The section of Interstate 5 that runs through Lathrop is less than appealing.

And that won’t likely change after a decision by the Lathrop City Council on Monday night not to move forward with a proposal that would have adopted a 4-mile stretch of the freeway and give city workers the staff necessary to maintain it.

Despite getting numerous calls about the condition of the Caltrans right-of-way at the two main freeway off ramps into Lathrop as well as the length of road between them and extending out in each direction, the pitch by Lathrop city staff to hire an additional maintenance worker and the inclusion of the highway stretch into their regular upkeep schedule failed to gain the traction necessary to proceed.

An attempt by Lathrop Mayor Sonny Dhaliwal to salvage the proposal – by agreeing to move forward with the Adopt-A-Highway portion of the proposal without actually hiring any additional staff members – failed when a second to the motion was not received.

Lathrop City Manager Steve Salvatore pulled no punches when he described the conditions that motorists face when they pull off of the highway – calling it “terrible” and “absolutely horrendous” – but the cost associated with hiring a new maintenance worker, roughly $86,000-a-year, was enough to prompt some on the council to proclaim that there’s a better way to spend that money.

For Vice Mayor Steve Dresser spending almost “half a million dollars” on something that should already be completed by Caltrans was not the way to be worthwhile stewards of public funds. Dresser appeared to agree with Salvatore on the status of some of the vegetation issues that could be addressed by taking over the maintenance, mainly the 106 trees that exist within the section of highway that runs from the 120 Bypass to the Roth Road off ramp. But shelling out the money to pay for such an endeavor, he said, wasn’t the right play.

“That’s taxpayer money that we can use for something else,” he said.

According to Salvatore, Caltrans maintenance schedule is impacted to the point that spot cleanups are not possible. He and his staff have made numerous phone calls and requests to have sections of the highway cleaned up only to discover that the transportation agency has either more pressing matters to attend to or not enough crews to handle the work.

If it were approved the highway maintenance work would have become just another stop for city crews that would have been bolstered by the hiring of an additional officer. Any new vegetation, Salvatore said, would have been provided by Caltrans through grants and could have been planted by the city crew tasked with completing and maintaining the work.

Even a suggestion of focusing on just the two main off ramps and tending to the rest of the freeway section when time permitted wasn’t enough to garner the necessary votes to move forward with the Adopt-A-Highway portion of the proposal.