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Mariposa County Board Of Supervisors Meeting
Selected Highlights For September, 12, 2006



 

Lee Stetson, Mariposa County Board Of Supervisor, presents a proclamation declaring September 16, 2006 as
 " Scottish Society of Central California Day"
 
With the sound of bagpipes emanating from somewhere near the Courthouse in Mariposa, the source was found outside the County Government Center as the county Board of Supervisors were getting ready for a meeting.

What a wonderful way to start the day, and now we
wonder what will happen on Saint Patrick's Day?

After a proclamation by Lee Stetson proclaiming  September,16, 2006  as "Scottish Society of Central California Day" the public was invited to speak to the board about their concerns.

Marian Huff, from Coulterville, thanked the board for allocating the money for the library and the park up in Greeley Hill. She also recommended to the Board not to cut the tourism budget.

Jim Kellerman talked about Habitat For Humanity coming into Mariposa County to  provide homes for lower income residents with no funding coming from the county.

Supervisor Bob Pickard commented that no word has still came back from the state of California on reimbursing election costs of over $82,000 for the last election.

The Board gave the go ahead after much discussion on the building of a library at Red Cloud on land given to the county from the Mariposa Unified School District. The County, once everything is a go will have three years to get the library built at a cost of about $200,000. Right now they have $135,000 in funds available so more money is needed to complete the project. Fundraisers are planned to hopefully bridge this gap. The rent on the building right now is $15,000 a year so we say build the Library and do it right, without a lot of cost cutting and save that 15K a year.

A letter addressed to Caltrans ( who was in the audience) about widening Highway 132 and Highway 59 so 45 foot busses could legally stop in Coulterville was approved by the Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Dianne Fritz said "It would be a wonderful bonus to the county" in referring to the widening of these highways.

During the LAFCO meeting a very short presentation on Princeton Ranch, which seems to be about building hundreds of homes on lot sizes down to 1/2 acre over by Mount Bullion was given.

Watch this very close, we say !




















 		   A letter of Appreciation for the Work Done on Highway 140 due to the Ferguson Rockslide was also presented to Caltrans District Director Kome Ajise.
Mr. Ajise said " It has been a pleasure working with the county"

After the presentation the real reason Caltrans was there began when Supervisor Stetson asked the question
" Where Now ?"

Kome Ajise  assured everyone there that they were not done with the 140.
After much discussion on the slide it was revealed that Caltrans had mailed a letter to the board in September about a three year timeline for a final replacement for the temporary bridges.

With projected costs between 50-100 million this will be a major project and will have to go through more channels than when they put the temporary bridges in.
The good thing Kome says is that a lot of work has already been done as far as bringing a team together on the future of the slide on what organization has the  leadership role on the slide.

They are still debating what they will install: either a tunnel on the North or South side of the canyon, a rock shed similar to a snow shed, or two bridges built in a viaduct fashion to go high enough in the air to avoid flooding of the river if it should happen.
So far they are leaning toward a tunnel he said.


With the team that has been put together already and after coming up with a design and presenting it to environmental groups the design has to be presented to the public for review. Along with other meetings and giving the review period 30- 40 days for comment, resource agencies get to give their opinion on the impact the design will have on the area.

Mr. Ajise then said the design then moves on to the final design process where they hope to compress that three year time frame down by not waiting for people to give 30 day reviews on each step of the design like is normally done. He hopes to be able to call them in to the office right then and talk about the design.

Kome said he will "Look at every possible way to move forward" at an accelerated rate to get this project completed.

He said that Caltrans is looking to install remote sensors on the road to alert vehicles longer than 28 feet to turn around before they get to the bridges so they can turn around safely  in a turnout.

Also he said with the 24 hour monitoring of the slide it has slowed down considerably to what they call  the first band of movement out of four bands they have made up in a warning system.

Finally. Dave Martin from the Sierra National Forest announced that they too are installing sensors higher up on the slide that will detect movement of the ground. He said " Only thing we can do is monitor it".

Supervisor Janet Bibby highly concerned about funding this permanent solution was told that normal debris removal was still the responsibility of Caltrans, that the emergency operation funding was still ongoing but that the funding for a permanent design would have to come from the federal government hopefully from emergency funding.









 

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