Our Roads Our Business

I think it was about 10 years ago that our children started commenting that they could close their eyes and successfully guess when we crossed back into Sonoma County returning home from a road trip.

Having been born and raised in Santa Rosa, I have, for many years now, traveled the roads of Sonoma County pursuing the activities of my personal and business life. During this time, I’ve driven, cycled or walked nearly every mile of road in the Sonoma County area. Whether it’s a simple trip to the grocery store or a visit to the emergency room, we all depend daily on our local network of roads and highways.

Along our county roads, we have countless opportunities for exploring beaches, hiking through redwood groves or just a Sunday drive through our many beautiful landscapes. But over the past couple of decades, I’ve watched our road network steadily degrade. I think it was about 10 years ago that our children started commenting that they could close their eyes and successfully guess when we crossed back into Sonoma County returning home from a road trip. But in recent years, these lighthearted comments have been replaced with frustration and anger.

While Sonoma County residents feel the effects of our crumbling roads in their personal lives, it also affects our professional lives. Our roads have become so bad that they are now a significant negative factor in the quality and success of doing business in Sonoma County. Poor roads inflict damage to our business fleets, accelerate vehicle depreciation, increase fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions, and impact property values. In an upcoming series of articles, I’ll take a close look at these effects on business, how we got here and what we can do to recover.

While the intent of this series is to look at how our road conditions affect business, it’s difficult to discuss the issue without first looking at the severity of the problem. The latest Sonoma County road survey rates our county roads as follows: 46.9 percent very poor, 14 percent poor, 18.3 percent good/fair, 13.6 percent very good, and 7.2 percent as excellent. It’s fair to say that we do have a lot of roads. In fact, we have 1,370 centerline miles of road in Sonoma County’s unincorporated area. Sonoma County also receives less money per mile of road than some other counties, so additional monies are required from the general fund to properly maintain our road network. Over the past few years, the general fund contribution to roads has been $5.3 million; down from $7.8 million in 2008, which is less than 30 percent of the total road maintenance operation budget. This is a fraction of the contributions made decades ago when the board contributed approximately 50 percent of the maintenance budget. For the fiscal year 2014-2015, funding was increased to $6.3 million with an additional $8 million bonus amount from the general fund, which was granted each of the past three years.

When looking at the way fuel taxes are dispersed, Sonoma County is 18th out of 58 counties in funds received per mile of road, but ranks near the bottom of all California counties in pavement condition. So it’s apparent that fuel tax allocation isn’t the only problem. Underfunded pension obligations use a lot of funds that would otherwise be available for infrastructure. The county looks at pension costs as a percent of payroll and considers 10 percent of payroll to be sustainable. Unfortunately, Sonoma County’s pension costs are about 20 percent of total payroll. That being said, there’s 10 percent of the county’s payroll that’s considered excess pension cost, which, according to the Sonoma County Taxpayers Association, equates to $43.8 million annually. That would buy a lot of road maintenance.  

While it’s true that we receive fewer gas tax dollars per road-mile than some other counties, this isn’t a recent surprise. Rather, it’s an understood obligation that requires dedication of resources, good planning and adequate funding—none of which have been provided. Instead, road maintenance has been deferred for almost two decades. This is, at the core, an issue of the priorities of our elected officials. Road maintenance is an easy target when trying to balance a budget, and roads don’t protest when you reduce their funding. It’s up to us as residents and taxpayers to demand that our infrastructure is maintained.

I encourage each of you to review the Sonoma County Long-Term Road Plan. It’s available on the Sonoma County website and on the “Save our Sonoma County Roads” site at www.SOSroads.org. The plan offers a history of the problem and a proposed path to recovery, which will include a quarter-cent sales tax measure. The county has doubled its road funding for the last three years and has committed to maintain that higher funding level through the five-year term of the proposed sales tax increase. Under these conditions, I’d support the measure. Pension costs will take years and political courage to turn around and I don’t believe our roads can wait.

In my next article, we’ll hear from a number of Sonoma County businesses and take a firsthand look at just how they’re being affected by our crumbling roads. Until then, drive safely and watch out for potholes.