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Out of the office
By Chris Strunk
Last Updated: March 26, 2015

Closing road early not a good idea

Road construction is a pain in the rear, but, by gosh, you don't have to make it more painful.

The city did just that this week.

The city agreed on March 18 to allow the contractor that is reconstructing Meridian in the heart of Valley Center to rearrange a major piece of its project schedule, less than a day after the city announced the original timeline.

And the city failed to notify the public of the change until the barricades started going up this week — five days later.

The intersection of Main and Meridian was closed March 23 and will remain that way for about a month. At the same time, a portion of South Meridian also was closed, essentially putting nearly every business in Valley Center on an island and telling the public: "Get there if you can."

According to the original schedule, Main and Meridian was to be closed in late May, after school let out.

Frankly, if I were the mayor of Valley Center, I would've told the contractor to patch up the hole, reopen the intersection immediately and go back to the original timeline.

Alas, that won't happen.

The contractor "believes, from an efficiency standpoint, that tackling the intersection now will be beneficial to the overall project," City Administrator Joel Pile said in an email to The News.

Efficiency? For whom? The contractor?

Well, in my opinion, the contractor should eat the apparent inefficiency that it erroneously planned for earlier.

I can't understand it.

The earlier closure doesn't even appear to shorten the length of the overall project any. In fact, according to the contractor's most recent timeline, the project grew by more than a month, from Sept. 7 to Oct. 8, with the recent changes.

I'm not an engineer, nor am I a road construction superintendent, but I know a little bit about communication. This communication failed dramatically.

Although emergency crews were told of the change last week, the communication apparently stopped there.

We were warned that the timeline was "fluid" and that things could change as the project progressed. That happens with most major undertakings. I understand that.

But this change was far from "fluid." This was a monumental shift, not a tweak.

I really empathize with businesses that have to rely on vehicle traffic to survive. It's tough enough in a small town.

So, when their lifeblood is nearly severed, it really hits home.

Surprises are the last thing you need.

Small businesses — I know about them, too, because I own one — can plan for a bad month or maybe two by delaying major purchases or waiting to hire additional staff. But when a bad month hits you out of the blue — by forces out of your control — it can be devastating.

Though the project was going to be a disruption in business no matter what, shutting down the intersection makes it worse, and, because of the timeline change, businesses had no time to plan for it.

I don't know how anyone can believe that was the right thing to do.

Chris Strunk is publisher of The Ark Valley News. Reach him at 755-0821, news@arkvalleynews.com or on Facebook.




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