MENDOCINO CO., 7/9/25 – Potholes and ruts along Mendocino County roads have long plagued local drivers, but residents insist one road has reached a crisis point.
Little River Airport Road (County Road 404), a six-mile rural route that winds through the Mendocino Ecological Staircase, is the focus of a grassroots campaign led by residents pushing for immediate repairs and a planned timetable for continued road maintenance.
The group, organizing under the moniker Citizens to Fix Little River Airport Road, has been pressing county officials to address worsening safety conditions along the route. Their goal is to secure long-term repairs — specifically DuraPatching, a method that injects a mixture of emulsion and aggregate to fill cracks and potholes. Little River Airport Road isn’t just a neighborhood route — those traveling on it include residents, emergency services, customers to businesses, delivery vehicles, and travelers using the airport.
“This road is a thoroughfare for people traveling to Comptche, Albion Ridge Road, the fire station, the airport — not just those of us who live here,” said group chair Vicki Wedegaertner. “We have large vehicles flying down this road, and there’s very limited visibility around some of the curves.”
Little River Airport Road also traverses no less than five marine terraces shaped over millennia, home to rare ecological zones including coastal prairies, redwood and bishop pine forests, as well as the renowned pygmy forest. The road also leads to the Van Damme State Park Pygmy Forest Discovery Trailhead, a popular tourist destination.
Little River Airport Road serves as the only access road for several residential communities, including the Woods, a retirement community of 109 households. It also serves as an emergency evacuation route during wildfires or extreme weather events. The Albion-Little River Fire Protection District’s Station 811 is located nearby on Albion Ridge Road.
This reporter walked a stretch of the road near the Woods recently with Wedegaertner and fellow group members Paula Patterson and Lori Jirak to look at the damage firsthand. Potholes, crumbling edges, and missing shoulders marked much of the route.
“After the group formed in January, we began organizing,” Wedegaertner said, “We drafted a petition and delivered it to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors at their May 20 meeting. Area residents also sent 63 postcards to the Mendocino County Department of Transportation’s Executive Director Howard Dashiell.”
“These roads are narrow with no shoulders,” Patterson added. “It becomes extremely hazardous, especially during storms.”
Jirak said the group has gone beyond advocacy. “We’ve mapped the potholes and documented what needs repair,” she said. “We all have the same hope — to get this fixed.”
Wedegaertner said the group has measured nearly 18,000 square feet of road requiring repairs. “We’ve mapped 34 separate sections using compass points and on-the-ground measurements just for DuraPatching,” she said. “But what we need now is for the county to prioritize funding for a long-overdue resurfacing — not just patching.”
Howard Dashiell, executive director of the county’s Department of Transportation, said there are myriad complications with the plan — some going back years. “Priority maintenance is a tough plan to put together,” he said. “When I first did the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) plan in 2019, County Road 404 was not so bad, and it was not listed for corrective maintenance. I am planning to do a new [condition index] soon.”
“We have terrible roads statewide,” Dashiel said. “The state has helped with the Gas Tax, but they don’t distribute funds based on who has the worst roads, it is based on the number of vehicle registrations.”
In a low-population, high-tourism county like Mendocino, the number of in-county vehicle registrations do not reflect the amount of wear and tear on the roads.
Dashiell noted that Save California Streets and Roads has a map breaking down the distribution of pavement conditions by county and Mendocino County at the bottom, listed as having poor conditions.
Senate Bill 1121, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022, requires the California Transportation Commission to prepare a needs assessment outlining the costs to operate, maintain, and expand the state and local multimodal transportation system in the next 10 years.
The 2025 State and Local Transportation System Needs Assessment aims to identify California’s transportation and infrastructure needs, the revenue available to meet them, and the projected funding gap through 2035.
The cold reality of lack of funding
Little River Airport Road lies in Mendocino County’s 5th District, represented by Supervisor Ted Williams.
“Your state legislature has chosen to not prioritize funding for rural roads,” Williams said, “and the county has decreased buying power, because its revenue comes primarily from property tax, which is capped under Prop 13.”
“The [county Department of Transportation] apportions very limited resources for the worst sections of roads,” he said. “The department attempts to spread work across the county, because any one corner could use the whole and need more, and they remove politics from the mix.
““Their assessment is based on objective criteria, not on who is most vocal. The core problem is that Mendocino County does not have enough tax revenue to meet mandates and maintain roads,” Williams said.
He then broke down the numbers: “Take all property tax from residents of the Little River Airport Road area. The county retains about 30% of that [property tax], which needs to cover sheriff, district attorney, jail, HR, IT, Juvenile Hall, and the list goes on. Consider about 14% of the county amount for roads. now figure out how many years it would take to pay for the repaving.”
“The Democratic Party controls both chambers of the California Legislature with comfortable two-thirds super-majorities,” Williams said. “They could choose to allocate state income tax to provide equity in rural counties, including roads that the 95,000 people of this county have no financial means to properly maintain.”
For now, the Citizens to Fix Little River Airport Road continues to rally community support and push for action on what they describe as one of Mendocino County’s most neglected roads. More information is available at fixlrairportrd.org.
How about a vote on a sales tax initiative or a bond on property tax to help get needed funding to these roads? Specially to this district that uses the road most often.
We already did that!!!!! It’s called the “California Gas Tax”. It was sold to us as the golden ticket to fix all our roads and the state has been collecting that tax since 2017. FYI this tax generates about 7 billion a year. So where is that money going?
Buddy, that’s not how that works. County roads are county roads. If your county isn’t generating enough tax revenue, your county roads will turn to dirt with or without the gas tax. The gas taxes do get distributed to smaller municipal groups but they are not the whole cost to repaving your local county roads. Ukiah passed measure Y to improve the quality of the streets in and around Ukiah. Which overall has improved the roads around town.
The state does not have money to fix our roads but there’s money for the train that’s still getting built
Little River Airport Road looks great. Drive Low Gap, Pine Ridge, Mill Creek, Mountain View. County roads are in complete disrepair.
Just to inform that our road, 110 in Hopland, aka Old Hopland Yorkville Highway, was just fixed! Had not had more than fill holes for many years. Is now beautiful-had not been totally fixed since early 1950s! We are totally appreciating the Mendocino County Road Crew!
Thank you, Mendocino Voice, for shining a light on the needs of Mendocino County roads. One addition: Roughly 80% of Californians live in a jurisdiction with a local sales tax to repave local roads, adopted by local voters. Each of Mendocino County’s four cities all have a sales tax to repair roads, adopted by city voters. Residents living outside of Mendocino County’s cities lack a roads sales tax, but they pay a road sales taxes each time they shop in those cities or neighboring counties like Humboldt and Sonoma. The crisis facing Mendocino County’s roads can only be resolved, in my estimation, if Mendocino County voters adopt a road sales tax to maintain Mendocino County roads.