Though many residents and a few councilmembers said they’d like
to see the Healdsburg Avenue Bridge saved Monday night,
councilmembers still voted 5-0 in favor of initiating a $2.8
million agreement for a three-phased engineering design and
environmental study to come to a final conclusion.
The debate of the structural integrity of the bridge, its
historical value and the cost of replacement has been ongoing in
Healdsburg for years, but with Monday night’s vote, the city moved
one step closer to making a final decision about its fate.
Omni Means, Ltd. was hired by the city to perform the studies
and told the council this week that by mid-summer, they will come
back with a recommendation to replace or rehabilitate the
bridge.
$2.4 million of the contract agreement with Omni Means is
expected to be grant funded and city councilmembers said it was
prudent to gather all of the available information before making
any decisions.
“I will not make a decision until you come up with all the
specific facts that we need to make a sound decision,”
councilmember Eric Ziedrich told the engineers. “I don’t think we
are doing the community any favors until we get that. Where we go
with it is yet to be decided until you complete your task.”
But councilmembers Mike McGuire and Gary Plass said while they’d
like to see the bridge saved and rehabilitated rather than torn
down, they agreed to the contract.
“This will give us a good, strong basis to show why and how we
did it,” Plass said.
Still, for the process, Omni Means representatives said they are
going into the first phase — which will eventually lead them to a
preferred alternative — with open minds.
The engineering team will be holding two community open houses
and preparing technical and structural studies before implementing
an “Alternative Selection Decision Matrix” and weighing each of the
evaluation criteria during phase 1.
“We will be holding a blank sheet open house,” Ross Ainsworth,
president of Omni Means said. “We won’t be coming to that meeting
with pre-conceived alternatives.”
That was an important distinction as councilmembers said they
received some heat after the original Request for Proposals (RFP)
sent out last fall stated that the preferred alternative was to
replace the bridge.
“The council and the community is sensitive about any
pre-conceived agenda,” Ziedrich said.
Ainsworth assured Ziedrich that was “not at all what our
approach is.”
Some in the community wished the approach was to simply save the
bridge though, without having to go through the entire process.
Healdsburg resident John Sorocco said “like most people here,
everyone wants to keep the bridge. Why don’t we just put all the
funds and set Caltrans on the straight and narrow and just fix
it?”
Mel Amato, a local electrical engineer and an outspoken advocate
for saving the bridge, said after hearing the presentation from
Omni Means and speaking with the team Tuesday morning, he is
confident they will move forward with a balanced approach.
“I think it’s moving forward the way it ought to,” Amato said.
“I am convinced this process is going to be open and they are going
to consider both (rehabilitation and replacement) on an equal
basis.”
Amato single-handedly took Caltrans on a few years ago when he
recalculated the measurements of pin locations under the bridge.
His findings proved that the bridge, which had been rated as a 2
out of 100 since the late 1970s, was much safer than once
thought.
“Everybody believed those ratings, the bridge looks so bad,
people thought it was going to fall down. It does need a good paint
job,” he said.
The bridge is now rated by Caltrans at 44, but Omni Means will
be recalculating and remeasuring the bridge as part of the first
phase of its project.
Amato believes that the rating will again jump to well over 60,
which he said, could jeopardize federal funding for
replacement.
Funding for rehabilitation isn’t affected though, as long as the
bridge rating remains below a mark of 80, he said.
The 88-year-old steel truss bridge connects the south side of
Healdsburg, crossing over the Russian River, to central
Healdsburg.
