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Calaveras Supes To Hear Road Safety Plan, Tree Mortality Update

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San Andreas, CA – Adopting a proposed road safety plan is among this week’s to-do list for the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors.

Public Works officials are recommending the board approve a Local Road Safety Plan (LRSP), developed to provide an overview of safety strategies, projects, and progress. Geared to reducing overall collisions in Calaveras County by December 2023 by 25 percent and fatal and severe injury accidents 50 percent by December 2025, the plan would be updated annually to provide quantifiable evidence of implementation and progress.

Officials point to 2017 statistics showing that 18 people lost their lives in vehicle accidents in Calaveras County, mainly due to human error, and hope to focus the next big wave of projects in the county on increasing local road safety in collaboration with partnering agencies and organizations.

Among other regular agenda items is a presentation by TSS Consultants, which manages the county’s tree mortality program. Since it began in October of 2017, the company will report that 23 projects involving the cutting and removal of over 7,400 trees have been completed. Seven more planned projects are in various stages and a limited return of several hundred right-of-entry forms remains a principal constraint to implementing work.

As the work continues under a disaster declaration the county can anticipate up to 75 percent program cost reimbursement. TSS Consultants shares that its field observations in Calaveras and Amador counties confirm the latest research from the University of California and the U.S. Forest Service, which report that mortality of ponderosa and sugar pines has tapered off but that the mortality of true fir has increased since 2017.

The supervisors will also proclaim this Kindness Week in Calaveras County, further deeming the jurisdiction as a Random Acts of Kindness Zone. They will also declare February 2020 Civil Grand Jury Awareness Month in the county.

Tuesday’s meeting will open to the public in the supervisors’ chambers (891 Mountain Ranch Road) in the government center following an 8 a.m. closed session with legal counsel on two matters of anticipated litigation.

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