CHICO >> Driving around the city in recent years entailed navigating potholes. Now, it’s navigating construction, which is nearly as common on Chico streets.

Measure H, the sales tax supplement passed in 2022 and implemented in 2023, spurred a 10-year master plan for road repairs that the Chico City Council adopted while reserving the right to modify.

One modification came with the June adoption of the fiscal year 2025-26 budget, which nearly halves the allocation for roads with an $8.5 million trim while also pushing back some planned work. Still prioritized but potentially delayed, South Park Drive’s rehabilitation planning sits temporarily in limbo pending the Aug. 19 reconsideration of the car-free plan that passed in June.

Overall, though, Public Works is zipping along with infrastructure improvements — sewer lines as well as all the travel lanes.

“A lot of stuff was in the works eight years ago,” Brendan Ottoboni, director of Public Works Engineering, explained in his office this week. “We never contemplated that Measure H would come in, so now a lot of things are coming to fruition. That, plus a big shot in the arm for us capital projects wise was the Fire Victim Trust Fund; that was a huge influx of funding that the City Council dedicated specifically to public infrastructure.

“So you’re seeing a lot of work being done between Measure H funds, Fire Victim Trust funds and all these grants we’ve obtained over the last six years or so. It’s all kind of hitting at once.

“It’s exciting,” he continued. “The town is changing year to year. Anything with construction is an impact, and we understand that … we get it’s an inconvenience. But we try to do our best to go quickly and efficiently, because if we can do it the right way, several weeks or months of impact results in that infrastructure being good for decades.”

The city conducts outreach to inform residents about projects. With so many, it can be hard to keep the details straight. Here’s an update on some notable work and plans.Petersen

Also known as Petersen Memorial Drive, previously North Park Drive, Petersen Memorial Way parallels Vallombrosa Avenue through lower Bidwell Park, terminating at the Sycamore Pool parking area. It provides westward-moving access to motor vehicles and bidirectional access for bicycles and foot traffic to creekside picnic areas.

Petersen closed last month for repaving — and it’s technically still closed pending final inspections, though bicyclists have resumed riding there. Ottoboni said the city should announce the reopening soon.

Once clear, auto traffic can resume, but only on weekdays … for now.

Erik Gustafson, director of Public Works Operations and Maintenance, noted that Petersen will stay closed to vehicle traffic on weekends and holidays” at least until a six-month review, “which is the current (City) Council direction for both Petersen and South Park Drive.”

South Park

Lower park’s other arterial, South Park Drive, is slated for renovation next year. How that will happen is back up in the air; a 4-3 council vote directed Public Works Engineering to proceed with Option 2, which would close the entire length of the road to cars, but that decision will come back at the August meeting.

Vehicles on South Park Drive head eastward through the historic gateway off Cypress Street and parallel Woodland Avenue past the entries to three parking lots — One-Mile, Sycamore Field, Caper Acres — before exiting onto Woodland. The road actually continues under Highway 99 and meanders beside East Eight Street to Centennial Avenue, but the stretch past Caper Acres has been closed to cars for decades.

Ottoboni said Public Works Engineering began refining designs after Option 2’s approval. What the council and public saw were conceptual renderings as opposed to final schematics. Not knowing whether they’ll go back to the drawing board, engineers have their work on hold.

One key difference between Option 2 and neighbors’ preferred Option 4, simply repaving South Park Drive, is resurfacing the three gravel lots with asphalt. That may be possible within allotted funding, Ottoboni said, depending on the final cost for Petersen.

East 20th

Stopped cars aside, the most conspicuous project is the Bikeway 99 bridge over East 20th Street. Construction is in the final phase, with the metal overpass and its concrete access points fully formed. Remaining work is primarily cosmetic.

Bikeway 99 connects north and south parts of the city on a path next to Highway 99. The bridge allows cyclists and pedestrians to traverse the length without crossing the heavily used street by Chico Marketplace.

That street is on the roadwork master plan. However, due to the budget cuts, the city scaled back the scope of East 20th work — from Highway 99 to Notre Dame Boulevard instead of all the way from Park Avenue — in ‘25-’26.

“We’ve got close to 340 miles of roadways (in the city),” Ottoboni said. “Even with Measure H, the huge investment, that still only equates — between preventative maintenance to full reconstruction — probably 5 to 10 miles per year. Do the math: That’s 30 years of that kind of investment.

“Now that we’re learning there’s budget constraints, now rather than 30 years, maybe it’s 60 or 70 years with inflation and costs going up. The last pavement management program update we did was a few years ago, and it was somewhere between $200 million and $300 million of needs to fix the entire network.”

Patchwork

As Ottoboni mentioned, not all the roadwork entails reconstruction. Operations and Maintenance addresses some of the pressing issues by filling potholes, applying slurry seal and replacing segments rather than whole lanes.

Forest Avenue provides an example of the latter. Spans of the street feature strips of fresh paving just where vehicle wheels roll ahead; otherwise, existing asphalt remains. This type of work is known as dig-out repairs and is performed by Operations and Maintenance crews.

“Last year, we procured a new piece of equipment,” Gustafson said, “a Wirtgen W130 grinder that we use to grind out old, failed asphalt and replace it with new.”

The grinding and retrenching bides time until more comprehensive repairs come per the master plan.

“It provides a better ride,” Ottoboni said, “but it doesn’t address the holistic roadway. It’s a more streamlined way to get immediate improvements with our internal resources, and with the tools (Operations and Maintenance crews) have, they’re able to do those kinds of things.

“We hear a lot from citizens saying, ‘Hey, our road isn’t scheduled to be rehabilitated until 2031’ — and that might even be further now,” he added. “We understand from a practical standpoint the frustration (of) ‘Why does it take so long?’ We can’t do everything at once, but that’s a way where we can bridge that gap until we can do a full rehabilitation.”