Placentia Residents Sound Off on Run Down Roads, Officials Vow Fixes

Placentia residents in the Palm Village North neighborhood say officials have neglected maintaining roads near their homes for decades.

For months, multiple residents in the neighborhood have shown up to several public city council meetings demanding officials prioritize the repavement of these streets.

Now, officials say they will be meeting next week to consider how to fix the roads.

"I've been pushing on staff to get this to us sooner rather than later because obviously it's a major concern. There's a process that has to be done and I think the most important thing is that we have one meeting with all the options on the table." said Mayor Jeremy Yamaguchi at the Nov. 5 council meeting.

Placentia isn't the only North OC city where residents have raised concerns about the quality of streets.

In nearby Fullerton, residents have long complained of broken streets in the college town.

[Read: Fullerton Moves to Repair Badly Damaged Roads ]

Jo Anne Sowards, a Placentia resident and real estate consultant, said that the streets in her neighborhood have not been repaved since 1999 when she first moved into the house.

"Our streets never got the attention they needed, and now we're in a situation where you just can't put a band-aid on it," said Sowards at a city council meeting in September.

She also said the streets' poor conditions will impact the value of homes in the neighborhood.

"Houses are selling for 1.4 and 1.5 [million dollars], and we need to keep up because the value is not going to maintain. And I know you'd really have a lot of upset residents if that happened."

Public Works Director Chris Tanio said city officials planned to repave the streets earlier, but the pandemic delayed the funds needed to begin construction.

He also said fixing the roads could mean sacrificing future public projects.

"Some of these requests take away from other streets that can get built within the city. My staff had estimated that if we did advance these streets, it would take away from other areas about six to seven miles of local streets within the city," said Tanio during the September meeting.

Councilman Chad Wanke said the city needs to properly fund repairs for their roads.

"I've been very dismayed to see that we haven't put more money into our streets and our timeline has been constantly pushed back while we've been wasting money on a bunch of projects that I think are vanity projects." said Wanke at the Nov. 5 council meeting.

Yamaguchi also said he's seen the bad state of the streets, and that he wants them repaved as soon as possible.

"I took my daughter over to this specific neighborhood to check it out for ourselves and ride our scooters around. When we arrived, I found that the condition of the road was not safe for children to be playing on," said Yamaguchi.

Rich Leem, a resident, said that he and his neighbors met with Councilman Ward Smith and Luis Estevez, the former deputy city manager, in 2022 and they were told the streets would be fully repaired by 2025.

"In [Mr. Estevez's] words, it made no sense to repair our streets now, because they were so bad, the repair would have to be complete and expensive," Leem said to officials at the Oct. 1 council meeting.

However, he said city officials have not yet followed through with the 2025 plan.

"We need to have the job done right and we need to have it done right now, or by 2025 as the original agreement was," Leem said. "The citizens of Placentia demand better. The neighbors of North Palm Village expect an agreement to be upheld."

Sowards said that city officials should prioritize road repairs more than former councils did when approving budgets.

"You all weren't sitting here when all these choices – bad choices – were made. But now you are," said Sowards at the Sept. 17 meeting. "It is your duty to be fiscally responsible."

Susan Moran, who lives between Roanoke Street and Willamette Avenue, also said the city hasn't repaved the streets for years.

"The people who lived there prior to me were 94 years old. They owned that home since 1969, and they held countless meetings to try and repair these roads," said Moran at the Sept. 17 meeting.

Moran said city officials have been aware of the bad road conditions, but have not taken any action to fix them.

"This road is marked as one of the worst, and has been for several years. The improvements have been budgeted, and what I don't understand is how they can continue to be budgeted but not be completed."

On top of her streets not looking up to par, Moran said the lack of new pavement is dangerous.

"I see children riding bikes, I see high schoolers. It's a major thoroughfare," said Moran. "People might not like the way it looks, but it's also just not safe."

Officials said in a meeting last week that they will discuss ways to prioritize the roads in an agenda item set for the Nov. 19 council meeting.

"I am looking forward to the agenda item that will be at the next meeting because in order for the council to discuss a change in direction and make a decision, it must be agendized," said Councilmember Rhonda Shader in the council meeting last week.

According to Wanke, the council may have to vote to cancel or delay other projects to prioritize repaving the roads.

"We can't just, in two weeks, change the budget. In order to get your road paved, what we need to do is find another project, decide to either pause or cancel it, and take that money and add that money for streets so that we have more money in the street budget," said Wanke in the meeting last week.

"We've identified projects we can pause or cancel to put more money into the streets."

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