■ Loan would help complete right-of-way phase of transit project

Benicia City Council may vote Tuesday night whether to lend $43,000 toward the completion of the right-of-way portion of the Benicia Industrial Park Bus Hub project.

In a Sept. 26 report, Public Works Director Graham Wadsworth wrote that the Solano Transportation Authority, the lead agency on the right-of-way phase of the project, set $500,000 aside for the purchase of the 1-acre lot for the bus hub park-and-ride construction.

However, “an additional $86,000 is needed to fully fund this phase,” Wadsworth wrote. He recommended the city contribute half of the shortfall, with STA lending the other half, and wrote that Benicia would be reimbursed from future earnings from STA Regional Traffic Impact Fees.

“Loaning the $43,000 from the city’s Traffic Impact Fee Fund will not significantly impact that fund’s programmed projects and services,” he wrote. Repayment could take five years or less, he explained.

STA has been negotiating on the city’s behalf since Jan. 21 to acquire the property from the current owners, the Antonio Barragan family, which has operated El Ranchero Taco Truck on the site for more than 20 years.

The negotiations began with city staff meetings with the family, Melissa Morton, then director of Public Works, had told the Council.

However, at the Dec. 3, 2013 Council meeting at which the panel was set to vote on the project and land acquisition, Hector Barragan announced that neither his parents, Antonio and Graciela Barragan, nor any other family member had been notified that the vote was scheduled.

An examination of the mailing list for official notifications substantiated his claim.

Barragan said at that meeting that his family had no plans to sell their land to Benicia, though two weeks later, at the Council’s Dec. 17, 2013 meeting, he and his family issued six demands they said the Council would need to address before the family would reconsider a sale.

The family’s attorney, John Gardner, wrote an 18-page letter to the Council, with 15 more pages of Industrial Park business addresses attached, saying the city’s failure to include the Barragans on its direct mailing notification list deprived his clients of the chance to review and comment on associated documents.

He reminded the Council that city employees had contacted his clients twice about the city’s proposal to buy their land, “yet staff failed to provide them the required notice. Instead, just two days before the Dec. 3, 2013, city Council meeting, our clients were informed of the IS (initial study) and MND (mitigated negative declaration) by other business owners within the Industrial Park.”

Gardner noted the city didn’t publish a notice in any newspaper of general circulation, nor did it post any notice on or off the 1-acre parcel. Instead, he wrote, it chose to issue the notice through direct mailing, as specified in the Public Resources Code.

City employees later said the list used for the mailing didn’t have the Barragans’ address, and that the defective list would be replaced.

One of the Barragans’ requirements, passing an ordinance to regulate food trucks in the Benicia Industrial Park, was completed last month.

Wadsworth, who joined Benicia staff last month, had been director of Yountville’s Public Works Department for five years. He succeeded Morton, who left Benicia to accept a position in Vallejo.

At his previous post, Wadsworth supervised a seismic retrofitting of Yountville Town Hall, expansion of its water recycling system and other projects.

In the meantime, the Council authorized STA as the lead agency in land acquisition negotiations.

The hub has been described during previous meetings as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the promotion of transit use, especially for those traveling to and from Fairfield and Suisun along Transit Route 40 and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in Contra Costa County.

The project also would straighten a roadway curve, provide buses a better stopping area and give food trucks and motor vehicles a better parking area, according to past staff reports.

“A tentative agreement has been reached to purchase the property for $520,000,” Wadsworth wrote. “Additionally, STA has incurred a cost of $64,000 for their real property negotiator and legal fees, for a total cost of $586,000 to complete the right-of-way phase of the project.”

He wrote that escrow could close within a month, and that a reimbursement agreement is being written to provide Benicia and the STA with assurances on the loan.

“Final design is under way, and the property must be acquired for the project to proceed to construction next summer,” Wadsworth wrote. Regional Measure 2 (bridge toll) money will pay for the construction, he wrote.

The item is on the Council’s consent calendar, which means the loan and several other items could be approved by a single vote without comment, though a Council member or a member of the public could request any of the items be considered separately.

The Council meeting starts at 7 Tuesday night in the Council Chamber of City Hall, 250 East L St.