Road repairs estimated at $3 million after Santa Cruz Mountains landslide

Santa Cruz Mountain residents affected by a landslide earlier this year got some bad news June 27 at a meeting with the Santa Cruz County Department of Public Works.

While the county could use federal funds to cover the roughly $3 million they anticipate it will cost to repair the slide area on Mountain Charlie Road, there’s currently no money for the estimated $1 million it will take to repair a private driveway that was also damaged by the slide.

“You guys are going to have to come up with some other funding sources to really enact these repairs.” assistant director of public works Steve Wiesner told residents at the meeting.

In the interim , Wiesner said, the department is considering a one-lane temporary gravel road to help residents more easily access main roads and get to Los Gatos, where many of them work and attend school.

“Obviously , that’ll come with a price tag as well, and so we’ll be talking about funding for a potentially interim repair as we continue to seek a final solution for the permanent repair and funding for that,” Wiesner said.

The landslide, which county officials first became aware of in February, has been blocking residents’ access to main roads, forcing them to take hours-long detours to work and school and causing concerns about emergency vehicle access. The slide area is owned and managed by Santa Cruz County, but residents in the area have Los Gatos addresses.

The public works department has been using the data they’ve gathered in recent weeks to put together a report identifying the landslide as the result of heavy storms in the area earlier this year, for which the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA had issued a federal disaster declaration. This process, Wiesner said, will allow the county to tap into the funds that the disaster declaration unlocked, though that could take anywhere from months to years.

Public works director Matt Machado said the county’s current budget will not be enough to cover all the county roads in need of repair.

“I’d like to remind everybody that the transportation system in our county has even greater needs than storm damage,” he said. “We have nearly $1 billion of deferred maintenance, so that’s an area that we continue to try and fund as well.”

At the June 27 meeting, resident Dan Crenshaw said increased traffic on the portion of Mountain Charlie Road that’s south of the slide has contributed to the road’s deterioration. Crenshaw called for the public works department to do more to maintain the road and keep it safe to use.

“The crux of this is that the road’s falling apart and we’re really not that far from another winter, so if we’re going to fix that to make sure that we can get in and out, it needs to be addressed very soon, and I would like to see it addressed regularly like we were promised in the first place,” Crenshaw said.

Machado said the department is aware of the road’s deteriorating condition and plans to do some maintenance work in preparation for the winter. But he also wanted to manage residents’ expectations, saying that about half of the roads in the county are in a “failed state.”

“We also have to be realistic with our financial situation, and with the massive amount of deferred maintenance across the county over literally hundreds of miles of roads, it’s a tall order,” he said. “And so we will continue to try to meet your needs, meet our community needs and meet our obligations, but it’s quite a challenge.”