GONZALES — Gonzales City Council is working to find a solution to the growing traffic problem with a decision to form an agreement with a special tax consulting service.
The council last met Oct. 15 to speak about the public’s concern for traffic coming into the city during peak traffic hours as well as the traffic around the schools. City Manager Rene Mendez brought forth a new business item to hire a special tax consulting service, Wildan Financial Service, to look at an enhanced infrastructure district on the Industrial side of the city.
“Redevelopment agencies used to bring forward an RDA area that would be locked in the future tax growth of the area to use for infrastructure,” Mendez said. “There’s no change in the property taxes added. It essentially locks in future growth of the property tax and commits the jurisdiction to using it for infrastructure or a plan at some future point that the city council will be considering.”
The Industrial Park has grown with bringing in Taylor Farms, Mann Packing/Del Monte Foods, Pure Pacific Organics and other businesses in the park. The City would also have to speak with the County of Monterey so they could use its property taxes for infrastructure as well.
“We do need some infrastructure improvements,” Mendez said. “We need infrastructure improvements to our streets, to our roads. There’s been a lot of conversation over the last several weeks about how busy Fifth Street is at several times during the day.”
According to Mendez, the costs for improving Fifth Street could range from a few million dollars up to $40 million.
The City also wants to loop the traffic around the Industrial Business Park. As drivers come in to North Alta Street, they would be able to loop around, access the Industrial Park and come out the other way. The loop would cost about $5 million.
“The idea with this is we would start generating a funding source to apply to those projects,” Mendez said. “The special tax consultants would be estimating what those funds might be.”
