Strike Causing Roadblock in Street-Paving Projects : Downtown: Locally, stalled talks between engineers, firms delay resurfacing of California Street in Ventura.

Two weeks into a concrete and asphalt workers’ strike that has slowed public and private projects throughout Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, neither side is budging.

There have been no discussions and no new negotiations are scheduled, said Brian Brubaker, a vice president with Southern Pacific Milling in Oxnard, one of several local companies whose workers are striking.

Meanwhile, California Street in downtown Ventura remains rough and unpaved, with temporary signs alerting traffic to the bumpy road.

The strike was called by members of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local No. 12, who run the equipment that makes the specialized asphalt and concrete.

“There hasn’t been any progress in the negotiations,” Brubaker said.

Officials at the union local were not available for comment Monday.

Union workers have been picketing outside Southern Pacific Milling, Cal-Mat Co. in Oxnard and Transit Mix Concrete in Moorpark since late last month.

But company managers say it has had little impact on most customers.

“We’ve had a lot of success with our customers in rescheduling projects,” Brubaker said. “The strike has had a very limited impact.”

But delays in completing the renovation of downtown Ventura have frustrated local officials, who spent millions of dollars and months of planning to upgrade the historic center of town.

During the ArtWalk and downtown open house late last month, city officials invited area artists to paint California Street between Main and Poli streets. The half-block-long sea-life mural--meant to be temporary until the road was resurfaced--is still displayed in the roadway.

“We’re making calls, finding out what the status [of the negotiations] is,” senior planner Patrick Richardson said. “But there’s really not much we can do.”

The material needed to repave California Street is available elsewhere, but it is a perishable product that cannot be trucked very far, he said.

“You can only ship it so far before it starts to harden,” Richardson said. “So that’s really not an option.”

Construction crews recently repaved sections of Main Street, but that was done without the material needed to complete California Street, Richardson said.

“It’s a different type of paving material,” he said. “Depending on the maintenance schedule of a street, you pave every 10 to 15 years. But you slurry-seal more often to make sure that it holds up.

“Main Street was never going to be repaved,” he said. “It only needed a slurry seal.”

About 150 members of the local operating engineers’ union went on strike July 25 to protest what they said were unfair pay cuts imposed by management at the companies that manufacture the rubberized asphalt.

Brubaker said the pay cuts were necessary to bring the unionized pay scales more in line with non-union manufacturers.