City of Fort Bragg will seek half-cent street repair sales tax renewal in November

FORT BRAGG, 6/2/23 — After the winter rains scoured out new potholes, the City of Fort Bragg is readying for a summer of street repair projects. The City will also be asking voters to renew its half-cent sales tax for another 10 years. City voters have approved the last two rounds of 10 years each of street repair taxes. Those two decades have shown a dramatic increase in the quality of Fort Bragg’s streets. A report by NCE Engineering says if the City continues the current streets program it will hit a catch-up point where regular preventative maintenance should handle most issues. Having the tax in place has actually saved the city money by doing regular work, rather than react and try to repair badly deteriorated streets

Fort Bragg has made much progress on street quality and is about to launch a summer project of street repairs. The worst quality streets in Fort Bragg are its alleys, This one between Franklin and Main Street is in better shape than ones in purely residential areas. The City does not always repair its worst streets first. It works on a complicated formula that allows it to get the most money for the streets with most use and economic impact, but also considering condition. Alleys are a feature of cities that arose over a century ago. More modern city streets are focused entirely on use by automotive traffic. Alleys were built to deliver products to small home businesses, utilities including coal, and for a slower, more walking-oriented world.

While streets have been getting better, alleys lag behind in quality. The street repair projects on the 2022-2023 docket begin on the southern end of Fort Bragg with projects on South Harold, South Street, Boatyard Drive and Chestnut Street. Some of the work will be complete repaving but some will be restriping. Summer Road renovation crews will head north across the City to finish up working on North Franklin Street and Stewart Street. (See map) The work is done this way for efficiency, and because the City can’t have crews working on North Franklin Street at the same time as Caltrans is working on the Pudding Creek Bridge, which will be subject to one-way traffic much of the summer. A light is about to be installed there.