Tiburon officials eye $4.2M in capital projects

Tiburon is planning to make headway on its seawall, storm drains and streets in the next fiscal year.

The Town Council reviewed a draft capital improvement program for fiscal year 2024-25 at its meeting on Tuesday. The listed initiatives total $4.2 million and are focused on street improvements, drainage upgrades and community projects. Council members expressed their desire for projects that improve pedestrian safety.

Patrick Kerslake, public works operations manager, said the list of projects mostly focuses on the town’s infrastructure and assets.

Proposed street improvement projects include adding bike lanes at locations along Blackie’s Pasture, Trestle Glen Boulevard, Tiburon Boulevard and Paradise Drive. The annual bike and pedestrian improvement program budgets $50,000 a year for these changes, funded by Measure A.

Another street repair proposed for the next fiscal year is reconstructing the brick crosswalks in the downtown area along Tiburon Boulevard. Many of these crosswalks have broken, missing or cracking bricks. The budget proposes $150,000 next fiscal year, but over the course of five years the total funding will amount to $450,000.

“What staff has determined through our analysis is that replacing the crosswalks with brick would be very labor intensive and an expensive venture for the town and maybe something we want to look at as a group to see if that’s the material we want to put back in,” Kerslake said.

Mayor Alice Fredericks supported the idea for an alternative material such as stamped concrete.

The seawall along Main Street also needs significant maintenance, as the concrete has deteriorated and rebar is exposed. The wall holds up the sidewalk and Main Street. A total of $100,000 is needed next fiscal year, but the following budget year might require $500,000 for the project. The town is seeking grant funding to help with the majority of the costs.

“For this project, we’re currently in the design phase,” Public Works Director David Eshoo said.

Around $1.4 million is budgeted to repair about 10 sections of road through the annual pavement maintenance and rehabilitation program. The road segments are ones that were not included in last year’s round of pavement maintenance.

“We wanted to make sure those didn’t slip through the cracks,” Kerslake said.

Tiburon also needs to replace or maintain its damaged and worn storm pipes. The proposed plans budget $750,000 for the next fiscal year for two storm drain replacement projects in the Bel Aire neighborhood.

Eshoo said the storm drain upgrades also will also include devices to capture trash. The upgrades are funded through Marin County’s stormwater pollution prevention program. Eshoo said those will be installed within the next few months.

Kerslake said the category with the greatest proposed projects is community improvements. Projects include remodeling the police department locker room, installing public electric vehicle charging stations and repairs to the exterior of Town Hall. Additionally, the public works corporation yard needs either a reconstruction or upgrades because it is over 100 years old and at risk of collapsing during a quake.

“It’s what we believe to be beyond its useful life,” Kerslake said. “We recognize that we need to do something.”

Kerslake said the approximately 3,000-square-foot building is essential to the town in case of emergency. In 2008, a previous administration looked into reconstructing the facility but deemed it too expensive. The 2024-25 budget estimated $120,000 to design the facility improvements, which will include an analysis on whether the building needs to be rebuilt or just upgraded.

“It seems to me that all of us should have a sense of urgency in getting this done,” Fredericks said.

Councilmember Jack Ryan said he would like staff to add two projects to the queue. He wants to look at repairing the sidewalks on the outbound side of Tiburon Boulevard, as well as potentially adding a path and a crosswalk at Mariner Way for children at Reed Elementary School to get to the library without crossing Tiburon Boulevard.

Individual projects will be brought back to the Town Council for approval. The town’s operating budget will be presented to the council at its meeting on Wednesday.