Here’s how much Santa Clara is spending on city repairs

Santa Clara is slated to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to partially fix the city’s failing infrastructure.

The Santa Clara City Council unanimously allocated roughly $100 million for dozens of infrastructure projects Sept. 16 as the first dollars allotted from Measure I, a $400 million bond approved by voters last year. The money will pay for roughly $22.2 million in replacements at the George F. Haines International Swim Center, $16 million in road resurfacing and rehabilitation and $12.2 million in fire and emergency services repairs. Funds will also cover about $16.6 million in storm drain updates.

The money will significantly contribute to the city’s $624 million infrastructure deficit. It will continue to be doled out in phases until roughly $142.2 million is allocated for fire and emergency services; $115.3 million for parks, the library, senior center and aquatic facilities; $46 million for storm drain improvements; $41.2 million for streets and transportation; and $9.2 million for historic buildings and beautification. The bond will sunset in roughly 30 years.

District 3 Councilmember Karen Hardy supports the allocation because she’s seen the issues firsthand. She said Fire Station 5, which will be rebuilt using bond money along with Fire Station 7, is so outdated its garage doesn’t fit modern fire engines. She said Fire Station 5 needs to be reconfigured so engines exit on Bowers Avenue rather than the smaller, residential Mark Avenue. She added a large focus for her is upgrading storm drains because a sewage failure could lead to an emergency.

“Other councils, I feel, kicked the can down the road too far, and this council said we need to fix this,” she told San José Spotlight. “We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t need to be done, because it does.”

The funds will also be one of the first steps toward reopening the International Swim Center, which closed in 2024 due to safety concerns. The money will replace pool decks, the dive tower, recirculation plumbing and boilers, in addition to demolishing the administrative building.

Amanda Pease, board president of the Santa Clara Swim Club, said the aquatics community has advocated for a new swim center for years. The city’s swimmers have to rely on school pools, which leads to later practice times and less community-building.

Pease said the swim center’s ideal facilities would be an extension of the Community Recreation Center, with a gym and communal spaces.

“We’ve made things work, but it’s really taken its toll on our community, on that sense of the team, because we’re so spread out,” she told San José Spotlight. “We don’t have… that unifying place where people from different levels are coming together and bonding… That’s been hard.”

Other projects in the bond measure’s first phase include $5 million in accessibility improvements and $4.3 million in renovations for the Henry Schmidt Park playground.
District 4 Councilmember Kevin Park said it’s important for the city to improve its infrastructure, but he worries the bond money won’t be enough to fix everything since it doesn’t cover the total deficit. He said Santa Clara’s infrastructure maintenance backlog has ballooned over the past 15 years.

“I’m glad that we’re getting a lot of these projects done in this measure, but we have to figure out a way so that the rest of the infrastructure, the rest of the needs of the city, can be addressed without another infrastructure bond like this,” he told San José Spotlight.

Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X.