Quick Take
With road repairs still in the pipeline all over Santa Cruz County, officials are constantly in talks with federal agencies in charge of funding road repair. As it turns out, the two main agencies that public works officials negotiate with differ quite a bit, and often dictate how quickly a road gets fixed.
Santa Cruz County has had its hands full with road and infrastructure repairs over the past several years as it has weathered flooding and landslides that devastated important county roads.
The county has had to navigate a complex, at times frustrating, process to secure funding from federal agencies. There are still 100 repair projects needed to fix damage caused by 2023 and 2017 storms. The county has allocated more than $83 million to roads in its 2024-25 budget, but a civil grand jury report from this year estimated the county’s deferred road maintenance needs at a staggering $801 million.
When a road is damaged by a natural disaster in Santa Cruz County, the county typically turns to one of two federal agencies to help pay for repairs: the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Which agency is responsible depends on the type of road that needs to be repaired.
About half of the roads in the county are part of the federal highway system and fall under the jurisdiction of the FHWA, Santa Cruz County Assistant Director of Public Works Steve Wiesner said during a media tour of both damaged and repaired rural roads last week.
Those are generally major highways, including Highway 1 and Highway 17, but also routes that connect to those highways, such as Soquel San Jose Road, Branciforte Drive and Empire Grade. Meanwhile, requests for funding to repair the majority of mountain and rural roads, such as Happy Valley Road, Porter Gulch Road and Schulties Road, are the responsibility of FEMA.
While both are federal agencies, local officials say that working with each one is very different: “I will say we have a much easier time dealing with FHWA than we do with FEMA,” said Wiesner. “They know roads — it’s their expertise.”
Wiesner explained that FHWA funds are distributed through the California Department of Transportation, which manages the state’s highway systems. Since roads are its main focus, it is often easier to receive FHWA funding than FEMA funding, because FEMA has to manage all kinds of disasters beyond just road damage. Further, FHWA is likely to come forward with funding even without a disaster declaration, said Wiesner, significantly expediting the repair process.
“Even when we don’t have federally declared disasters, we often still have our federal highway partners come and provide funding. The FHWA recognizes the importance of keeping our road system together,” he said. “But FEMA won’t even touch you unless you have a declaration.”
County Director of Public Works Matt Machado said the agencies’ responsibilities differ, too, complicating their processes. FEMA, particularly, has to manage all kinds of disasters, rather than just roads, which leads to backlogs and extra bureaucratic layers.
Machado added that 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) released $1.2 trillion in federal infrastructure spending, $350 billion of which is for federal highway programs. However, federal infrastructure funds are now all distributed through a competitive grant process established by the IIJA, meaning it’s not guaranteed. The county still receives funds through 2016’s local Measure D and state Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, but missing out on federal funds hurts the county’s ability to get repairs done quickly.
Machado said that in the past, specific amounts of road maintenance money were allocated to each region automatically. Now, with the introduction of the IIJA, the process is not only competitive, but is open to more agencies, like private ports. He hopes that federal funding reverts to a formula-based process, because having to compete with so many different agencies “just slows down all the progress for all the roads.”
Latest news
Check out our Carmageddon road delay list here. This week, pay particular attention to:
- The on-ramp to southbound Highway 1 from Bay Avenue in Capitola has been closed since late September to allow construction crews to adjust the roadway elevation in line with the bus-on-shoulder lane. Drivers can take a detour north on Porter Street to Soquel Drive, then east to Park Avenue, where they can rejoin Highway 1. They may also head south on Bay Avenue to Park Avenue, and rejoin southbound Highway 1 there. The Regional Transportation Commission expects the ramp to reopen on Friday, Nov. 29.
- The off-ramp from northbound Highway 1 at Bay Avenue and Porter Street will be closed from 9 a.m. on Monday through 5 a.m. on Tuesday for roadway excavation.
- Drainage work, tree work and guardrail work will close down sections of Highway 9 from Monday through Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Those sections are San Lorenzo Valley High and Lazy Woods Road, Scenic Drive and California Drive/Middle Road, Prospect Avenue and Lorenzo Avenue, and the Camp Campbell entrance and Stapp Road.
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