Shenanigans on the Boulevard

by Dennis Evanosky

Hoodlums have been spinning "donuts" at the intersection of Carson Street and Elinora Avenue in Redwood Heights at all hours. They have created a nightmare, and the city of Oakland has done its share to make a bad dream worse.

An onramp onto Highway 13 at the intersection has created a larger-than-normal space. This allows these errant drivers plenty of room to wreak havoc and quickly escape.

Neighbors whose homes border the crossroads have dubbed the tire tracks left behind "blood on the pavement." Frustrated, they contacted the city. They saw their frustration turn to anger as the bureaucracy played an all-too-familiar fiddle as the neighbors jumped through one hoop after another.

The neighbors worked hard to do everything they were told, including having 70 percent of the residents sign a petition for a barrier at the site. They waited while the bureaucrats fiddled. Finally, after months of waiting, they began to make phone calls and waited for return calls. Nothing.

They discovered that management had passed their case from one worker to another without informing them. At last, the bureaucrats told them there was no room for a barrier. When the neighbors asked to see the measurements, the bureaucrats would only say that they had done them.

The neighbors placed a call to Dick Spees and waited two weeks for a reply. Spees' assistant Sean O'Shea delivered news they did not want to hear: The city would do nothing; there was no money until spring.

Then the neighbors called the Metro.

I called Spees and left a very pointed message. The city had totally ignored taxpayers for months, I told him. Then the bureaucrats used his office to inform the neighbors that they were out of luck. It sure sounded like shenanigans to me and would make a great story for a column.

Spees called me from Oregon. We had a three-way conversation that included O'Shea. Spees agreed that he had to step in. He instructed O'Shea to have the offending parties come to his office for a meeting.

Strike one!

Then I e-mailed Mayor Jerry Brown, City Manager Robert Bobb, and Public Works Director Claudette Ford and asked them to comment on the situation.

Mary Weinstein from the mayor's office replied. She asked me to call Transportation Services Manager Amit Kothari, who said he and his boss, Assistant Public Works Director Raul Godinez, wanted to meet with me. They were very anxious to meet before my Friday-the-13th deadline.

O'Shea also attended the meeting.

"We dropped the ball," Godinez admitted. "We want to make this right."

Strike two!

The neighbors were dealing with his busiest division, Godinez explained. The workload had been especially demanding, with a 35 percent vacancy. The neighbors had applied for help during what Godinez called a "shifting-around period" and "fell through the cracks."

He explained that his department deals with 5,000 calls for service a year, calls that include requests for speed bumps, stop signs, barriers, and traffic signals, as well as residential permit programs.

"We are the city's busiest division with the most vacancies," he said.

Kothari explained the city's solution to the problem: "Bott Dots." These are the blue plastic markers one sees on the road to delineate traffic. The city has come up with a solution using these dots to discourage donuts.

"The tire marks that the donuts make govern the placement of the dots," he said. "Normal traffic will straddle the dots; drivers attempting donuts will not be able to execute the moves."

Kothari assured me that drivers attempting donuts would not lose control. They simply will not be able to do the donuts.

Godinez and Kothari agreed to meet with Spees and the neighbors at the intersection. They promised to have a solution in place by the end of October. Now with a meeting set up, a fastball is coming toward the plate. Will the city strike out, or will they hit a homer? (At least the Metro got them to step up to the plate.)

Stay tuned.