Cleaning Up Sandy Side Streets Goes Against the Grain

Dear Street Smart:

The Department of Public Works maintenance people cleared the sand from the intersection of Channel Islands Boulevard and Ocean Drive in Hollywood Beach, but not one grain of sand was placed in the trucks.

By observation, they must also have cleared the commercial street south of Channel Islands.

According to a responsible supervisor, the department does not have the equipment, funds or personnel to do regular maintenance in the Hollywood Beach area and sweeps away the sand that lines many of the streets.

So what does it take to get some action on other streets in this area? They are a mess.

Harold L. Johnson

Hollywood Beach

Dear Reader:

County public works officials confirmed what they apparently have told you already: Since there is no threat from the piles of sand that gather along the edges of beach side avenues, there is no sense in spending taxpayer time and money sweeping them up.

“If sand or any debris on county roads become such that we consider it a hazard to the traveling public, then we do our best to clear the roads,” said public works official Butch Britt.

“Sometimes with local residents, their desire might be more than what we can afford to do.”

Britt said he sends crews to the streets of your neighborhood periodically to make sure the sand is not piled up too high. “When it’s a hazard, we schedule a removal,” he said. “It’s not a trivial effort.

“We don’t have regularly scheduled street cleaning in the county, except in those areas where residents pay for it through an assessment district,” Britt added.

Cheap, effective solution? Sweep it away yourself.

Dear Street Smart:

Hueneme Road deserves some modern attention at a key point near Camarillo.

Where Lewis Road meets with Hueneme, that intersection is a tricky, three-way maneuver and needs either stop signs in all directions or traffic lights so that cars can cross without the mad squeal of tires.

The intersection may be somewhat in the boonies, but the traffic is not.

Karen Murphy

Oxnard

Dear Reader:

Good news. County road maintenance officials already are plotting improvements to Hueneme Road.

“We do have a project for the replacement of the bridge near that intersection,” county transportation official Butch Britt said. “As part of that project, we’re going to try and make some intersection improvements as well.”

The $3-million improvement project is expected to go to bid later this spring, Britt said. Construction should take between 10 and 12 months, however, so it will be 1997 before your concerns are alleviated.

Nonetheless, Britt credits you for recognizing the problem.

“It’s kind of an odd configuration, and we’re going to try and straighten it out as much as we can,” he said.

Dear Street Smart:

I live in a new housing tract in east Ventura and something is bothering me about the roads around here.

All of the manhole covers in this [California Windcrest] neighborhood stick up an inch or two above the street surface, causing drastic bumps to the car every time I drive over them.

Please don’t tell me to steer around them. A lot of the time, there are other cars coming and that is not an option. When is the city going to smooth over the streets so the manhole covers don’t present such a road hazard?

Nancy Williamson

Ventura

Dear Reader:

Guess what? The streets in your neighborhood are not yet owned by the city of Ventura. They still belong to the folks who built your house.

Nazir Lalani, Ventura’s top man in traffic, said he, too, has wondered when the developer plans to complete the streets within your subdivision.

“They will eventually be accepted as public streets, but the developer has chosen not to put the final layer of asphalt on,” Lalani said. “We’ve been trying to get the developer to finish up those streets.”

Trouble is, Lalani said, many contractors hesitate to lay the final portion of the road while homes are still being built in a particular neighborhood.

Developers are required to present the city with a quality street, and they do not want the road damaged by heavy trucks coming and going during the construction.

“At this point, we have no jurisdiction in the matter,” Lalani said. “But we are concerned because damage is occurring to the manhole covers.”

A spokesman at the Westwood office of Kaufman & Broad, which built your new home, said the streets would be smoothed over by the end of this month.

“That’s the plan,” he said.

Write to Street Smart, The Times Ventura County Edition, 93 S. Chestnut St., Ventura 93001. You may enclose a simple sketch if it will help Street Smart understand your traffic questions. Or call our Sound Off Line, 653-7546. Whether writing or calling, include your full name, address, and day and evening phone numbers. No anonymous queries will be accepted, and letters are subject to editing.