Planners Get Going on Priority Projects Under Measure M

After successfully persuading voters to pass a half-cent sales tax for traffic improvements, Orange County transportation planners met in emergency session Friday and vowed to obtain interim financing to begin some projects by February.

The Orange County Transportation Commission voted Friday to hire the national consulting firm of Deloitte Touche to develop quick interim financing proposals, since the sales tax does not take effect until April 1 and it will take a year for revenue to accumulate. The firm is expected to file an initial report Thursday.

In its first meeting since Tuesday’s election, the commission tentatively agreed to pursue interim financing for priority projects totaling $82 million.

Praised by commission members for insisting that Measure M be placed on the ballot this year, panel Chairman Dana W. Reed said the credit also belonged to what Reed described as OCTC’s “excellent, very professional staff.”

During the session, Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder even apologized to the panel for opposing Measure M in her successful reelection battle with Westminster Councilwoman Joy Neugebauer, who also opposed the measure.

“I was wrong,” Wieder said, adding that before the Nov. 6 election she thought that the commission was trying to “cram” Measure M down voters’ throats in light of an almost identical measure’s defeat a year ago. She also praised Reed for calling Friday’s special meeting. “You didn’t let the ink get dry,” she said.

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who did not campaign against the measure but argued against placing it on the ballot this year, admitted that he had been wrong too.

“I’m so happy, sir, that you did not listen to me,” Stanton told Reed.

Acting as a specially created Local Transportation Authority under the legislation that authorized the Measure M election, the commissioners voted to borrow $250,000 from OCTC reserves to pay Deloitte Touche and other financial consultants.

“I believe we’re on track to make this program go quickly,” said OCTC executive director Stanley T. Oftelie during the emergency meeting--called on election night.

The projects targeted by OCTC for interim financing were first disclosed at a Wednesday press conference. They are:

* Widening and adding new ramps where the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways merge--known as the El Toro Y.

* Car-pool lanes for the Orange Freeway.

* Bus turnouts, turn pockets, synchronized signals and widened intersections as part of the Beach Boulevard “super street” project.

* More commuter rail service.

* Land purchases for a light rail line--eventually to extend from Santa Ana to Los Angeles International Airport--and for doubling the width of the Santa Ana Freeway.

* Design work and property appraisals still needed for the widening of the Costa Mesa Freeway north of 17th Street in Tustin and appraisals along the Santa Ana Freeway north of the Garden Grove Freeway.

Caltrans officials said after the meeting that they are already gearing up for the increased workload by adding people to the Orange County district staff. Many of the priority projects are already being processed, said Frank J. Weider, Caltrans’ deputy district director for construction.

“It’s not like we’re starting from scratch,” added Dale Razlaff, Caltrans’ deputy district director of planning and public transportation.

Caltrans district officials were already in Sacramento Friday discussing ways to speed design work and construction.

Moreover, the commission voted to contract with the State Board of Equalization to collect the additional half-cent retail sales tax approved by voters Tuesday as part of Measure M, which is expected to raise $3.1 billion over its 20-year life span.

Oftelie warned, however, that the county won’t start seeing major income from the sales tax until December, 1991, as collections must build up. And officials said there are other problems to surmount, including the uncertainties posed for creditors by next year’s scheduled merger of OCTC and a sister agency, the Orange County Transit District, and the need to hire bond counsel, designate financial officers and obtain a high financial quality rating to reassure prospective purchasers of any bonds to be repaid with future tax revenue.

Wieder quizzed Oftelie on Friday about Measure M’s requirement that cities adopt growth management plans before they are eligible to receive proceeds from the tax, fearing that existing ordinances would have to be rewritten or thrown away.

But Oftelie noted that Proposition 111, the state gasoline tax hike already approved by voters last June, contained substantially the same requirement and that county and city officials have been meeting regularly to come up with uniform guidelines that also take into account differences between communities.