Looking for ways and means to keep city running

The city of Chula Vista faces a $600 million infrastructure budget deficit. The city is exploring several funding options through an Asset Management Program Advisory Committee that has provided the city with feedback on infrastructure needs and potential funding sources.

City Manager Gary Halbert said there is a wide spectrum for funding infrastructure including looking into a potential bond measure, exploring a sales tax increase, possibly creating assessment districts or forming community facility districts.

Halbert also said addressing the city’s needs with the limited budget it has for infrastructure would lead to ongoing deterioration.

Formed about two years ago, the committee examines infrastructure priorities and needs in Chula Vista.

“We are also asking them for options on how we would pay for infrastructure,” said Mayor Mary Casillas Salas. “Would they be agreeable to some type of revenue increase or not?”

Casillas Salas said it is premature to discuss a bond measure for a ballot but wants to get community input on funding strategies.

David Danciu sits on the committee and said there have been improvements made in infrastructure around the city, especially with the paving of new roads.

Danicu also said he isn’t sure if he would support a bond measure or a sales tax increase as he would need to know the details first before taking a position.

“I don’t really want it on my property tax,” he said. “I think I would rather have it as a value added tax … or a luxury tax. That’s the tax I would go for.”

Danciu said he was never asked for input on infrastructure funding.

In 2009, Crossroads II publicly opposed a ballot initiative for a sales tax increase, which eventually was defeated by the voters.

For the past two years the city of Chula Vista has examined all of the city’s assets and did an assessment of what the city’s infrastructure needs are.

The committee recorded every asset the city has with every aspect of city ownership such as sewers, curbs and gutters.

Halbert said the assessment was conducted to see where the city’s needs for infrastructure are the most pressing, what needed to be fixed immediately and what most needs fixing in the long term. Part of the assets management program was also putting a value to the cost of the infrastructure repair, Halbert said.

The city has a capital improvement program for major infrastructure repairs that runs an average of $17 million to $20 million a year from various funding streams such as gas tax and money received from the San Diego Association of Governments.

“What we do with the general fund money is we do the Band-Aids,” Halbert said. “We go around and fix pot holes, take care of the parks’ grass and those types of things.”

Last year the city conducted a survey to find out what the public thought should be prioritized, what they felt the city should be spending on and what they felt was lacking with infrastructure. Halbert said last year’s survey showed priorities around funding public safety, street repairs and water quality.

A 10-minute telephone survey was also done this year by True North Surveying and Mapping, LLC asking a series of questions about infrastructure priorities, including if residents would support a possible bond measure and other funding sources.

Halbert said the city is still gathering the results from that survey and will present the survey results at an October council meeting.

Danciu said he was never called to be surveyed.

Halbert said the Asset Management Program Advisory Committee puts Chula Vista ahead of other cities in the state in regard to understating infrastructure problems because he said many cities have not gone through and identified the pieces of infrastructure that needs to be repaired.

“Other cities talk about ‘we need to do something’ but they haven’t even gotten to the place where they can look at it from a methodology that says ‘where are we? what are our priorities? what do we need to move forward with and what size of a problem are we trying to tackle?’”

So far more than 600,000 individual pieces of infrastructure items in Chula Vista need to be repaired, said Halbert. However, the city is not done analyzing all of the city’s infrastructure projects.

Halbert said there isn’t a timeline as to when the city will decide how to fund infrastructure repairs, whether it is through a bond or other measures.

Rick Hopkins, director of public works, identifies the condition of each piece of infrastructure, with an estimation of when it should be repaired along with an estimated repair cost.

“We all recognize that $600 million is a lot of money and it’s just a very heavy lift,” Hopkins said. “But if you can get a fraction of that, then you want to make sure you’re spending it on the right things and that’s why we really want to be in step with the community to take whatever we can get in a way of additional revenue and put it in the right places.”