RIO DELL MAPPING OUT ALTERNATIVE PLANS FOR STREET IMPROVEMENT

The city of Rio Dell may have to find a new way to fix the pothole invested streets after the unofficial results of last week’s election.'Measure J' would have authorized the city to borrow 2 million dollars to repair the poor street conditions.“I've talked to any number of people and they said, we know we need to repair the roads, we just don't want to pay for it," said City Manager Jim Stretch.Stretch says the tax would have been about $11.49 for every $10,000 of assessed value.“The fact is there isn't money out there we have to provide for ourselves when it comes to keeping our roads and side walks repaired," Stretch said. While it isn’t official that the measure hasn’t passed, Stretch says it’s unlikely it will get enough votes from absentee ballots.The city receives $85,000 each year from a tax on the sale of motor fuel within the city limits to do road repairs, but it’s not enough to fix them all. “It's bad enough driving down them, but walking is even worse," said Rio Dell resident Shannon Foster. Foster says the roads are so bad her car was knocked out of alignment."Especially when it's raining cause you can't tell how deep they are.” About 11.5 miles of road needs work, which comes out to 80 percent of all roads in Rio Dell. Stretch says another option would be to look at the election results and see what areas voted for in favor of Measure J, and conduct a Local Improvement District.“For example,” Stretch said. “If we have an area down by the river that we have more than two-thirds of them say ‘yes, that what we want,’ we’ll have a discussion with them as to whether they want to set up their own improvement district—tax themselves and then effectuate those repairs.” But that will be decided once the official election results are in.