Details
What: Davis City Council
When: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Community Chambers, City Hall, 23 Russell Blvd.
Watch it: Live on Comcast Channel 16 and AT&T U-Verse Channel 99 and via webstreaming at www.cityofdavis.org/media

Spring cleaning has spilled into the summer for the City Council, as it will discuss three items Tuesday related to waste, including a potential increase in garbage collection rates for most residents as well as an ordinance to ban plastic bags citywide.

But first the council will be asked to approve an integrated waste management plan, an overarching strategy several years in the making — one that likely will include plastic bag policy and a change in the trash pickup rate structure — that’s supposed to guide Davis toward its long-term zero-waste objectives.

The management plan will push to drop the city’s waste production rate to 1.9 pounds of trash per person per day by the year 2020 and as close to zero pounds per person per day as possible by year 2025. The average resident in Davis currently produces 2.6 pounds of trash per day.

City staff also hope that commercial waste production — which includes multi-family residential properties such as apartment complexes — will drop from 12.1 pounds per day to 8.3 by 2020.

To reach these targets, through the integrated waste management plan, public works staff will begin to roll out a series of programs, policies and ordinances for the council to adopt that all aim to further the city’s waste reduction initiatives.

This year, the council would introduce, among other efforts, two pilot programs:

* One would take grass clippings, leaves and other green waste out of the gutter and put them in containers. This pilot program is already in place along Eighth Street and would be expanded to other critical bike safety routes.

* Another would have Eighth Street pilot participants add food scraps to their green waste containers.

The council will evaluate these pilots with an eye toward expanding them citywide.

Under the management plan, the council also could approve an ordinance that would crack down on people who scavenge recyclables from curbside containers.

Plastic bags

The council Tuesday also will reopen the discussion of banning single-use plastic bags in Davis — an initiative identified in the waste management plan as a zero-waste policy priority — only weeks after the state Legislature backed off its own intentions to abolish the bags statewide.

Members of the UC Davis branch of CalPIRG have urged the council for months to take up the issue and implement a citywide ban so that Davis can join the rest of the cities in California that already have passed such a law.

Most recently, the city of Los Angeles adopted a ban, making it the most populous municipality in the country to outlaw carry-out plastic bags. According to the Davis staff report, 77 jurisdictions in the state have adopted some sort of ban.

The Davis Natural Resources Commission, which has had an ordinance drafted for months while the city waited for the state to make a decision on the issue, has modeled its law after those passed by other cities.

The language has to be precise or the city could be vulnerable to legal challenge by members of the plastic bag industry.

If the ordinance is unchanged from its most recent iteration, it would apply only to large retailers such as Nugget Markets, Safeway, Save Mart, CVS/pharmacy, RiteAid and Target. Smaller stores that have gross annual sales of less than $2 million would be exempt.

The ordinance also likely would impose a 10 cents-per-bag charge on all full-sized paper bags to continue encouraging consumers to bring their own reusable bags.

The council will not have the ability Tuesday to adopt the ordinance, but it could direct staff to begin drafting the final resolution and to prepare all the necessary environmental and legal paperwork it would need to implement the new law.

If the ordinance stays on track, the council would vote on it in October and, if it’s approved, it would go into effect by July 2014.

A full list of the stores that would be affected by the ordinance can be found on the city’s website under City Council Meeting Agendas at http://city-council.cityofdavis.org/Media/Default/Documents/PDF/CityCouncil/CouncilMeetings/Agendas/20130702/09-Single-Use-Carry-out-Bag-Policy.pdf.

Sanitation rates

To further encourage waste reduction, staff will recommend Tuesday that the council adopt a variable rate structure that would bill residents for trash collection based on the size of their trash cans.

The proposed structure would bill residents who use a 95-gallon “cart” or can — which makes up about 85 percent of all trash cans used in Davis — a rate of $37.06 per month, or about a $6.50 increase from the current flat rate of $30.63.

Residents using a 35-gallon can, the smallest of three standard sizes, would be charged a monthly rate of $28.06, while those using a 65-gallon can would be charged $31.06.

The council will not officially adopt sanitation rates until October and the rates likely wouldn’t go into effect until Dec. 1. On Tuesday, council members simply have the opportunity to approve Proposition 218 notices that must be sent to all property owners in the city to notify them of the potential rate increases.

Meanwhile, the cost of waste removal to Davis customers will rise regardless of the rate structure, as Davis Waste Removal plans to charge the city about 3 percent more for its services this year, while landfill fees will go up by 2.4 percent.

Overall, the city will spend just over $10 million in the upcoming fiscal year on trash removal services.

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

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