RB street repair has resident question city’s planning

The process and length of time it is taking to fix a Bernardo Heights street has at least one Rancho Bernardo resident questioning the City of San Diego’s efficiency and planning.

Joe Larkin, who lives on Avenida Consentido, has been monitoring the progress on his street daily since the project is right in front of his house.

“There is such ineptitude and waste of money,” Larkin said. “It’s crazy and just a shame.”

He said work began in April, when several houses over a crew replaced 50 to 60 feet of sewer pipe that runs under the middle of Avenida Consentido. Larkin said he welcomed the work since the road was “sagging” in the middle due to its clay composition and the likely settling of the sewer pipe under it. Since moving there 30 years ago, the pipe has never been replaced as far as Larkin can recall.

Larkin explained that the soil in his neighborhood has caused problems for some homes and is the reason why his driveway has separated a bit from his home, but said his house does not have foundation problems like other residences have experienced over the years. The same condition is likely affecting the sewer pipe and road, he said.

Larkin said he started questioning the city’s efficiency when after the first portion of sewer pipe was replaced, the crew did not return, but left pipes behind, giving the appearance that more work was planned. Several weeks later the pipes disappeared.

Sometime after that, Larkin said Avenida Consentido — like many other Bernardo Heights streets — received a new slurry seal. But it, like many adjacent streets, was not subsequently striped. That’s when he started calling around to find out when the work would be completed.

On June 20, a crew returned to Avenida Consentido and ripped up a section in the middle of his street, Larkin said. Some of the new trench was patched, the rest covered with large plates. “No parking” signs were placed to prevent vehicles from parking in front of his home and several of his neighbors’ homes, new sewer pipes were left nearby, as was a portable toilet.

Larkin said he found out another 60-foot section of sewer pipe was to go in and questions why the whole project was not done at once.

Last week, he contacted City Councilman Mark Kersey’s office seeking answers and eventually the Rancho Bernardo News Journal when four days passed and no workers returned after the first day.

“The whole street has been held captive by a lack of planning,” he said, alleging this project is what is holding up the striping work for his and nearby streets.

Gina Jacobs, Kersey’s spokeswoman, said the councilman’s staff has been looking into what happened. She said city staff told Kersey’s office that the street repairs were not a full slurry, but temporary repairs until the second half of the sewer work could be completed.

Jacobs attributed the delays to staffing issues and said work should be completed by this Friday. She said crews do not typically leave a project before it is completed, but in this case needed to be pulled from the sewer project to do another job.

She said if those they asked are incorrect, and a 60-foot section of new slurry sealed street was torn up to do more work under it, then it was “a small hiccup” to the system. According to Jacobs, the city restricts work from occurring for three years after a street gets a new slurry seal and for five years if it gets a new overlay. There is an exception for emergencies.

“We are reviewing the situation to make sure it does not happen again,” Jacobs said.

Larkin said a crew returned on Monday (June 27) to start installing the sewer pipe and said he was told by a supervisor that the job will go into next week. After that another crew will come out to apply slurry seal to the repaired stretch of road.