Backlog of Capital Repairs Mounting

Cities across Orange County, particularly those with older urban cores, face millions of dollars in mounting maintenance backlogs ranging from crumbling roads to inadequate flood-control channels to aging sewer lines.

Although government officials know what the needs are, in many cases they don’t know one key detail: how to pay for the repairs, which become more difficult and costly the longer they are left undone.

For example, about a quarter of the county’s 6,600 miles of surface streets are in poor or very poor condition, according a March report to the Orange County Transportation Authority. The report estimated it would cost cities $150 million a year to keep streets from deteriorating further, but that only $50 million to $60 million was being budgeted annually.

More than a decade ago, Orange County planners compiled a list of $1.1 billion in flood-control projects to protect existing communities and channel raging flood waters in areas where communities were planned. So far, only about 10% of the projects have been completed, and critical work to storm channels in Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa that experienced devastating flooding in 1983 remains undone. The reason: lack of cash.

“It’s a hell of a backlog,” said Sara Bavan, the county’s chief of flood control programs. “We generally find that we are reactive, because of the lack of funds.”

And with age comes deterioration--as Westminster found out last month when a 30-year-old water tank ruptured, unleashing a flash flood of 5 million gallons of water that injured six people, destroyed 10 homes and damaged at least 60 other buildings. Preliminary damage estimates began at $20 million.

As city officials investigated the cause of the rupture, an acrimonious local debate has broken out over whether better monitoring could have prevented the incident. Critics, including some former city officials, said Westminster should have gone ahead with plans in 1991 to double water rates to finance a better maintenance and repair program. Instead, the city reacted to public outcry and raised rates only 15%.

School districts face similar challenges, trying to maintain older buildings while adding classrooms to handle growing student populations and class-size reductions in elementary grades.

Yet even when the money is available, the work doesn’t always get done. Los Angeles voters last year approved a $2.4-billion proposition to catch up with deferred repairs and build new schools. By April, one year after the issue was approved, only 8%--or 814 of 10,689 projects--of the five-year plan had been completed.

Delays in Repair May Create Safety Hazards

Meanwhile, the backlog has increased, and some officials worry that $2.4 billion might not be enough, touching off a debate over whether old schools should be repaired or new ones built to handle overcrowding.

In Orange County, few of the deferred projects, such as disintegrating sidewalks, are considered threats to public safety. But some of the delays have experts worried. County engineers acknowledge that many storm channels cannot withstand a historic deluge. Antiquated sewer systems need to be improved, officials said, to avoid lines cracking that could result in environmental problems.

The backlogs points up the challenge that faces city officials who must persuade taxpayers to spend millions of dollars to repair items, such as storm drains, that they never see.

The problem extends nationwide.

In highways alone, a congressional transportation committee report four years ago concluded that the nation needed $212 billion to repair highways in poor to fair condition. That didn’t include repairs to the one in three bridges that were “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.”

The crux of the problem, nationally as well as locally, for public policy officials lies in balancing priorities. When funding falls off, maintenance is usually among the first areas scaled back. Maintenance and capital improvements are often a difficult sell at budget time, as the public clamors for more police patrols, recreation programs and computers in classrooms.

“The people who get laid off are people like maintenance workers, because [administrators] keep the priority on public safety,” said Sandra Sutphen, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton who specializes in public administration and emergency management.

For example, Fullerton cut 53 jobs--about a third of the work force--from its maintenance department over the last decade, said Robert Savage, city director of maintenance. The city spends about $14.6 million a year on capital maintenance, but still has a backlog of sidewalk, street, building and park repairs and maintenance, he said.

When Orange County went into bankruptcy in 1994, all but essential maintenance projects--those considered a matter of public safety--were put off, said Rick Dostal, administrative manager in the county’s budget office.

“You figure you can put off maintaining buildings and do it next year, then next year comes around and you put it off until the year after that,” Dostal said. “It kind of builds on itself.”

Eventually, though, the work has to get done. Earlier this year the county Board of Supervisors approved a $41-million, seven-year plan to catch up with deferred maintenance, involving projects ranging from balky air conditioners to leaky roofs.

“We’re still putting forth a million or two for ongoing maintenance as we chip away at the backlog,” Dostal said. “Anything we felt would be a safety hazard, even during the bankruptcy, we addressed.”

Yet even during cash-flush times, attention paid to maintenance issues is a function of the local political atmosphere, Sutphen said.

“The issue is local leadership,” she said. “If the city manager will put this high on his or her agenda, the city council will more likely pay attention.”

In most municipalities, she said, council members serve part time and in many cases rely on administrators’ recommendations for which projects to undertake.

“But they’re also very dependent on immediate critical issues, and anything that comes up that is politically sensitive is going to take priority over these longer-range issues,” Sutphen said. “Particularly in an election year, they’re going to be responsive to people in the community yelling and screaming about a new traffic signal versus such a boring issue as there might be a leak in the reservoir.”

The problem extends beyond local government to school districts.

A report last year by the Coalition for Adequate School Housing estimated that schools statewide will need $6 billion over the next decade to catch up with deferred maintenance. About nine out of 10 schools needed major repairs or maintenance, making the state among the worst in the nation, the report said.

Orange County school districts reported $205 million in deferred maintenance projects that will need to be completed over the next five years. Voters will be presented with a $9.2-billion statewide bond issue in November that would build and repair public school facilities from kindergarten through graduate school.

Last year, the Orange County Sanitation District hiked sewer rates by as much as 100% in certain areas in part to finance nearly $1.6 billion in capital improvements. The district handles sewage for more than 1.5 million people roughly living north of the El Toro Y.

District officials were harshly criticized by some residents for the steep hikes, but they argued that older portions of the sewer system in cities like Santa Ana needed repairs, and that the entire system had to be expanded to handle increased demands from surging populations.

At the local level, many cities report no backlog of maintenance, particularly places like Irvine, which is less than 30 years old.

Older cities, though, have more pressing problems.

Keith Comrie, the Los Angeles city administrator, said the city has fallen behind in its street maintenance efforts. About 3,000 miles of streets currently require some level of maintenance or repair, he said.

An average of 150 miles of the city streets are resurfaced each year--well below the goal of covering 200 miles a year. In some years, only 50 miles have been done, he said.

In Huntington Beach, city officials expect to spend $6.3 million this fiscal year on emergency repairs, including $1 million on the sewer system, $1.2 million on streets and $400,000 to replace the City Hall roof.

But city officials also have identified about $217 million in expected projects over the next 20 years. It has referred the issue to a citizens advisory committee, which is studying which projects to tackle first and how to pay for them.

In Tustin, the physical state of the city has become a political issue in the fall election. Three of the city’s six water tanks need repairs. Two have wooden lids that need to be replaced, and one needs a new retaining wall, said Water Services Manager Gary Veeh.

‘Concerns Have Fallen on Deaf Ears’

Although city engineers say the problems won’t lead to structural breaches, at least one candidate--Lou Bone--had raised the condition of the tanks weeks before the Westminster tank collapse. After the collapse, Bone argued that “infrastructure concerns in the city of Tustin have fallen on deaf ears.”

However, Veeh said a project to replace the retaining wall is in the design stage, and that repairs to the deteriorating roofs will probably follow after completion of a new water tank under construction at Main Street and Prospect Avenue.

In Seal Beach, the city has accrued a backlog of minor projects deferred in recent years because of funding problems. Now that financial pressures have lessened with the improving economy, city officials are chipping away at the backlog, said Steve Badum, public works director.

For example, city officials are accepting bids for renovations to public restrooms beneath Seal Beach Pier--a project that has been needed for several years, Badum said.

And always lurking in the future are the vestiges of the past. Cities that were developed in sections tend to fall apart the same way.

“The problem is when cities get old,” Badum said, “they tend to deteriorate in chunks.”

Contributing to this report were Times correspondents John Canalis, Christine Castro, Steve Carney, Chris Ceballos, Linn Groves, Jason Kandel, James Meier, Harrison Sheppard, Joseph Trevino and Lesley Wright

* UPCOMING PROJECTS: A city-by-city list of maintenance priorities. B3