you pay attention during the campaign or were you too worried about pot? Hal Cole was on the council when the MOU was signed but not on council when the perfomnce bond and other security measures that would have kept the project viable were not required. Do your homework before you write all these letters to the paper inorder to keep yourself visible in the community.. We know your game..
You Mr. Kubby are not a threat to this community,but you have worn out just about every last nerve with this community thanks to these antics and tatics that seem to make you feel better. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Sounds like JT needs a doob… Time for me to get involved.. Fix the darn roads…! Ok., I’m done…
Thanks for pointing out the obvious… Go kubby!