The Santa Clarita City Council is coming back from summer recess Tuesday with a slate of purchases to approve, including funding for aerial images, mulch delivery and improvements along Drayton Street.
The Drayton Street improvements are expected to cost no more than $656,217, and for that the city will get a sidewalk, curb and gutter, and curb ramps along the south side of Drayton Street to provide a continuous pedestrian path of travel from Railroad Avenue up to where it ends on Drayton Street.
The improvements are a part of the city’s plan to support a year-round homeless shelter in Santa Clarita. The work is being done by a local company, R.C. Becker, which had a winning bid that was about half the bid of the other company that bid from Oxnard.
The city also is expected to approve a plan for aerial photography for an amount not to exceed $89,000 to join a collaborative that delivers “highly accurate digital aerial imagery and elevation datasets to participants at substantial cost savings” according to city staff and has “become a national model for collaborative data acquisition.”
City officials use the imagery to help provide services for residents. The service covers a 4,100-square-mile territory for Los Angeles.
“LARIAC members will be provided with highly accurate digital aerial imagery and other data for use with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), web-mapping systems, computer-aided design (CAD), and engineering design applications,” according to the city’s agenda. “Delivery includes near-infrared imagery, oblique imagery, elevation data, topography line data, and cloud-based access to updated high-resolution orthogonal photography.”
The city estimated its cost for similar imaging, if it were not a part of the collaborative, to run about $325,000.
The city is also expected to authorize $117,000 a year for a mulch delivery service throughout its landscape maintenance districts.
The city uses mulch versus soil in its districts strategically, according to the city’s agenda.
“The city of Santa Clarita’s Landscape Maintenance District (LMD) operation spreads more than 2,400 tons of mulch throughout the 62 financially independent zones within the LMD,” according to a city staff report. “Moreover, mulch is more aesthetically pleasing than bare dirt; it helps retain moisture in the soil, thereby reducing water use; and it inhibits weed growth, thus reducing the use of chemical weed retardants.”
C&M, a Sylmar company with the winning bid, came in at about $3,000 less than the competing bid from a Granada Hills company.
