THE VASCO WARS Piercing the Fog Surrounding Highway Safety Improvements
	January/FebRuary 2005

by Annette Beckstrand
Photos by Russell Byrne

I was raised in Livermore and for years we drove our family station wagon to Brentwood in order to pick fruit, which we took home and turned into pantry shelves full of jam.

When three families who were friends of my parents’ bought land in Brentwood in the 70s we laughed at them. “What are you going to do out there?” my parents asked. “You’re going to die in the wilderness!”

Ten years ago we moved to Brentwood ourselves. We ran into our former friends who were astonished to see us. “What are you doing here?” they asked. “We just moved here,” we said. They really laughed at us! “Do your parents know?”

Like so many other people, we moved here to get the quality home that we wanted. The big goal was for me to stay at home and not work, and moving to East County was the way we could do that.

We also moved here because we had the feeling that our kids would be safe. There are six kids in our family. My mom would pack our lunch and we would ride to the park. Eat our lunch. Pay a quarter to go swimming. Back home for dinner.

We couldn’t do that in Livermore by the time my children came along. We could do that in Brentwood, however. We didn’t have to worry about unsavory characters lurking around our parks.

Trying to Come to Terms with Vasco Road
Vasco Road is a painful topic for me. I find it difficult to subdue my passions and retain a politically correct detachment in the face of the maneuvering and political gamesmanship that have been played with this topic.

My connection with Vasco Road began almost a decade ago when I spent five months with my kids driving the old Vasco Road on a daily basis. Even then we were trying to cope with people driving far over the speed limit and passing improperly.

My husband commuted as well. He left home at 5:15 in the morning and got back home at 2:45 p.m. My eldest son commuted for three years. My second son commuted for a year.

I remember nights when I was standing over the stove, preparing dinner, while wondering if all my loved ones were going to get all right. If they were 45 minutes late I wondered if they were going to be getting home at all.

The Vasco commute became even more unsettling as the years went by.

So now it is difficult for me to be tolerant of some of the agendas — both disclosed and concealed — that seem continually to be fogging up the current Vasco Road debate as we talk and talk while waiting for issues to be resolved that somehow never get resolved.

After some of our meetings are finished I sometimes feel that we are even less clear about what we are doing than when the discussion began.

Opportunity Missed
A year ago the City of Brentwood offered to loan the county money that we believed, based upon our own engineering studies, would be sufficient for installing temporary barriers in the most dangerous sections of the road.

The City Council offered a $1.5 million loan for ten years with no interest. This investment was to be made, not for long-term improvements, but as a short-term measure to save lives until the county and state could make permanent improvements.

Right from the beginning we were disappointed by the fact that our then County Supervisor, Millie Greenburg, sent a staff member instead of coming in person to accept our offer. We had hoped the county would be more enthusiastic about being presented with what seemed to us a great opportunity to address the problem.

We had done sufficient research to feel that we had a grasp on what was needed to save lives. If the county had simply spent the money on implementing the plan that we had created, we would have ended up with a barrier that would have eliminated the deadly crossover accidents that had plagued the road as out of control cars or vehicles passing improperly flew into oncoming traffic like balls crashing through pins in a bowling alley.

Tilting at Millie’s Windmills
Rather than actually taking action, however, the county began to carry out its own research and to moderate a series of discussions about whether our proposal was the best thing, given the need for emergency vehicles to get to the scene of an accident and the necessity of providing sufficient breaks for local traffic.

We on the City Council thought that these issues could be dealt with and resolved by a committee charged with working out the details.

However, the county began by putting together a Vasco Road Taskforce, bringing representatives from the older Highway 4 taskforce under Millie’s umbrella, together with citizen activists, Jeff Altman and Joann Flynn.

I suspect that the county put this group together as a public relations maneuver because Millie was taking a lot of political heat at that time. She was running for re-election and her campaign was suffering.

She was unwilling to take the decisive steps that we recommended and had provided the funds to pay for, but simply wished to put on a good face before the public. When the primaries didn’t go well, she took the additional step of hiring Nolte Associates to make another study.

Nolte Associates was very qualified and the report they brought was comprehensive. However, the report missed the point completely, which was figuring out a way to save lives right now.

Instead Nolte put together the plan for the ultimate improvement of the highway, bringing it up to CalTrans standards in preparation for the day when the state would adopt the highway.

Of course, there is no $90 million dollars available to bring the roadway up to the CalTrans standards. And even if they could find the money, CalTrans itself isn’t going to have resources to take over Vasco Road in the foreseeable future.

I was incensed that the county should have warped the goal to such an extent. By commissioning this expensive and detailed report, they excused themselves from the need to implement the realistic improvements that would have saved lives in the short-term.

The county ignored the point that the goal was to minimize fatal accidents by preventing aggressive or careless drivers from threatening the lives of innocent people.

Talk! Talk! Talk!
Being in politics myself, I’m aware of the temptation for people in public office to develop an attitude that views the holding of endless meetings and conducting numerous studies to be the content of the job they were elected or appointed to do.

I’m on a mission to fight against that attitude. The job of people who serve the public should be to solve the problems that their constituents have. It isn’t our purpose to merely give the impression of working on those problems through endless discussions about them.

Someone once said that the county will always institute a task force or conduct a research study in order to avoid actually doing anything — in this case actually erecting the traffic barriers that we need so much.

Just before adjournment of one of our task force meetings, I asked Millie, “What steps are you going to take between now and the next meeting to bring forward lifesaving improvements before any more deaths occur?”

My question was a loaded one because I knew she had no answer. The fact is, neither the county nor the state has a plan to do anything right now to get those barriers into place.

I’m sure Millie thought my question was a bad one because, according to her way of looking at things, by conducting the task force meeting she had done something.

The only decision the county has made so far is a de facto one — by waffling around with the process they decided not to use the money we gave them to implement the short-term solution we suggested.

The grim fact remains that if the county had simply taken the money the City of Brentwood had offered and had used it to erect the barriers that our engineers had recommended, those four people in that van last fall who were killed by that irresponsible driver swerving in and out of the lanes of traffic would probably be alive today.

We’re trying to talk to death issues that become actual life-and-death matters in the blink of an eye. People don’t die by themselves. When those people died in that accident, the tragedy touched the lives of their widows, the 15 children left orphaned, and the eight grandchildren. Plus, who knows how many other lives were affected by that single, terrible moment.

Lessons from the Bypass
I’m actually in a good position to critique efforts that try to force Vasco Road improvements into inappropriate compliance with CalTrans standards since I currently am the chairperson of the Bypass Authority. We are responsible to ensure that design standards for the new bypass extension meet CalTrans guidelines.

Our contract with CalTrans obligates them to assume responsibility for the bypass, once it is completed. In exchange, they agreed to relinquish their control of the current part of Highway 4 that goes through Oakley and Brentwood.

The catch in the deal is that CalTrans is obligated to bring the Oakley/Brentwood part of the road up to the CalTrans standards before turning the road over to us.

We’re currently three years away from the date that the State scheduled for adopting the Highway 4 Bypass. CalTrans has been attempting to hold us hostage in getting the permits necessary to finish the north end of the bypass on the condition that we would release them from their contractual obligation for fixing the current highway.

CalTrans is really in a bind, at this point. The state lacks the resources to meet their contractual obligations in fixing up the Oakley/Brentwood section of Highway 4. They don’t have resources neither to assume maintenance of the Bypass nor the funds to fix up the existing highway.

So you see the foolishness of the county officials in worrying about spending $94 million dollars in bringing Vasco Road up to CalTrans standards when there is no way CalTrans could possible afford to actually adopt the road anytime in the next decade.

Counties all over the state have been adopting the kind of short-term solution we were advocating, but our county simply won’t do this.

An impenetrable fog has settled in to obscure the Vasco Road improvement process. And I believe the fog has been intentionally created in order to blind people to the unwillingness to act on the part of the officials who are in control of the process.

The county isn’t doing anything. They aren’t planning to do anything. The county isn’t going to spend $94 million on fixing Vasco Road in Millie Greenburg’s lifetime.

I’m personally encouraged by Mary Piepho’s recent successful campaign to unseat Millie as our County Supervisor. I believe that Mary really has the best interests of our citizens at heart. I expect that she will provide actual leadership in identifying the information she needs and then taking action based upon that information.

I should add, at this point, that I believe Millie Greenburg to be a good-hearted person, herself. She was simply not equipped, perhaps, to carry out the duties that her position demanded of her.

Postscript
We think it is ironic that we moved to Brentwood so that “mom” could stay home and now I’m never at home. I work long hours, including most evenings, at a job that pays me $550 a month. The fact is, I really like working on the City Council because I’m sure that the work of the council is having a tremendously positive effect on the community. There’s more we should do than we are actually doing, but we’re accomplishing things that really make the community a better place to live, work, and play. That feels good!

The City Council is at its best when we are able to do something like provide affordable housing for schoolteachers. Or provide more park space than any other city in the county. We are working hard to provide programs and amenities that make this a great place for a family.

I have blossomed in my public roles. Serving the public has become not only a passion but a source of genuine pleasure and fulfillment.

My ability to assume a leadership position in the community has come, in part, from the incredible guy I’m married to. From the beginning of our relationship my husband saw more value and worth in me than I did. I finally began to be curious about the person he saw when he was looking at me and tried to see myself through his eyes.

So my husband has become my supremely tangible example of unconditional love and encouragement. He’s “The Wind Beneath my Wings.”

My personal faith in God was the other part of my success in coming out of my shell. I’m on a life-long quest of trying to learn God’s plan for my life. I’ve been realizing that as a daughter of God, I’m a person of individual worth.

So in a sense, God and my husband share the same view of me. They both think I’m a valuable person.

With that kind of awareness growing in my heart I began to lighten up on myself. I realized that I didn’t have to worry about how I looked or what I said. It didn’t really matter whether I appeared to be intelligent, or not.

For example, if both God and my husband think I’m good, should it matter if some political opponent doesn’t have a good opinion of me?

The only thing that finally matters to me is the answer to the question, Am I doing what God wants me to do? Am I meeting the needs of my family? Am I meeting the needs of Brentwood Residents?

Getting my priorities straight at that level has brought the rest of life into order. I’m working for the benefit of others. I want to get the Vasco Road mess fixed up and I don’t care who gets the credit. Everything doesn’t always have to be about me. I just want people to stop dying.

925-516-5440
abeckstrand@ci.brentwood.ca.us
www.ci.brentwood.ca.us