Quick Take
The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will receive a progress report on a road funding study and local transportation funding and investments at its Tuesday meeting. The study is in response to significant public input on road conditions and the push for more funding.
The Santa Cruz County Executive Office will provide a progress report on a road funding study and local transportation funding and investments to the county board of supervisors at its Tuesday meeting.
According to a staff report, the board has received an influx of public comments on road conditions and the need for more road funding. The report is intended to respond to those concerns and give a look ahead to ongoing funding efforts. Between fiscal years 2017-18 and 2025-26, the county spent $473.3 million on road programs and had to respond to seven federally declared disasters in the span of just one decade.
The majority of the money used in that time frame came from state and federal sources, as well as voter-approved and resident-funded sources restricted to transportation spending. In the fiscal years listed above, federal and state disaster reimbursements accounted for 31.3% of the money received for roads. In fact, about 96% came from the sources restricted to transportation spending altogether.
Those funding sources, though, have largely fallen behind inflation and are less effective than they were historically. The staff report notes that the biggest challenge is determining where funding should come from; the county’s road funding study seeks to identify sources that would add to road funding. Without additional funding, the report says that the countywide PCI, or pavement condition index, is projected to fall to 36 out of a possible 100 by 2034-35. It is currently at 51.8.
To prepare for the future, county staff laid out a number of possibilities for raising more money for road maintenance and upkeep. Some of those include raising the transient occupancy tax, which taxes hotels and short-term rentals. Those are typically easy to pass locally, given that tourism is a billion-dollar industry in the county. It also suggests renewing and increasing the Measure G sales tax, a half-cent sales tax that expires in 2030, which the board could consider prioritizing for roads.
Other possibilities include updating county services areas, issuing bonds backed by that service area, and forming a rural road resiliency county service area with a new assessment of $150 a year on rural parcels that could raise up to $4.5 million a year for road purposes. That option would have to be approved by a weighted ballot of affected property owners.
The overall strategy in the upcoming fiscal years is to find revenue that builds on road funding instead of taking money from other services. The County Executive Office is expected to return to the board with the road study’s full findings and a general fund forecast in February 2027 as part of the midyear budget report.
The board of supervisors meets Tuesday at 9 a.m. in the board chambers, Room 525, at the county government building at 701 Ocean St. in Santa Cruz; the meeting is also available here via Zoom.
Latest news
Here’s what’s happening this week on our roadways:
- Paving is causing an overnight closure of Highway 1 from State Park Drive in Aptos to Bay Avenue in Capitola between 9 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. from Monday through Friday.
- Bridge work is shutting down one lane of Highway 9 between Pool Drive and Old County Highway and Riverdale Park and Monaco Lane until April 30, 2027
- The southbound Highway 1 off-ramp at Bay Avenue in Capitola is in the fourth month of a four-month closure that began Aug. 2 as crews reconstruct the ramp as part of the bus-on-shoulder facility.
- Roadway excavation is shutting down the southbound Highway 1 on-ramp at Park Avenue in Capitola until Nov. 19.
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