Last night, the Yucca Valley Town Council narrowly accepted the sole bid for a construction project on Highway 62 on the west end of Town. The $2.8 million dollar project, which will add raised medians, curbs, gutters, and sidewalks from Mohawk Trail to Palm Avenue, and a traffic light at Church Street, is slated to start in February and will last at least four months. Managing editor Tami Roleff was at last nightâs 4-hour marathon meeting. Today in part one of a two-part report, she explains why the vote was so close. Tomorrow, spay and neuter vouchersâŚ
In a 3-2 vote, the Yucca Valley Town Council accepted the sole bid for the second highway median project on the west end of town. Seven business owners told the Council the medians would hurt their business, including Chet Smelser of Chetâs Appliance. âThis is going to cost me my business, and I have 12 people working for me. Iâm going to move my business to Joshua Tree.â Many spoke out about the dangers of having commercial trucks drive on alternate routes through residential streets to get to the businesses, and about the Townâs poor notification in notifying business owners about the project. Council member Bob Leone agreed with the business owners. âThe business people are constituents of this town. The people of this Town own the town, we donât own the Town. There isnât a person out there that Iâve spoken to that isnât against the medians.â Mayor Merl Abel thought the Town should scrap the raised medians and only go forward with the sidewalks and traffic light. âWe got a lot of it right; we got part of it wrong. I would love to reject this one and come up with a project and say weâre just not going to do center dividers at this particular time.â Council member Dawn Rowe argued that previous councils made a commitment to the Town that the current council needed to honor. âThis is an inevitable project that will come forward sometime in the future; we will be required to do this. Iâm not willing to throw away a million dollars that we have put aside and then add more money to do this later.â Voting to accept the bid were Dawn Rowe, George Huntington, and Mayor Pro Tem Robert Lombardo. The revised median project will include a left-hand turn pocket for northbound Palm Avenue only. As part of the approval council members also asked staff to prepare a rough construction cost of paving the alley between Palm and Grand Avenues, and Pima Trail east of Church Street to Palm Avenue.