Tehachapi News

Half a million and spend it quick!

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The city of Tehachapi will receive $495,900 in federal stimulus transportation money, the Kern Council of Governments announced April 6.

Tehachapi will spend the money on rehabilitating a 0.6-mile stretch of H Street/Mill Street between N Street, Green Street and Highway 58, said Assistant City Manager Dave Zweigle, who is handling preparations for the project.

“It's happening so fast,” Zweigle said.

The city had the rehabilitation project in the pipeline and was ready to take advantage of the windfall.

“We are working on rehabilitating H Street from Green to Mill and around the corner to the freeway,” Zweigle said. “We started with [an estimate of] $240,000 and it's nearly doubled.”

If there is enough money, Zweigle said, the city also will rehabilitate Mill Street on the north side of Highway 58.

The project will utilize a new, more economical system of rehabilitating the asphalt, Zweigle said.

Instead of removing and hauling away the old asphalt, crews will grind and mill the existing material, add an emulsifier and put a layer on top.

"It's a green way to rehabilitate streets,” Zweigle said. 

No cash for unincorporated

No money from the $30 million Kern County transportation allotment will go to the unincorporated county portion of the Greater Tehachapi area.

“No stimulus money is being spent in (unincorporated) Tehachapi for roads purposes,” said Mark Evans with the county road department.

“We have just more than $10 million road stimulus money,” Evans said. “In our world that's not a lot.”

Evans said that the county has directed federal money to three major projects in the Tehachapi unincorporated area recently, including work on the Tehachapi Willow

Springs road shoulder.

Additionally, the county approved a bond two weeks ago that will fund an extension of Reeves Street, build a left turn and widen Woodford Tehachapi Road at Westwood Boulevard and build bike lanes on Woodford Tehachapi Road.

No sewer money

The county is applying to win federal stimulus water quality funds for five low-income areas, said Greg Fenton, with the county engineering and survey department. Tehachapi has no projects in that pool.

Fenton is busy organizing state and federal environmental reports for septic and sewer projects in Shafter, Taft, Weedpatch and two in the Kern River Valley to meet the looming federal deadline.

The Shafter project is $3 million, he said, and the others are less than $1 million.

“If we can get one, we will be thrilled,” Fenton said. “It's very competitive - first come, first served. We have been all over this.”

In other Kern stimulus news

In addition to doling out the dough by population instead of project, the council board of directors decided to combine two $15 million transportation “pots” into one and give local jurisdictions discretion on how to spend it.

“It is a faster way to get it spent,” said Robert Phipps, the council's administrative analyst. This way, he said, it will be spent on smaller projects and more jobs.

One or two larger projects, he said, “take more time to ramp up.”

The Kern Council of Governments is the county's allocating agency for the transportation money, which stream from federal and state programs for construction and maintenance that have different restrictions.

In lumping the money into one pot, the council did away with the requirement that half the money be used strictly for capital construction.

Stimulus-funded transportation projects must be permitted, approved and begun no later than 180 days from Feb. 17, 2009, the day the president signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Cities and the county have to spend it or lose it.

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Local jurisdiction transportation stimulus funding amounts allotted by Kern Council of Governments based on population:

Arvin $622,882
Bakersfield $12,164,400
California City $543,723
Delano $1,936,425
Maricopa $21,280
McFarland $507,524
Ridgecrest $1,034,939
Shafter $589,437
Taft $353,343
Tehachapi $495,900
Wasco $937,195
County of Kern $11,051,040
Total $30,258,088

Source: Kern Council of Governments

 

Posted online April 13, 2009; print edition April 15, 2009.