Tensions rise over Auburn’s mangy median

Published 3:11 pm Wednesday, August 15, 2012

What to do about that pesky traffic median north of the Highway 18 interchange on Auburn Way South is a question that reared its homely head once again at a City meeting Monday, where passionate advocacy boiled over into unusually sharp words.

Councilman Bill Peloza, who has had about as much of the scruffy median as he can endure, has said over the course of several meetings that he wants something done about it, and he has not been shy about demanding that, whatever that might be, it be done now.

But as City leaders over the course of Monday’s Municipal Services meeting expressed a preference for long-term solutions, Peloza grew more and more frustrated.

According to Public Works Director Dennis Dowdy, there’s no money in the arterial street fund now to contract out a median project involving stamped concrete, an alternative that City leaders had previously discussed. Dowdy said that plan would cost an estimated $45,000.

The median was built in the 1990s, and irrigation water is available there, Dowdy said, so the north and south ends could be landscaped with low maintenance vegetation, for example low-growing barberries. The center of the median, where time has proven that nothing can grow and survive, Dowdy said, could be devegetated and sterilized.

Dowdy said bark and colored stones would make for good cover, and he has been working with the parks department on a plan involving their use.

Parks department staff would perform the work, with the street department providing limited access to the busy area.

Peloza repeatedly pressed for a timeline on the repairs to which Mayor Pete Lewis responded time and again, “it will be done in a month.”

Largo Wales noted that when the median issue first surfaced months ago, it was a “crisis mode” topic, but since then the City has established a committee, has begun a public process and has been working with parks department staff to come up with a long term plan.

“I would really like to continue with our original direction and not start piece-mealing this until we have a chance to work with (City Maintenance Crew Chief Mike Miller) and do the overall plan we decided to do and have been aggressively working on the last couple of months. What we’re lacking is a comprehensive approach,” Wales said.

Osborne said an immediate repair, given the current closure of M Street, would complicate an already bad traffic situation.

“I vehemently disagree,” Peloza said of the opposition. “At the Saturday Rotary breakfast, five people came up to with ‘when are you guys gonna get off your … and fix that sorry entry to the city of Auburn.’ They said maybe we should get Rotary to go down at midnight and take care of it.

“… This is an entry to our great, More-than-Imagined city of Auburn, and you are treating it like it can wait until we get a standard. It’s ridiculous. I told somebody it looks like a 30th-Century war zone, with thousands of cars heading up to the Casino and city people going home. We’ve gotta take action, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, it’s an eyesore,” Osborne said. “But I don’t think we need to be doing this right now with M Street closed.”

“I totally disagree,” Peloza said. “We may not see a plan for another six months, yet that piece of … a median will still be going. I’m going on record here that I don’t agree with these two members and I hope all the citizens call you and tell you what they think.”

“That’s totally inappropriate,” Osborne said.

The final consensus was to remove all vegetation from the median for now.