Efren Carrillo says Sonoma County will pay to improve Roseland roads

Sonoma County is committed to sharing in the cost of improving the roads, parks, and services in Roseland long after it is annexed into Santa Rosa, and intends to make a formal proposal to the city soon, Supervisor Efren Carrillo said Friday.

In the most detailed remarks to date about how much the county is willing to spend to support Roseland’s integration into the city, Carrillo made it clear the county will step up and help with what the city estimates could be $80 million in infrastructure needs alone to bring the unincorporated area up to the standards of the rest of the city.

“The county understands and knows very well that the city will undoubtedly incur increased costs on an ongoing basis to bring service to this area,” Carrillo said in remarks to the Latino leadership organization Los Cien.

About 7,000 people live in the five areas being considered for annexation currently, 6,400 in the 620-acre unincorporated area of Roseland and another 600 in a total of 92 acres of county pockets around Brittain Lane, Victoria Drive, West Hearn Avenue and West Third Street. Current timetables call for the area to be annexed sometime in the summer or fall of 2017.

Past efforts to annex Roseland into the city have fallen apart because the city and the county couldn’t agree on how to share the increased costs of city services to the area, particularly law enforcement.

Carrillo acknowledged there remains a gap between the city and the county on the subject, but Carrillo said he was optimistic a resolution could be reached.

“I don’t think gap the gap is as large as it may have been in the past,” Carrillo said.

City officials have been anxiously awaiting a formal response to its November cost-sharing proposal to the county. The plan called for the county to pay the city least $35 million over 10 years in addition to the property tax increases it will receive.

That includes $1.3 million in startup costs, $18.5 million to improve roads, $8 million to help build Roseland Community Park, and $805,000 a year for 10 years to cover the increased costs from other services.

Carrillo expressed willingness to share in some costs, but only put a dollar figure on one - roads. Carrillo said the county would be willing to spend $6.7 million to bring the pavement conditions of the roads of Roseland up to the city average and would “share” in the cost of other amenities, like sidewalks and lighting, which are sorely lacking in the area.

Mayor John Sawyer said he was pleased to hear the county agree to a decadelong cost-sharing timeline and wanted to hear more.

“We now hope in two or three weeks to get a more substantial report and we can start the tough work of negotiating and compromising and moving forward with this really big project,” Sawyer said.

City manager Sean McGlynn said he, too, was pleased to have received “a response that looks like the beginnings of a proposal.” In carefully crafted remarks, Carrillo made it clear, however, that the county won’t be saving as much as people assume from the annexation. He cited a number of county health, housing and social service programs that will continue after annexation.

“We’ll continue to provide important services in this community,” Carrillo said.

He also noted that the deputies who patrol Roseland area are part of a team that patrols all the way to the coast, the suggestion being that if they stop patrolling Roseland it won’t save the county much.

Santa Rosa city officials have been frustrated that the county has not responded sooner or in greater detail to the city’s proposal, which was based on a cost study now more than a year old. Carrillo’s presentation contained just seven slides and the city received it Friday morning.

County officials also gave a presentation outlining the status of work on a park in the Moorland neighborhood. The park, if funded next month by supervisors would be called Andy’s Unity Park, in honor of Andy Lopez, the 13-year-old who was killed there by a sheriff’s deputy in 2013.

Features of the proposed park include a turf field, skate plaza, basketball court, teen clubhouse, dog park, community garden and orchard on one parcel, with a kiosk, picnic area and memorial garden on another.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.