City Councilmember Paul Johnson got his election-year dream. Now he's hoping it doesn't rain.
Earlier this year--with the upcoming October 3 city election looming--Johnson began pressuring the city staff to immediately tear up and repave Dunlap Avenue rather than do the improvements next year as originally planned. Johnson says accelerating the project wasn't done to impress voters when they go to the polls next month. In fact, he insists, at the time he didn't even think he was going to seek re-election. And he certainly didn't know he would face a free ride with no election opposition.
Nonetheless, Johnson's constituents will get their newly paved street ahead of schedule. What they'll also get--which probably won't be obvious until after the election--is floating manhole covers and a swamped Central Avenue. All because Johnson wanted to tinker with the street-paving priorities in the $92 million bond program approved last year by voters.
Those street projects, carefully put together by city bureaucrats and blessed by a citizens' bond committee, occasionally fall prey to the heavy-handed election-year tampering of elected officials. That's why Phoenix winds up with half-completed paving projects in some places while needed--and planned--improvements disappear from the list. For example:
* Mary Rose Wilcox didn't like the idea of widening a half-mile stretch of Seventh Avenue, saying it would ruin its use for pedestrians. So the project was killed.
* Howard Adams grumbled about tearing up yet another central city street before the Papago Freeway was finished and worried about some adjacent development. So city traffic officials put off for at least a year rebuilding a one-and-one-half mile segment of Indian School Road.
* Linda Nadolski criticized plans to widen 16th Street, what with construction of the Squaw Peak Parkway nearby. So the project--which was added to the "must do" list as a high priority only a year earlier--simply dropped from sight.
In Johnson's case, the Dunlap Avenue project was rushed to bid and the street is now torn up. The project should be completed by late October.
Johnson says his request to speed up construction was just his way of helping spur redevelopment in Sunnyslope. The city, which owns property at the southeast corner of Central and Dunlap, was negotiating with Trammell Crow Co. to build a shopping center on that land; the widened street was supposed to spur that project along. But the company backed out about three months ago, concluding that market conditions didn't make such a venture financially attractive.
By that time, though, the bids for the road-paving project had already been opened and work began in July.
There was more to the timing than simply trying to please Trammel Crow and other potential developers: Johnson wanted the job finished by the end of the year. He insists he wasn't trying to have a nearly completed project under his belt by the city election. In fact, he says, if he wanted to assure his job, he would have made sure the project didn't start until after the election so the torn-up street didn't upset district residents.
But the two-term councilmember needs to worry more about anger among many Sunnyslope residents and business owners who believe their cries for redevelopment aid have fallen on deaf ears at City Hall. (During meetings in Sunnyslope, Johnson is constantly questioned by business people and residents about the prospects for economic development in the area.)
Johnson's successful demand for quick action on the street-paving project gives him a "victory" to point to.
There's a price to be paid for that, though.
The project was advertised for bid on May 8, with bids opened May 31. Richard Pierson, owner of Pierson Construction, one of the three bidders, says this window didn't give a lot of time for anyone to really look at the project and the plans and figure out the real costs. Pierson says that means he had to bid higher to take care of contingencies he did not have time to spot. And he expects that the other bidders did likewise.
The city received three bids, though one was withdrawn because the company said it had made a math error. That left Wheeler Construction Co. with the low bid of more than $1.7 million, almost $237,000 higher than estimated by the city's own engineer.
Wheeler got the go-ahead on July 12, with instructions to be done by October 27. Bob Johnson, Wheeler's vice president, says that finish date means higher costs for him because he will have to pay overtime for construction crews. He says, though, he can recoup some of that cost because he doesn't have to rent barricades and pay for an off-duty police officer to direct traffic for as many days.
Costs aside, the main reason Dunlap Avenue wasn't scheduled for reconstruction until next year was that its new storm sewers are supposed to drain into the Arizona Canal Diversion Channel. But the channel's segment through Sunnyslope hasn't even been put out for bids yet, and the contractor is going to plug up the sewer outlet. Once the drains fill up, says city transportation chief Jim Matteson, the water will wind up on Central Avenue.
Not to worry, says Matteson. The contractor is going to plug up the sewers at the low end at Central and Dunlap. "We'll bubble them up on Central and let them run down the surface on Central," he explains.
What that means is all the water that enters the high end of the system at Seventh Street and Dunlap will overflow back onto the street at Central.
It's an interesting concept--and not the first time the city's tried it. The city rebuilt 35th Avenue north from Dunlap Avenue several years ago, putting in storm sewers. That project, like this one, was supposed to drain into the diversion canal. And that project, like this one, was completed before the canal was there. So the contractor plugged up the end of the sewer.
But the water didn't just "bubble up" gently at the low end. The pressure blew off manhole covers all along the line. So the city bolted down the covers. That solved one problem--and created another. One entire manhole, concrete and all, was shoved up from the pavement. And the high pressure forced water through cracks between the pipes, where it washed out the surrounding sand and caused the road to collapse.
"That didn't work very well at all," admits Matteson. He says he's been told by others that it was the city's choice of a certain type of pipe that caused the washout problem, something he insists won't be repeated here.
Other councilmembers also claim noble causes when they did some election-year tinkering with road-paving priorities.
Wilcox this year took up the cause of protecting neighborhoods from unbridled road-widening projects. She says she wants a more carefully thought-out process. The first job she ran into was Seventh Avenue. City traffic officials wanted to rebuild a stretch from Thomas to Osborn Roads, adding four feet in width. The problem, Matteson explains, is that the lanes are narrower than normal, something that is particularly important with the high use of the reversible middle lane. City officials considered the work so important they included it in the list of projects to be built with the $92 million in street-paving bonds approved last year by voters.
Now, Matteson is singing a different song, saying it really isn't that important. Is Wilcox blocking the project?
"You're damn right I am," Wilcox says. "We have to really look twice at widening a road for the sake of jamming traffic through."
Actually if Wilcox could get her way, she'd narrow some of the streets, replacing traffic lanes with wider sidewalks and a row of trees between the walkways and the asphalt. She contends people actually would walk along major streets in Phoenix, even with the carbon monoxide fumes and the triple-digit heat, if there were just more trees.
Matteson, whose continued employment is dependent on the good will of the council, isn't about to argue with her. "My job is to provide information," he says. "It's up to the council to make the decision." And to put the best face on it. He now calls Seventh Avenue "a marginal project," despite his agency's earlier conclusion that bond funds were necessary to clear up the problem which has resulted in "disruption of through traffic."
He also may be willing to sacrifice this project to keep Wilcox from torpedoing one of his pet programs to widen Thomas Road from Seventh Street to 19th Avenue. Wilcox doesn't like this one any better, though she admits an extra traffic lane probably will have to be added eventually.
A mile farther north, Howard Adams has put the kibosh on widening Indian School Road from Central Avenue east to 16th Street, at least for the time being. "I didn't want any more central city streets torn up until the Papago [Freeway] is finished," Adams says. The result is that the Indian School Road paving project is left half done: Traffic heading east across Central Avenue finds the road suddenly narrowed by two lanes.
Matteson has a different explanation for the project delay. He says the city wants to wait to see how the old Indian School property will be developed, with an eye to getting the new owners to donate land for an additional traffic lane. He admits, though, that could be two years away.
But there's really no reason the city can't reconstruct the road now: Engineering plans were prepared for the intersection of Indian School and Central which allow the city to widen the heavily traveled street without the need for additional land from the school property. The plans also allow an additional lane to be added on school property at a future date, without tearing up the improvements.
Plans to widen 16th Street between McDowell and Indian School Roads have been on and off the drawing boards for years. When the Squaw Peak Parkway was first proposed, the city saw no reason to widen the five-lane street that runs parallel a half mile to the west. So, five years ago, the city spent about $200,000 to resurface the two-mile stretch.
The new blacktop had barely cooled when Severo Esquivel, who was a deputy city manager, insisted that a widened 16th Street was necessary, with or without the new parkway. So Matteson earmarked $3 million in bond revenues for the project.
The resurrection of the plan caught Councilmember Linda Nadolski by surprise. "The staff never told me it was on the list," she says. So she asked for some justification. So did Sheryl Sculley, Esquivel's replacement. Matteson, who had gone along with Esquivel without raising a ruckus, now responded that the project probably couldn't be justified, what with the partially completed parkway already taking 10,000 vehicles a day off 16th Street.
But the fight has only been delayed. Matteson says the road will eventually have to be widened, even after the Squaw Peak is completed through to the Dreamy Draw.
It may be a decade before even the Squaw Peak won't be able to handle the traffic, and 16th Street will have to be widened. By that time, a whole different crew of elected officials, worrying about a different election, will be tinkering with street projects.
