After a five-week-long recess — and a few scattered meetings thereafter — the new Davis City Council has its calendar set and will begin its regular meeting schedule Tuesday. On the agenda are a discussion about changes to the Fifth Street traffic redesign project and a public hearing to raise waste removal rates.

The meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Chambers at City Hall, 23 Russell Blvd. It will stream live online at archive.cityofdavis.org/media and can be watched on Comcast Channel 16.

In August, the City Council slipped into a discussion over details of the Fifth Street project that will reconfigure the road between A and L streets, reducing one lane of traffic in both directions and adding bike lanes, among other changes.

Councilman Brett Lee voiced concerns in his first crack at the issue on the dais that the median that bisects the road might not be wide enough to adequately protect pedestrians who are caught in the middle while crossing from one side of the street to the other.

But because it was not a regularly scheduled agenda item, the council directed staff to come back at a later time to discuss the matter further.

Interim Public Works Director Bob Clarke explained to Lee and the rest of the council, however, that the city has designed the road with a slimmer median to allow for wider and safer traffic lanes.

With the potential of large trucks or buses traveling alongside bicyclists down Fifth Street, the wider traffic lanes afforded safer coexistence, based on studies the city had seen.

The council will discuss the balance between the wider traffic lanes and median Tuesday.

The Fifth Street project — which also will add new turn pockets, pedestrian crossings and traffic signals between A through L — has been divided into several phases of implementation.

The city already has secured $836,000 through a Sacramento Area Council of Governments grant to pay for the bulk of Phase 1. However, Davis about $200,000 short of paying for the entire cost of the initial phase, which is estimated at $1.09 million.

If the city doesn’t secure any more funding, city staff will bring the final Fifth Street Phase 1 design to the Safety and Parking Advisory Commission, the Bicycle Advisory Commission and finally the City Council to prioritize the various components of the project and move forward using the available funding.

The cost of the ultimate vision for Fifth Street is estimated at $1.77 million.

Once KD Anderson & Associates, the firm designing the project for the city, finalizes the engineering, the city can send out bids for construction.

Community Development Administrator Katherine Hess believes the final engineering will be complete by the spring and that construction will begin in the summer.

Waste removal

While the city figures out how to structure the water rates it will use to pay for whatever multimillion-dollar surface water project the council decides to pursue, city officials also have proposed an increase to the other line item that residents find on their bimonthly utility bills: sanitation rates.

Clarke and Utilities Manager Jacques DeBra will propose Tuesday to raise residential sanitation rates by 89 cents per month to cover the cost of weekly garbage, recycling, yard material and street sweeping services.

The 3 percent increase city officials have proposed equates to a hike in the residential curbside monthly charge from $29.74 to $30.63. The rate change would go into effect on Dec. 1.

According to Clarke and DeBra, Davis Waste Removal recently has begun charging the city more for its services, and the city hopes to make up the difference with the new rates. The city has contracted with DWR for sanitation services since 1972.

But there is a plus side to the rate hike.

“The increase will also allow the city to implement recycling programs (such as the Pilot Commercial Organics Program) that move the city toward its diversion rate target of 75 percent by 2020 (as mandated by the state),” the staff report prepared by Clarke and DeBra said.

However, when the council conducted its first public hearing to discuss the rate increases, council members expressed frustration that the new rates themselves did not encourage conservation, something Mayor Joe Krovoza said the council had been seeking for years.

City Manager Steve Pinkerton said that in order to stave off any potential contractual problems with DWR, it must pass these rates now and revisit reduction incentives at a later time.

As of Thursday, the city clerk had received 21 protests to the rate increases from property owners who received Prop. 218 notices. In order to halt the new rates, more than 50 percent of property owners in Davis, or 7,791 of 15,580 property owners, would have to file protests.

— Reach Tom Sakash at [email protected] or (530) 747-8057. Follow him on Twitter @TomSakash

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