Dear Benicia Community,

Since the collision at the pedestrian bridge on Military West, and subsequent demolition, City staff have been working on a variety of fronts to ensure safe school crossing for students, in particular the students at Mary Farmar Elementary School. This has been our top priority. We anticipate that a contract with The Crossing Guard Company will be executed shortly. The contract will include 3 crossing guards stationed at Mary Farmar Drive & Military West and West 10^th Street & Military West for morning and afternoon school drop-off and pick-up for the remainder of the school year. Republic Services has agreed to pay for this contract. Police Department and Benicia Unified School District (BUSD) staff have already scheduled staff to cover those duties this week and next week while the contract with The Crossing Guard Company is being implemented.

To facilitate with traffic calming and slowing traffic approaching the school zone, a police radar trailer and two electronic road signs have been deployed notifying oncoming traffic to slow their speeds due to increased pedestrian traffic. The speed signage has been adjusted appropriately for school hours. The Police Department will be enforcing traffic laws and writing citations in the area. Staff has also initiated a contract to have Military West re-striped near the school to aid drivers in their approach towards the school. Additionally, as a traffic calming measure, water barricades will be deployed on the edge of Military West, both eastbound and westbound, near Mary Farmar Drive by Tuesday, February 14th. All of these measures are designed to slow traffic as drivers approach the school zone.

The City has also contracted with Coastland DCCM and they have performed engineering work to assess and evaluate the installation of temporary signals, stop signs and other measures at or near Mary Farmar Drive and Military West. It was necessary to properly evaluate such measures to ensure any instillation would meet all safety and traffic standards. It would be a mistake, and irresponsible, to deploy such devices without first understanding the potential repercussions and unintended consequences…but rest assured, we take these suggestions very seriously.  After analysis, the City, and our engineers, have determined that we can safely install a temporary stop sign at this location. We will be drafting an official ‘memorandum for record’ (required for such a move) explaining this decision and will proceed with installation.

The Public Works team met this morning to go over the stop sign, ancillary signs, and striping plan and we will proceed expeditiously to install those while avoiding additional safety/traffic impacts.

Finally, the contract with Coastland DCCM has also tasked them with assessing, evaluating and scoping the possibility of the installation of a temporary bridge. We are still awaiting a timeframe on those reports but have directed Coastland to move quickly.

Staff will continue to provide updates to the community through our weekly newsletter and social media posts when appropriate. Should members of the community have questions they may reach out to our Interim Deputy City Manager Sarah Shawky at 707.746.4334 or [email protected].

On another note, last Tuesday at the City Council meeting, we had some technical difficulties with our very important presentation by the Fire Department on our Vegetative Fuels Management Plan.  I want to call out the outstanding work of Fire Chief Chadwick, Della Olm and our consultant team from Dynamic Planning + Science (DP + S) Ethan Mobley, Clare Peabody and Brian Greer.  Please see the article below and the link to the City Council presentation.

Erik Upson
City Manager

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