The Water Advisory Committee voted unanimously Thursday to recommend that the Davis City Council forgo placing the surface water project on the November ballot and wait until next year.

The committee wants more time to explore all possible options for the city’s new water supply.

City Manager Steve Pinkerton explained to the water committee at its meeting Thursday that, after the committee recommended last month that the council place a binding project measure on the November ballot, several new developments have altered the situation.

The issues working against a fall vote, Pinkerton said, include the fact that the school now plans on placing a parcel tax on the November ballot, something the city hadn’t anticipated when the WAC first made its recommendation. City officials worry about the success of passing both a school parcel tax and higher water rates in the same election.

And, even after the council granted the WAC extensions for making its decisions on exactly what project the city should pursue, Pinkerton said he believes the time frame is still too tight for the water committee to make a definitive decision and realistically inform the public by November.

The committee eventually unanimously agreed on the postponement of the November vote. The committee then voted 9-0-1, with one abstention, to have the vote “no later than June 30, 2013″ instead of hammering down a specific date in March.

But before the WAC decided to move the ballot measure from fall to next year, committee members had to weigh the consequences of delay.

Pinkerton explained that because the city of Woodland faces deadlines to meet its water quality standards much sooner than Davis does, Woodland doesn’t have the time Davis wants to make a fully vetted decision on the project.

That means Woodland must send out bid requests in December to the three design-build-operate teams that would potentially deliver the project in order to stave off potentially crushing fines for failing to meet its water quality standards from the state Water Quality Control Board.

In order for Davis to delay a public vote on the project and keep the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency option open for itself, Pinkerton proposed to the water committee that Davis pay for, or “absorb” the cost of, three extra bids furnished by the design-build-operate contracting teams for a Woodland-only option.

The three teams would not require the cities of Davis or Woodland to pay for just the original bid proposals; those would come at no cost to the cities.

Pinkerton explained that if Davis waits until next year to put the project to a vote, Woodland would send out bid requests on its own in December. This would leave Davis out of the project for good, or put the city in the position that, should it want to rejoin the project later, it likely would have to pay much more than it originally would have to build out the infrastructure.

Under Pinkerton’s plan, Davis essentially would pay to keep both Woodland-Davis and Woodland-only options on the table, while Davis makes up its mind on its options.

If the city of Davis decided to pursue a West Sacramento option,Woodland still would have the bids from the contractors to pursue the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency project alone. Woodland City Manager Paul Navazio said last month that his city has no intentions of pursuing a West Sacramento water supply option.

But that was not the only recommendation the water committee was asked to make about the Woodland-Davis project Thursday.

Pinkerton also presented a proposal from Woodland to have Davis join in filling the water treatment site, one aspect of the Woodland-Davis project, in order to prepare the site for construction. Filling the site would cost the city of Davis just over $500,000 now. And then, if the city decided to continue on with the Woodland-Davis project as a whole, it would cost about $1 million more.

The committee voted unanimously to recommend that the council not pay the approximately $500,000 until the city has made a decision on the project as a whole. The cost of the water treatment facility project could rise because of the decision not to help fill the site now.

Then, after the two recommendations were made, the water committee may have thrown the city a curve ball.

As Woodland and the deadlines it faces are driving the city of Davis to make decisions faster than it might prefer, the committee decided 6-4 to recommend that the council not decide either of these items — incurring the cost of an extra design-build-operate proposal from each team and the site-fill proposal — until after the council fully understands what consequences Woodland faces from the Water Quality Control Board for not meeting its deadlines.

WAC member Frank Loge raised the question that if the control board recognizes that Woodland is making good faith efforts alongside the city of Davis to seriously address its water needs, that the consequences for not meeting those deadlines could be much less harsh than the committee is being led to believe.

The council will consider the water committee’s recommendations at its meeting Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. in Community Chambers at City Hall, 23 Russell Blvd.

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

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