Call to action

Editor: A Memorial Bridge Call to Action
This is a call to action for all in our Healdsburg community to
officially register their concerns and preferences relative to the
future of our Healdsburg Memorial Bridge – rehabilitation or
demolition and replacement.
Please mark your calendars for our City’s planned public open
house to discuss and document community inputs relative to the
Memorial Bridge Project. Elsewhere in this edition of the
Healdsburg Tribune you should be able to find a copy of our City’s
official public invitation to this event. The following information
was gleaned from a copy of the invitation send by our city to the
Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society.
Per that invitation, the city and their consultant Omni-Means
will be there to “answer your questions and document your comments,
desires and concerns regarding this important project.” They go on
to promise that “The City will consider all public input received
when developing alternatives for the river crossing to be
evaluated.”
Since this will be an open house format, you can arrive any time
between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m., register your concerns and preferences
and then leave. This will NOT be a town hall forum where you must
stay seated through the whole event.
The date is Wednesday, March 31, 2010 and the venue is the
Healdsburg Senior Center at 133 Matheson Street near the plaza in
downtown Healdsburg.
If you have not been following the status of our bridge, you
should be aware of the fact that Caltrans re-inspected the bridge
in August of 2008. As a result of that inspection and a correction
to their 1979 structural calculations they rescinded the presently
posted load limits. They declared our bridge fully capable of
carrying all legal loads. Furthermore, their ultrasonic and
detailed hands-on inspection of the critical bridge truss members
found no defects, cracks or flaws of any kind. Underwater
inspection by divers also found no significant problems with the
supporting piers. Nevertheless, some basic rehabilitation upgrades
are overdue.
Rehabilitation tasks include replacing the present deck (roadway
& sidewalks) with a modern, light-weight deck to further
improve the structural capacity; implementing an already state
mandated seismic retrofit and a much needed painting. Comparative
cost considerations are not trivial. The cost for a replacement
bridge — about $23 million — is double to triple the cost of
rehabilitation.
I will close by echoing the call to action in our city’s
invitation — Please attend the meeting and be heard!
Mel Amato
Healdsburg