Quick Take
For years, Caltrans inspection reports flagged maintenance needs for Capitola’s Stockton Avenue Bridge. Yet those recommendations apparently never came before the city council. Now, taxpayers face hundreds of thousands of dollars in near-term repairs — and potentially millions more for rehabilitation or replacement. Before the city fixes the bridge, Capitola resident Kevin Maguire wants some answers. He wants to understand how Capitola got here – and what steps the council will take to make sure such mistakes don’t happen again.
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The Stockton Avenue Bridge — one of Capitola’s most recognizable landmarks — is now facing the prospect of a multimillion-dollar repair or replacement, raising serious questions about how the city got here.
Before Capitola decides whether refurbishing the bridge is a good use of taxpayer money, I think residents should be asking a more basic question: Why did recommended maintenance apparently go undone for years? Why didn’t the city’s top officials know about it, and did Capitola miss opportunities to pursue outside funding?
Those questions have increasingly come into focus during recent city council discussions. On Aug. 27, the council voted unanimously to pursue maintenance recommended by Caltrans. Then, on Sept. 10, the council voted 4-1 to continue advancing a polyester concrete overlay as the preferred near-term treatment, subject to engineering confirmation that it is safe and practical. Councilmember Melinda Orbach cast the lone no vote.
Those votes mark a shift in the conversation: Rather than treating replacement as inevitable, the council is now pursuing the possibility of extending the bridge’s life through a less costly repair. But that decision also makes the questions about how the bridge reached this point — and whether earlier maintenance or outside funding could have changed the equation — all the more important.
For now, replacement is no longer being treated as inevitable.
The exchange that exposed the problem
How did questions about the maintenance history arise?
City council candidate TJ Welch began digging into the Stockton Avenue Bridge’s inspection history and obtained years of Caltrans reports. This brought the maintenance record into public discussion. That shifted the conversation from how Capitola should replace the bridge to a more basic question: Why hadn’t the city been completing the maintenance that has been recommended for the bridge in the past? At the Aug. 27 meeting, Vice Mayor Gerry Jensen asked that very question – calling it “the elephant in the room.”
City Manager Jamie Goldstein answered: “Candidly, I don’t know. I never saw them as city manager. … It was never a request that I saw from public works.”
This response should concern every citizen.
A city manager does not need to personally read every technical report. But the city must have a system ensuring professional recommendations about critical infrastructure do not disappear somewhere between public works, the city manager and council.
Public Works Director Jessica Kahn explained that the city had been receiving Caltrans inspection reports — electronically for roughly eight to 10 years and previously by mail, with inspections generally occurring every two years.
Yet neither staff nor council could identify a prior council action in which elected officials were presented with these longstanding maintenance recommendations and chose not to fund them.
Somewhere among receiving the reports, evaluating the recommendations, budgeting for the work and bringing a decision to the city council, the process broke down.
Council changed course
The council responded Aug. 27 with a unanimous 5-0 vote to pursue near-term maintenance, focus longer-term engineering on preserving and rehabilitating the existing bridge, and seek consultants experienced with historic rehabilitation and the Caltrans process.
Two weeks later, staff returned with a much bigger price tag. The preliminary estimate for the Caltrans-recommended polyester overlay included roughly $126,000 in engineering and $284,000 in construction — about $410,000 before traffic control, roadway work, inspection testing and contingency costs.
Staff also presented a cheaper methacrylate treatment that would seal cracks and slow water intrusion but would not restore deteriorated portions of the deck. Staff said the polyester overlay could potentially extend the bridge’s service life roughly 10 to 15 years, compared with about three to five years for methacrylate.
Despite the higher cost, the council majority chose to keep advancing the Caltrans-recommended polyester approach, subject to an engineer confirming that added weight and load-rating implications do not create other problems. The council discussion also referenced Caltrans inspection reports dating back to 2011 recommending this type of treatment.
Funding questions are finally on the table
The Sept. 10 discussion confirmed that state funding exists for this type of maintenance. Kahn said the polyester overlay is eligible for a Caltrans maintenance program, although the wait could be roughly three years. A larger rehabilitation project could potentially qualify for a different state or federal bridge program.
The city council also discussed the roughly $500,000 state grant secured after the 2023 storms. That money is tied to debris mitigation and cannot simply be spent on the deck overlay, but councilmembers asked whether the state should be approached again as the city’s strategy changes.
The city’s structural consultant had already reported that, based on the 2022 Caltrans inspection, the bridge qualified for preventive-maintenance funding and recommended providing more recent deterioration findings to Caltrans for reassessment.
Bike safety is real — but 135 feet is not a network
Within the past month, two collisions involving vehicles and bicyclists occurred in Capitola.
A cyclist was also struck on Soquel Drive near Porter Street, less than a mile from the city, and later died.
I would never claim that a particular bike lane or bridge design would have prevented any one collision. But these incidents should sharpen our discussion about bicycle safety.
Earlier Stockton Bridge concepts contemplated widening the approximately 135-foot bridge and adding more bicycle and pedestrian space. But widening 135 feet of bridge does not create a safe bicycle route through Capitola if riders are deposited back into mixed traffic at the other end.
If Capitola wants facilities that work for children, older adults, families and people who are not comfortable riding beside traffic, bicycle safety should be treated as a continuous-route problem.
We should maintain and preserve the Stockton Avenue Bridge while separately answering the larger question: What continuous, separated route will actually allow people to travel safely from one side of Capitola to the other? The Capitola trestle is being inspected as a possible solution.
Retirement does not erase accountability
At the Sept. 10 meeting, Goldstein announced he will retire in December after nearly two decades serving Capitola. His retirement should not close the book on what happened.
How did recurring inspection reports and maintenance recommendations reach city hall without apparently becoming a transparent decision before the city council? Who reviewed them? Were grant opportunities evaluated? Why wasn’t the council asked to make the choice?
The city should produce a straightforward public accounting: what was recommended, who received it, what action was taken, whether funding was requested, whether council was told and, if work was deferred, why.
The history spans multiple public works administrations, so it would be premature to assign every failure to one person. But the central fact remains troubling: professional inspection reports were reaching city hall for years, the city manager said he never saw them, and the city council apparently was never given the opportunity to decide whether to fund the recommended maintenance.
Whatever the fuller explanation, that is a system failure.
Fix the bridge — and fix the system
Goldstein’s December retirement gives Capitola an opportunity to fix that before the next city manager takes over. The city council should require significant inspections to be logged, recommendations assigned and tracked, funding opportunities evaluated, deferred work documented and major unfunded infrastructure needs brought to the council.
If the Stockton Avenue Bridge ultimately must be replaced, so be it. If rehabilitation can safely preserve it for decades longer, Capitola should pursue that.
The decision should be based on engineering, real costs, funding opportunities, preservation, transportation safety and an honest accounting of what happened before.
The city council deserves credit for changing direction. Now it needs to finish the job: preserve the bridge if the engineering allows it, build bicycle safety as a continuous network rather than isolated pieces, determine how years of maintenance recommendations fell through the cracks — and make certain it does not happen again.
Kevin Maguire is a Capitola resident.
