(The following story appeared on the Napa Valley Register website on May 24.)
PLACENTIA, Calif. — A $460 million plan to run railroad tracks through a below-ground concrete trench to so that freight trains don’t disrupt traffic has made little progress six years after it began.
The Orange County city has cut funding for the OnTrac project after spending about $33 million on consultants, right-of-way purchases and conceptual plans. One underpass is under construction.
The town, with about 50,000 residents and an annual budget of $26 million, is $22 million in debt. It has paid $12 million to OnTrac, a joint powers authority originally meant to join together several cities along a bustling Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail line. Worried about the project’s costs, no other cities joined.
Some residents say the problem stems from lavish city spending. Christopher Becker, a former city public works director who now leads the 10-year OnTrac project, was promised $450,000 a year plus 15 percent contract administrative fees./AP
His salary was scaled back to about $290,000 as the city ran out of money, and now he and eight other private consultants will take half their pay until $50 million more in government funding can be secured.
City officials say funding problems are only temporary. They expect about $14 million in emergency money from the federal government and a $5.8 million loan from the Orange County Transportation Authority.
But some are worried the town may have been too ambitious.
“Maybe we were just naive about controlling costs and perhaps too trusting,” said City Councilwoman Connie Underhill. “Had we been more sophisticated, we might not have fallen into this trap.”