City Council Meeting Highlights

Highlights from the August 20 City Council meeting:

• The City’s geologist gave the latest updates on land movement in the Portuguese Bend Landslide complex. While the overall rate of movement across 680 acres varies from acceleration of 13% to deceleration of 13%, the overall trend is deceleration of 1%. However, the landslide is still moving approximately 88 times faster than it was in October 2022.
• Borehole drilling has shown there is movement on a deeper slide plane, which had not been previously known, and the deeper slide plane is moving much faster than the shallower slide plane.
• This means City staff and the team of geologists and engineers working to slow the land movement must change their strategy. The Council authorized City staff to take a more holistic approach by expanding the project area to encompass the entire landslide complex, prioritizing the deeper slide.
• City Staff will return to the Council with emergency construction contracts to install deeper, vertical dewatering wells as a pilot program at the toe of the landslide to provide immediate relief. Drilling of these wells is expected to begin in the coming weeks.
• Staff will continue work on developing drainage improvements and assessing the timing of the hydraugers.
• Staff will also explore what temporary housing resources may be available from the county or state for residents displaced by land movement.
• The Council postponed a discussion on potentially taking a position on PVPUSD’s school bond measure, as there was not a large enough majority vote to take a position. Instead, this topic will be revisited at the September 3 City Council meeting.

For all City Council actions from the meeting, watch video at rpvca.gov/agendas.