Pinole staff present five-year CIP prioritizing roads, sewer and San Pablo Avenue bridge ahead of council vote

Public Works Director Heba El Gindi told the Pinole City Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Committee on June 11 that the city’s five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) for fiscal years 2025–26 through 2029–30 includes 45 projects and five infrastructure assessments and is scheduled for City Council approval on June 17.

The CIP matters because it sets which streets, sewers and facilities the city will design and build, and it identifies the funding sources that will pay for those projects. El Gindi said the plan was reviewed by the Finance Subcommittee and City Council in April and May and by the Planning Commission on June 9.

El Gindi said the five-year CIP is funded by “grants, enterprise fees, development impact fees, measure funds, and the recently approved vehicle impact fees.” She described a shortlist of 24 priority projects for 2025–26: three facility projects, two park projects, six sanitary sewer projects, two stormwater projects, 11 streets and roads projects, and two infrastructure assessments. The spreadsheet El Gindi summarized includes items the city expects to bundle or sequence depending on available grant matches and construction seasons.

Key transportation items include a pavement rehabilitation program that will begin on Pinal Valley Road and extend to other corridors; El Gindi said Pinal Valley Road is about 2.8 miles in length and, combined with the planned work on Tennant (about 0.8 miles), would create roughly 3.6 miles of a “complete street corridor” over the next two years. The pavement rehabilitation work is planned to be contracted to outside contractors while smaller maintenance tasks remain with the city’s internal crews.

The CIP also lists a primary corridor project: the San Pablo Avenue bridge replacement. El Gindi said both NEPA and CEQA environmental reviews are expected to be completed by the end of the year and that the bridge project is “mainly funded by three different grant funding, federal, state, and regional.” She said the city recently revised an agreement with WECTAC to better use a STMP grant and to minimize the local match; the current local match shown for the bridge is $100,000 in this CIP cycle.

On utilities, El Gindi said six sanitary-sewer projects are funded by enterprise fees (not the general fund). Those projects include replacing two remaining blowers at the treatment plant (spare parts are no longer available for older models), upgrades to private sewer lateral assistance (guidelines not yet developed), an effluent outfall upgrade to better handle storm events, rehabilitation of a secondary clarifier, lab upgrades (equipment and cabinetry, budgeted roughly $150,000), and rehabilitation or replacement of pump stations and force mains along San Pablo Avenue and Hazel Street.

Facility and parks work in the CIP includes pool equipment repairs and larger pool upgrades in 2026–27, a climate sustainability grant-funded fleet transition project with an indicated grant amount of $952,000 and a local match listed as $118,000 to support EV fleet conversion and EV charging stations, and an annual parks program budgeted at $200,000 for playground equipment, lighting and shade structures. El Gindi said an associate engineer position paid from enterprise fees is proposed to support the sanitary sewer program.

Stormwater projects are proposed using Measure S funds housed in the general fund; El Gindi noted one small-scale project to replace a damaged storm drain pipe that causes recurring flooding, and a second to help the city meet state requirements such as installation of trash capture devices.

The CIP includes annual programs for sidewalk maintenance, ADA transition improvements, pavement markings and signage retroreflectivity upgrades, street-lighting improvements (El Gindi said the city has about 952 PG&E-owned streetlights and over 500 city-owned lights), and a signal upgrades program intended to move signal controllers and software toward local monitoring and eventual signal operation. The signal program is shown as an annual program of about $200,000.

El Gindi told the committee the city is applying for the federal Safe Streets for All grant to update the ADA transition plan and to develop complete-street design guidelines; she said the $250,000 currently budgeted could be used as a local match if necessary. She also said two infrastructure assessments for 2025–26— a storm drain master plan and a recycled-water feasibility study—are funded by enterprise fees to guide future projects.

No formal committee action on the CIP was taken at the meeting; El Gindi said the CIP will appear on the City Council consent calendar on June 17 after multiple prior reviews.

The committee discussed several corridor details during El Gindi’s presentation. A committee member raised a safety concern on a narrow section of Pinal Valley Road between Helena and Granada where the travel lane narrows and limits space for bicyclists; El Gindi said the corridor will be tackled as a complete-street project and that specific segments and cross sections will be determined during design. The committee also asked about Old Town traffic calming, which El Gindi said was pushed from 2025–26 to 2026–27 in the CIP.

The committee approved the minutes of the Jan. 8, 2025 meeting during the session. Members present voted to approve the Jan. 8 minutes; the minutes for December 2024 were noted as not approved at a prior meeting because two members abstained and the meeting had not constituted a valid quorum for approval.

The CIP presentation materials and the council schedule are available on the city agenda; El Gindi said she will return with design materials and community outreach for corridor projects as they move from planning to design.