The contractor in charge of the largest highway improvement project in Santa Barbara County history told Noozhawk on Friday that the state of California owes him for the entire month of December, and warned that if the $1.1 million bill isn’t paid by Tuesday, he may shut down the job.
“It’s a bad situation for us,” said Mike Mattivi, vice president of Sun Valley-based Security Paving Co., which is heading up the ongoing project to widen Highway 101 between Hot Springs Road and Milpas Street.
“We can’t keep working without money.”
The four-year, $80 million freeway-widening project, which also improves or replaces several bridges and creates a roundabout at the west end of Coast Village Road in Montecito, is among about 2,000 public-works projects throughout California that are facing major delays as a result of the state’s protracted budget crisis.
Last month, a state panel froze $3.8 billion in loans for infrastructure projects to pay for vital public services. The work stoppage could last until June.
For motorists, any delays would prolong the duration of current inconveniences, such as the closed Milpas onramp to southbound Highway 101 and the roundabout construction at the congested intersections of Coast Village and Hot Springs roads and Old Coast Highway.
Local government officials last month expressed hope that the state would exempt the Highway 101 project from the delays because it, unlike the vast majority of construction plans on the list, is well under way. The project, which began in July, is about 15 percent complete. Now, three weeks later, the status of the state funding remains uncertain.
“Projects that have been awarded may (or may not) be suspended,” Caltrans spokesman David Anderson told Noozhawk in an e-mail Friday.
If the state doesn’t pull through, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments could come to the rescue, at least temporarily. On Thursday, the board of SBCAG, which includes the mayors of every city in the county, will consider making an unusual move: using local sales tax dollars to give the state a loan.
Specifically, the loan would come from Measure D, a half-cent sales tax. But even if it happens, the loan wouldn’t buy the state much time. Jim Kemp, SBCAG’s executive director, said the agency could afford to lend the state about $2 million, which would last the contractor two months, tops, he said.
Shutting down the project, Kemp said, is “not good for the economy, it’s not good for the traffic and it would be expensive,” he said. “There are so many areas (on the construction sites) that are open grade. It would just be a mess.”
But at least one SBCAG board member said the idea of lending the state money doesn’t sound very desirable, either.
“If we loan them some money, I don’t trust they will pay it back,” Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum said. “On the other hand, we have a partly done construction project and a contractor, so we should just finish it.”
Security Paving executives said that if they stop work on Highway 101, they could devote more resources to completing projects funded by the federal government, which isn’t having difficulty making payments.
Typically, the state must pay contractors by the 10th of every month for the work completed the month before. Hani Jamaleddine, project manager for the Highway 101 project, said the state owes Security Paving about $1.1 million.
“There’s no clear direction from the state as to how they want us to proceed,” he said. “We are really in the dark.”
Jamaleddine said his crews had been working ahead of schedule. For instance, he had hoped to reopen the Milpas Street onramp by the end of January — four months early. Now he’s not so sure.
Meanwhile, Kemp said many motorists have complained about the traffic headaches brought about by the roundabout construction.
“The traffic has always been bad there, but it probably got a little worse,” he said.
In addition to the widening and the roundabout, the Highway 101 project calls for completely replacing the Milpas overpass, as well as improving several other bridges.
About $52 million of the project’s $80 million cost is to come through the state Pooled Money Investment Board, a three-member panel of the state’s controller, treasurer and the governor’s finance director. About $13 million will come from Measure D, with the balance due from other state and federal funds.
The $52 million in state money became available as a result of Proposition 1B, which was passed by voters in 2006 to create funding for transportation projects.
Write to rkuznia@noozhawk.com
