What's Going to Happen to Our Bridge?

There was another Special City Council meeting on April 9, 2013, on the Main Street Bridge with an agenda 233 pages long. Wow!

The only bridge meeting I’ve missed was the morning meeting held last February, I believe, which was a redundant meeting for those that couldn’t make the evening one. Every meeting has been well attended and each one has provided opportunity for public input, and each one has had plenty of public input — downtown merchants mainly, who are the ones that will bear the real cost of whatever is done with the bridge.

There were 21 speakers at this meeting, every single one of which urged the Council to fix and possibly improve what we have as opposed to the remove and replace suggestions so strongly provided by the City from the outset.

As a personal observation, I have noticed that the Council has pulled back on the accelerator of replacement, and through all the input they have received, both publicly, and I have no doubt privately, they have taken a more open attitude toward fixing what we have and even hired yet another consultant to explore just how bad the structural integrity of the bridge is to see if it can be fixed. And apparently, it can — or at least that’s what I heard at this latest meeting.

What’s at stake here are multiple issues. First, the bridge is in need of attention. The City has known about it for years, but is now in the position of having to address it for multiple reasons. We of course have the liability issue that hangs over what might happen. We also have the funding issue, which of course is critical.

Then, we have the loss of business to our downtown merchants, all of which have made so many sacrifices and worked so hard just to be doing business on Main Street, from restaurants to hotels, and from artsy establishments to agriculture stores, every one of them will be impacted by whatever solution is arrived at and every one of them are deeply and justifiably concerned.

Further, depending on how this all plays out, we could easily see one downtown business after another close up, extinguishing what we and our visitors have come to know and love as downtown Half Moon Bay; and that of course doesn’t include the revenues lost to the City. It almost seems like we are in search of the least ugly option to solve a potentially serious matter — the potential of a severing of circulation from the north side of Main Street to Main Street itself; and make no mistake...the choice is critical and could be absolutely devastating.

It is for those reasons and more that I continue to be pleased with the level of public participation in all its forms, from criticism to constructive ideas, and there have been many more of the latter than the prior; and also pleased to see the Council warming up to the repair over the replacement option of our bridge, thanks to the consistent public pressure. Initial anger and frustration is slowly melting away in favor of optimism. More new ideas were offered at this meeting by both the public and the consultants, a couple of which show promise. I suspect that more are yet to come, however.

In the end, and the meeting ran from 6 to 9:50 p.m., the Council came to consensus on their top five priorities going forward. I don’t know when the next meeting on this will be held, but there are more to come, along with more ideas and refinement of the ones already provided to minimize disruption and get the job done for the benefit of us all.

I took notes and have the PowerPoint presentation handout provided and am happy to answer any questions that I can on this.

Read more on Patch:

• City Council to Review Main Street Bridge Project
• City Council Opts to Contract Out Planning Department
• How Will Half Moon Bay Spend $13.15 Million?
• To Repair or to Replace the Main Street Bridge?