ATASCADERO — The Atascadero City Council met over Zoom on Tuesday night to discuss and review a financial audit of 2020 from Moss, Levy and Hartzhiem and discuss the annual road report spawned from the passing of Measure F-14 in 2014.

The meeting began with some brief updates from the City Manager before Atascadero Fire Chief Casey Bryson took over to lead a presentation on Atascadero’s new evacuation planning method. The Atascadero Fire Department will be formally teaching the public about the latest software that they have spent a year working on in the coming weeks but first gave a preview to the Council Tuesday night.

“We realized we really needed to get a little more into evacuation planning and evacuation notifications,” Bryson told the Council. “Looking into both of those and how we can do a better job, we came across Zone Haven.”

The website breaks Atascadero into different sections and will help all citizens keep track of evacuation orders keeping them safe and organized during stressful times.

Following the Chief’s presentation, City staff dove into the 2020 financial audit. The 2019-2020 fiscal year was an unpredictable one that presented many challenges due to the stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the challenges, the City performed relatively well overall with the help from one-time funding from governmental aid through the CARES Act and Senate Bill 1090. The City was also aided by vacant positions being left open during the pandemic.

After little discussion, a motion was made, and the audit was accepted. The 100 plus pages of the City’sCity’s financial statements can be found online at Atascadero.org.

The second and final item of the night was a review of the Citizens’ Oversight Committee’s Annual Road Report. The report was approved on December 10, 2020, and detailed how the City has been using the Sales Tax increase in 2014 to fix roads as they promised and which roads are in for a touch-up in 2021.

The City has implemented a “Critical Point Management” methodology that selects segments of roads whose conditions are such that if repairs or maintenance is not performed soon, the road will deteriorate into a state that will require more extensive repairs than if maintenance could be achieved sooner.

Between July 2019 and June 2020, the City earned just under 2.5 million from Measure F-14 Sales Tax Revenue and fixed 4.24 miles of City maintained roads in Atascadero.

In 2021, the City is looking to fix 3.81 miles of roads, including sections of Old Morro Road East, Marchant Ave, Pismo Ave and Marchant Way.

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