Special Report

Street Fight
Sales Tax Strategy Delivers Impressive Improvement

The Contra Costa County city of El Cerrito chose to tackle the complicated problem of pavement maintenance head-on. In 2006, El Cerrito’s 138 lane-miles of local streets were in poor condition (single-year PCI score of 48) and the city had a backlog of more than $21 million in maintenance work. Four years later, the city had boosted its single-year PCI score to 85 and had trimmed its maintenance backlog to just $500,000. By 2013, El Cerrito's one-year PCI score had dipped slightly to 83 but its three-year moving PCI average skyrocketed to 84 from just 62 three years earlier. How did El Cerrito improve pavement conditions so much and so quickly?

After launching a public outreach campaign that included citizens, city council members and public works staff, El Cerrito in 2008 won overwhelming approval of a half-cent sales tax measure for a Street Improvement Program. The sales tax created a direct, permanent and local source of funding that now generates an estimated $1.5 million of revenue each year for future pavement maintenance.

Inspired in part by the success of the El Cerrito Street Improvement Program, two other Contra Costa County cities placed similar sales tax measures on the ballot in 2012, with 69 percent of voters in Orinda endorsing Measure L, a quarter-cent sales tax to finance the repair, rehabilitation and maintenance of local streets; and 70 percent of voters in neighboring Moraga approving Measure K, which provides a full cent on each dollar of taxable sales for pavement repair and rehabilitation, and for storm drain repair. Measure K's impact was felt almost immediately, as the one-year PCI score on Moraga's 110 lane-miles of local streets climbed eight points to 58 last year from just 50 in 2012.