School safety may be at the heart of nearly every project District 1 Councilman Diego Bernal advocates, but he said the rules for how the city spends money delay improvement projects.
Now he’s on a mission to change that.
"We can all agree that pedestrian safety around schools is a priority. No one's going to argue with that," he said.
While working on several projects fixing sidewalks at places like Edison High School and installing lighting outside of Ridgeview Elementary, Bernal said he found the process to be too time consuming.
Instead, he wants a way to make school improvements more of an automatic fix.
"Let's lock it into our budget, lock it into our policies, so that it's happening automatically without all of this effort, without all of this negotiating," Bernal said.
So far he has got backing from at least four other council members, including District 4 Councilman Rey Saldaña, District 6 Councilman Ray Lopez, District 7 Councilman Cris Medina, and District 8 Councilman Reed Williams.
If approved, the money may come directly from the council members’ budgets, or may have to be raised from other sources like grants.
Bernal said it's still up in the air, but he’s hopeful for a budget plan that will provide a lasting solution to this issue.
