Officials Fear Road Budget Shortchanges Local Needs

County officials calculate that it costs about $100,000 to put a traffic light at an intersection. There are 49 intersections in unincorporated areas with enough traffic to warrant signals, but there is only enough money to pay for four this year.

For air quality reasons, the county is required to use water-base rather than solvent-base paint for striping pavement. The water-base paint doesn’t last as long. Estimated additional cost to the county this year: $300,000.

In the scramble to find money to widen existing freeways and to build toll roads and new freeways, county transportation planners are worrying that local roads may get overlooked.

Bath of Red Ink

According to Ernie Schneider, county Environmental Management Agency director, the fund that the county uses to fix potholes, install traffic lights and build new roads in unincorporated areas is heading toward a bath of red ink.

“The road fund is in trouble,” Schneider said. “We have a projected shortfall in the road fund estimated to be $5 million to $8 million annually over the next five years in terms of what is needed for us to accomplish (our goals).”

Schneider said the Board of Supervisors has directed that only $3 million be spent from the fund for capital improvement programs each year.

Money Eaten Up

“Well, two projects eats that up,” he said. “(Widening) Newport and Irvine boulevards will eat that up. To most people, $1 million sounds like a lot of money. Well, $1 million will buy you 10 traffic lights.”

A major source of revenue for the road fund in the last two years--$7.6 million--was money the state received for letting companies drill for oil off the California shore. But that two-year program is over.

In the same period, just less than $1 million more came from a fund administered by the Orange County Transportation Commission. But in fiscal 1987-88, the county’s road fund will get only $193,000 from it.

In addition to the money needed for capital improvements, the Environmental Management Agency has calculated that it will take $2.4 million a year for seven years to fix up roads in poor condition and another $4 million annually for routine maintenance.

That adds up to $6.4 million a year needed for maintenance. But because of budget problems, only $5.5 million is earmarked for the fiscal year that started July 1.

Schneider said repairs become more expensive with time.

‘Lots of Money’

“We are trying to keep one step ahead of a deteriorating road system that is in such a state now that every dollar we do not spend now on road maintenance will cost us $7 in the future,” Schneider said. “We don’t have the $7 to spend. We’re talking lots of money.”

The supervisors have budgeted about $75 million for the road fund this year.

Currently, the money in the road fund comes from gasoline taxes, traffic fines and fees paid by developers, but Schneider said new sources of revenue must be found.

In a report to the county’s legislative planning committee two weeks ago, Ken R. Smith, the Environmental Management Agency’s manager of transportation programs, suggested that one way of getting money would be to increase the gasoline tax.

Among the problems with that, however, are opposition from Gov. George Deukmejian; an inevitable fight over how the proceeds would be apportioned, with rural counties wanting the money divided on the basis of road miles within the county and urban counties wanting it split based on population; and the fact that it would take an estimated 8-cent-a-gallon increase to equal the money that could be raised by increasing the sales tax by half a cent.

Despite the crushing 1984 defeat in Orange County of Proposition A, which would have raised the sales tax by 1 cent and earmarked the proceeds for transportation, politicians have said they may have to ask the voters to change their minds and vote themselves a higher tax.

Not Permanent Solution

But Smith’s report said an increase, if limited to specific projects, probably would not permanently solve road fund shortfalls.

The county’s lobbyist in Sacramento, former state Sen. Dennis Carpenter, told the supervisors and department heads who constitute the county’s legislative planning committee that transportation “is going to be a major issue in Sacramento next year.”

At the meeting of the committee at which Smith’s report was presented, Carpenter said counties across the state share Orange County’s problems in varying degrees, making it certain that transportation “will be the No. 1 issue” in the Legislature.

Supervisor Don R. Roth said at the meeting, “It’s time to take an aggressive promotion on the sales tax.” Roth, who like Deukmejian is a Republican, said the governor’s opposition to new taxes is “a lofty ideal” but that with transportation problems continually worsening, the governor will be pressured to change his mind.

Smith mentioned two other ways to get funding: renewing the program providing offshore oil revenue, and forming a countywide assessment district, with property owners paying assessments based on how much they benefit from improved roads.

But Smith noted that the offshore oil program would have to be renewed by the Legislature.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton took a cautious stand on the assessment district proposal, cautioning that voters might have the “perception that it might be a way to circumvent Prop 13,” the 1978 initiative that limited property taxes.