By Jim Miller
A little over a week ago I was amused to see the Turko Files run a couple of segments “exposing” a disastrous Golden Hill renovation project on 25th Street that I had covered nearly six months earlier in late August of 2014. The KUSI angle was, appropriately, how bad the endless construction has been for local small businesses who have suffered through the scatter-shot planning and surreal whack-a-mole approach to getting the job done more“efficiently.”
Neighborhood residents might recall how Mayor Kevin Faulconer claimed his administration would change the game back in April of 2014 when he opined, “It’s a mindset that’s changing, and it says do it all at once. It’s taken awhile and it’s been frustrating for us, it takes more planning. So now, we do all of the projects at once – pipes, streets – so you don’t have to come back six months, two years later.”
What he didn’t consider was whether the residents of Golden Hill would dig it any better if his “efficient” new mindset of “doing it all at once” just meant that the work would keep going with no end in sight for the foreseeable future. Indeed, as bad as it is to live through the interminable disaster that is 25th Street, the political ironies are rich beyond words. As I noted back in August 2014:
“There is no such thing as a Democratic or Republican pothole.”
Remember that pat line that Kevin Faulconer used ad nauseam during the mayor’s race?
Well out here in the real world after the election, neither variety of potholes is getting fixed very quickly, and Faulconer’s fine words about efficiency and commitment to infrastructure are long forgotten once the press conferences are over.
A case in point is my Golden Hill neighborhood, where residents recently posted angry signs before they cleared several cone-blocked streets and dozens of “no parking” signs on their own after four months and counting of inaction in the wake of a Faulconer press conference where he promised big things.
As the San Diego Reader reported back in April:
Faulconer said the city has been rightfully criticized in the past for poorly coordinating infrastructure projects. For instance, the city would pave a street and then tear it up a couple months later for a sewer or water project. This project would be different, he said. The area would soon be due for a water-main replacement, so that project was consolidated with the other planned improvements.
As I write this in late August, nothing has been delivered for over four months but more potholes, bad water pressure, occasional geysers erupting from broken above-ground pipes, constant foul-ups, car accidents caused by obstructed views, perpetually unfinished sidewalks complete with dangerous uncovered holes, and a Waiting for Godot action plan.
Then – Graphic With Aug 2014 Article
And it has gotten so bad in the months since last summer when this was first published that most of my neighbors have just given up on even getting any coherent communication from the city no less any effective action. It seems we are stuck in some purgatorial netherworld where the clusterfunk low-bid construction company digs a hole for a day, covers it up again, goes away for a week or so, and then comes back to put a metal plate over the hole, move some dirt, and then drag a big dumpster from one end of the block to the other for no apparent reason.
The bottom line here is that there is no rational planning, adequate communication with residents, or even vaguely competent execution going on. Deadlines come and go, streets get dug up, repaved, and dug up again. But in Kevin Faulconer’s San Diego, no one is ever accountable.
Sucks to be you, Golden Hill.
NOW – Streetside March 1, 2015
This absurd comedy is occasionally interrupted by multiple car accidents, like the one where a man drove his truck into a stack of pipes in the middle of the construction site scattering light blue shrapnel up and down the street and all over my yard. Since no one offered to clean up the mess, my eleven year old collected a nice pile that we kept on our porch to remember that magic moment.
Aside from the damage to local businesses and car wrecks, there is the regular obscene waste in the midst of our historic drought as they test the pipes and pump rivers of water down the gutters of the neighborhood, the poor old folks tripping and falling on the street, the random crazy fun of people jumping in the open dumpsters on weekends to bang the walls and make big noise, and the joy of the Social Darwinist parking competition between residents and worried-looking yoga patrons.
But if one picked up UT-San Diego yesterday, you’d never know about any of this as their latest puff piece on Faulconer notes that, “The mayor has also focused on infrastructure, devoting half of all new revenue to repairing and rebuilding roads, sidewalks, recreation centers and other city facilities.
He also plans to streamline how infrastructure money is spent, blaming inefficiencies for much of the backlog.”
In the same piece the mayor himself pontificates once again on his mastery of all things infrastructural, “`It’s not about throwing money at the problem,’ he said. `I don’t believe the city’s been spending the money efficiently and wisely.’”
Well thank God he’s on it, otherwise things wouldn’t be going so well on 25th Street.
It truly is a new day in Golden Hill. The song of jackhammers in the morning sounds like victory—the victory of the very “reform” and outsourcing policies that KUSI News and Manchester’s UT-SD relentlessly sold us as manna from heaven. Amazingly, the KUSI coverage of 25th Street opens with Turko making the same old tired jokes about “government work” without any admission that this rotten deal is the pure product of the what the local right and their allies in the media have been promoting as the road to our civic redemption.
As Peter Brownell of the Center on Policy Initiatives put it when I asked him for his take on the 25th Street nightmare: “This project really suggests that the City cannot assume that contracting out to the private sector is more efficient. To the contrary, contracting effectively requires close City supervision and management.”
But that uncomfortable truth is just better left unsaid in most local media quarters.
That’s right, dear readers, instead of the magic of the marketplace delivering better services for less money, taxpayers have been treated to the worst kind of incompetent low-bid labor. So, like that neighbor you know who thought he got a great deal on his home renovation only to be stuck with a hopeless boondoggle, San Diego is getting what it paid for in projects like the one here in my storied neighborhood.
But in Kevin Faulconer’s San Diego, fantasy rhetoric about how much more “efficient” his approach is will always trump such awkward realities.
San Diego is getting what it paid for in projects like the one here in my storied neighborhood.
Jim Miller
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Thank you for another clear-eyed report on what is really happening in San Diego.
More to the point, what is NOT happening…
Thank you. I am in that area at least once sometimes twice a week. One of my walking partners lives on 23rd and B. I never know which street will be blocked. This has gone on for months. The other problem is 25 and Broadway where LosReyes is located. I am sure their business has suffered. (they make my “home made” dinner once a week) Once again try and figure how to get in to their parking lot. If this was a week or two of this problem it would be a different story. This has also gone on for months. An area to watch Park Blvd. and University. It is either in to the third week or a month and I don’t see them finishing in the next month. This was even a bigger problem when they decided that parking all their equipment on Louisiana St. behind the Albertsons. A neighbor expressed his concern at having so much equipment in one place and it is now someplace else. lets see how long this project last.
When they let these contracts to the lowest bidder, do they specify any conditions … like when the project must be completed to get paid in full? Otherwise, they take a cut in what they are paid? If there are not any conditions attached to the contract, then for sure you’re going to get the lowest quality work on an interminable basis. Then the company will go bankrupt and the city will have to start over again with a different low bidder.
Good article, like your style. It would be great if some of the city staff office employees could get out on city work sites and supervise regularly, like everyday, I’m sure work would move along faster.
The city’s twice been out to Park Blvd. and Upas St. in recent months digging deep holes in the intersection there. Most recently it was about a month ago to repair a broken water main junction some 12 or 15 feet near the center of the intersection. It was tragic to watch all that water gushing free from the yellow hydrant there, for hours on end, running down to Florida Canyon, as the lines were being flushed, so the city guy’s told me.
Our condo complex had an advisory to preserve water during the city’s drought posted at its entrances while the water ran freely into the street.
Jim,
Thanks for writing about this debacle. It’s a embarrassment (in its second year) to Foulconer, the city. It’s also embarrassing to the residents and businesses of Goldenhill. Most of the residents around the construction do not have offstreet parking so when the No Parking signs go up and are left for weeks with no contruction actually occuring you get a real idea of the ineptitude of this project. The giant cluster of pipes, cones, piles of dirt and a very large dumpster in front of a very busy Fire/EMT Station speaks of how dangerous this ridiculous situation has become.
Time for the Mayor/ City to come back to Goldenhill for another presser to tell the residents what specifically they are going to do to remedy/finish this disaster. I didn’t believe him the first time he showed up with a shovel.
He should have given the shovel to residents, so they could get rid of the bullshit.
Can you imagine these construction techniques happening on Prospect Blvd in central La Jolla? Only in dreams beyond imagination. The private contractors tore-up Chatsworth Street along Point Loma High school after electrical undergrounding and sewer replacement just a few years ago & repaving. The water pipes replacement project did horizontal cuts across the street every fifty feet. The cuts are sinking because of poor compacting and lack of City supervision. Driving on the street now is like inverted speed bumps taling out struts & car shocks. It would be interesting to ask these contractors how many times they see a City supervisor showing-up at the job site during the job duration. I’d bet the farm it’s weeks apart. I say this because I had sewer pipes and water pipes replaced in front of my house over a three month period and never remembering a city labeled truck in the construction area.
Amen.
Wait until you get reverse diagonal parking – this will be the only place in San Diego to utilize this revolutionary new feature. Hard for most people to even imagine how to do it. With two way traffic, this is a recipe for fender benders. Todd Gloria loved the idea – no change since he first endorsed it.
When the contractor disappears on 25th Street, you can find them in the Bancroft/Cedar streets area. They started a water project there many months ago. It’s on and off, and they disappear for a week or two. Dig a hole, tear up the street, fill it in, disappear. Now we know where they go.
I always wanted to know what “managed” really means in Sanders’ legacy, “managed competition.” There is zero management of any sort going on during the work. The same contractor did some horrible things to the private property adjacent to another project years ago; there was no oversight by anyone – not the City and not the company management. No matter how bad a job this company does, they continue, year after year, to be handed contracts. I’d like to know who the owner of the company is, and how they continue doing business with the City.
I live pretty much at ground zero of this disaster (25th and Broadway) and I can’t believe it has gotten to this point. Yesterday we were cheering for the rain to just wash away all the damn cones, signs, dumpsters, and heavy equipment that’s just been parked in our street for over a year.
About a month ago our car got towed for “violation of construction signs”, even though there were no signs out when we went outside to find the car gone. No signs, just two teenage guys in orange vests, literally taking selfies instead of doing whatever work they’re being paid to do. That’s $400 we had to pay to get our car back, which we especially can’t afford now that they’ve also raised rent in the neighborhood (no doubt in part due to the ‘improvements’). Oh, plus the $65 to the city for the unfounded and unarguable citation.
Even when the signs are there (instead of laying in broken piles scattered throughout the area), they are either illegible – with conflicting, cryptic messages written in washed-out felt pen on masking tape – or just left unmarked, with residents ever questioning whether or not it’s safe to park their car in front of their houses.
That’s if they’re put out on time or even at all. A few months back we came out to the car and were told by the construction guy that we were “lucky we came out when we did”, AS he was putting out the No Parking signs for that day – meaning if we had come out just a few minutes later, an entire scene would have taken place wherein No Parking signs would be put down without notice, and the cars “in violation” would then be towed. This is BEYOND irresponsible; it’s flat-out corrupt.
Oh well, at least we have those pretty tile mosaics on the corners to look down at while we’re figuring out how to maneuver across the street through all the debris. Oh, and we’re still waiting for all the curbs that were broken during this “renovation” to be fixed.