The Tracy City Council held a short emergency meeting Friday morning to confirm its support of the Safe Routes to School project.
Tracy City Administrator Jeff Carpenter told the council he was contacted late last Thursday and was told Tracy wouldn’t officially be given the go-ahead to start the project until the council passed a resolution approving the submission of a SRS application.
The SRS path is planned to be constructed parallel to Pine St. between the elementary and high schools. There will be two crosswalks included within the path, one near each school.
“They needed a resolution and asked when they could get it,” said Carpenter.
Both the school district and City had to officially sign off on the project before it commences, Carpenter said.
Carpenter was out of town when the email was sent to him and wasn’t able to respond immediately.
“I got a message back from this person who said since we didn’t respond to him they were prepared to not go forward with the Safe Routes to School application because we needed more things from you that need to be changed,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter said the City Attorney was charged with responding to the person who had reached out to Carpenter to let him know the council did pass the resolution.
“We had already called for a public hearing on (April) 14th, so we’re going to continue on with that; we’ve already advertised for that,” said Carpenter. “If they’d have gotten this to me two weeks ago, we wouldn’t be having this emergency meeting.”
The council passed the resolution unanimously. “This is an important project, and I can see no downside to the project,” council member Seth Schmidt said.
