City chooses bridge rehab

In a unanimous vote, following an overwhelming response from the
public to keep the Healdsburg Avenue bridge, the city council chose
to rehabilitate the bridge, rather than tear it down and build a
new one, or even keep it, but build a new one anyway.
The standing room only crowd that packed city hall Tuesday night
was largely in favor of a plan that would structural and
seismically upgrade the bridge, but keep the historic landmark as a
fully functioning vehicular bridge.
“That bridge is part of who we are,” said City Councilmember
Lisa Wittke Schaffner. Many in the community agreed with the
sentiment.
One resident who takes the bridge every day said she considers
it an exhale as she slowly crosses the river. “You know that you
are home with that nice, peaceful, slow drive across the bridge,”
said Mary Curran.
Others took a more pragmatic approach to the argument.
“In my view, an unneeded second bridge is an unaffordable
luxury,” said Healdsburg resident Mel Amato, who organized the
group Friends of Healdsburg Memorial Bridge and has been a stern
critic of tearing down and replacing the bridge.
Amato questioned the fiscal projections of proposals created by
the bridge consultants and thinks that rehabilitation of the bridge
will amount to less than the stated $17.3 million.
Local architect Alan Cohen, a former Planning Commission member,
considers some of the bridge’s so-called deficiencies as
assets.
“You accept that narrower streets slow down traffic,” he said.
“When you drive across the bridge, you slow down because it’s so
narrow. This deficiency is actually an advantage.”
Cohen asked the councilmembers to make a judgement call about
saving the bridge that went against city staff’s
recommendation.
“At the end of the day, there’s judgement required. “You can’t
crank all the facts into a matrix and grind out numbers that answer
this question for you,” he said, referring to a complex weighted
ranking guide that was used by consultants to determine the top
projects.
Consultants with Omni Means, Ltd. have been studying the 1921
steel truss span for over a year, while conducting a series of
public hearings on the many options to preserve, rehabilitate or
replace the bridge.
Both city staff and paid consultants preferred a different
option that would have kept the historic bridge as a bicycle and
pedestrian pathway, but built a new bridge for cars, just to the
north between the current bridge and the Railroad bridge. Many in
the community rejected that proposal for aesthetic reasons, but
also felt it would be cost prohibitive to build a second
bridge.
As passionate pleas were made by some in the audience, a few
councilmembers became defensive to a sometimes determined crowd of
speakers intent on keeping the bridge. Community members in the
crowd were admonished for hissing during a presentation from the
consultants and two speakers were stopped mid-sentence by
councilmembers who took offense to comments made that pointed a
negative finger at the city and bridge project consultants from
Omni Means.
After two hours of public discussion, councilmembers one-by-one
agreed that keeping the bridge and rehabilitating it was the only
way to go.
The Healdsburg Public Works Director said once a preferred
alternative had been chosen by the council, the next 12 months
would be spent studying environmental impacts and developing the
Draft Environmental Impact Report that would lead to additional
public input on the outcome of the study. After that, Kirn said,
the city could move forward with the full design process that would
take no less than six months, leaving at least 18 months from now
as the earliest possible start for work on the existing bridge.
The city will spend $2.3 million on the environmental and design
process that will now commence, 88 percent of which is paid for
through grant funds and the remaining 12 percent funded through
Proposition 1B funds and street impact fees.