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City Council Hears Budget Recommendations

Parks and Public Works Director and City Engineer Dan Wall said he believes the city should aim to add nearly $4 million to its annual infrastructure budget in the coming years.
Wall emphasized that these were his recommendations and understood they would not happen immediately or even within a year or two.
“Rather, these are targets to strive for in future years through the budgeting process,” Wall told the City Council at the Friday morning meeting on Jan 27.
The city now allocates $1.45 million annually to infrastructure upkeep, which includes that of streets, sewers and storm drains, sidewalks and buildings. The vast majority of that, $1.2 million, is allocated for streets.
Wall, after investigating the state of the city’s utility infrastructure, prepared his estimates based on what it would take to catch up on maintenance and repairs and eventually keep up with them as needed. The city has approximately $13 million in repairs and Wall estimated that would rise to $26 million in 10 years if the city made no adjustments to its infrastructure budget.
For streets, Wall estimated that the annual budget should aim for $4.3 million annually, an increase of $3.1 million. Although interim City Manager Cindy Collins noted there are “very few cities that have a street program at this level,” Wall said there is a need to repair deteriorating streets. The recent levels of rainfall have resulted in about 30 new potholes in town, Wall pointed out.
“Our roads are not as bad as some, but I’d like to have developed no potholes,” he said.
Wall recommended bringing the sewers and storm drains allocation to $600,000, an increase of $500,000 annually. Much of the city’s system is still the original system and the bulk of repairs up to this point have been “Band-Aids,” as Wall characterized them.
“It’s getting to the point where we need to start thinking about a systematic replacement,” he said.
Wall also recommended bringing the budget for maintenance of sidewalks to $250,000 annually (a $100,000 increase) and building maintenance to $380,000 annually (and increase of around $270,000).
The City Council filed the report and took no action.
Police Chief John Incontro also presented crime data for the fourth quarter (October, November and December) at the Friday meeting.
There were a total of 34 burglaries (26 residential and nine commercial) in that three-month period, most of which occurred during the day with suspects breaking in through the rear of the property.
There also were 28 larcenies in the fourth quarter, most of which were identity thefts, and nine aggravated assaults.
The residential burglaries constituted a 41% increase from last year and the larcenies were up by 11%.
Incontro also presented data on traffic-related incidents in 2016, noting there was a 68.67% increase in non-injury collisions, 16.41% decrease in injury collisions and 5.26% decrease in hit-and-runs. There were a total of 236 reported traffic incidents in San Marino last year.
Top locations for traffic collisions included the intersections of Huntington Drive with both Del Mar and San Marino avenues (nine collisions each), Los Robles Avenue and Oak Street (nine collisions), Euston Road and San Marino Avenue (six collisions) and Los Robles Avenue and Monterey Road (five collisions).
The City Council unanimously approved appropriating $10,362 to help complete renovations to the Old Mill, which will include two new ramadas.

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