By Mayor Gloria Partida and Councilmember Dan Carson
Last month marked an important occasion – the completion of the reconstruction of a 1.3-mile section of bike path on the south side of Russell Boulevard from Highway 113 west to the city edge. Long regarded as one of the worst stretches of pavement in our bike path system, the city partnered with the UC Davis campus to build a new, smooth, well-marked bike and pedestrian path on campus property safely away from the tree roots that turned the old pathway into a bumpy obstacle course.
Meanwhile, the city is moving forward in April with a $1 million bike path improvement project in North Davis. An almost $3 million pavement rehabilitation package including slurry seal treatment of various residential streets as well as grinding and overlay of new pavement on D, E and Eighth streets is also scheduled this spring.
Many more such pavement rehabilitation projects for both roads and bike paths are in the offing because of the City Council’s adoption last October of an $84 million ten-year funding plan designed to measurably improve the condition of our almost 218 miles of pavement.
Our pavement will get better. The council formally reaffirmed its goal of improving the “pavement condition index” for roads and bike paths to values that are more in line with the pavement conditions in neighboring communities and the statewide average. Council adopted a ten-year funding plan identifying and earmarking the level of resources our independent expert engineering consultant determined was needed to achieve those goals. Council then directed city staff to return with 2020-21 budget adjustments consistent with that plan.
Our consultant had initially estimated that we would have $53 million available over ten years to complete the $84 million in work that would be needed to meet those pavement improvement goals. This estimate includes making full use of about $1.3 million in annual revenues from the 2017 state gas tax increase (known as SB 1) for pavement rehabilitation, as is already the 
city’s practice.
The council directed the two of us, working as a council subcommittee with city staff and the chair of the city Finance and Budget Commission (FBC), to find the rest of the money. We met about every two or three weeks from January through October 2020 to hammer out a list of credible actions to fully address the remaining $31 million funding gap. The solution list is explained in great detail in the October 27, 2020, city staff reports but briefly summarized here.
Notably, the plan does not increase tax rates on Davis residents but assumes that a relatively small share of the $31 million would come from future revenue from local economic development. No current program or infrastructure project would lose funding and other important transportation projects and programs would be unaffected. However, because this plan reprioritizes city funding to this core and critical infrastructure, it could slow commitments for unidentified new programs and projects.
Specifically, the plan takes into account prior council decisions providing money for fixing our pavement that had gone unrecognized in previous consultant modeling, such as $300,000 per year approved in the past to offset road damage from garbage trucks. Our General Fund “baseline” funding commitment to roads, unchanged for the last seven years, will now increase in keeping pace with the overall growth in General Fund revenues, with a further $1.2 million bump in annual funding after the Covid-19 recession is over. About $500,000 a year in other transportation and gas tax revenues will be prioritized for pavement work as state law allows. Another $2.8 million of $13 million in uncommitted community enhancement funds from previously approved developments will go to “fix it first” pavement projects that will benefit residents who live in or near those projects as well as the city as a whole.
The plan institutes best practices to reduce the cost to taxpayers for fixing our pavement, including a moratorium on “trench cuts” on recently paved streets and roads and updated permit fees to offset damage to streets when such work does occur. City crews will patch potholes reported by our citizens before damage worsens and escalates pavement rehabilitation costs. In keeping with past city practices, the plan provides the funding needed to carry out a mix of pavement rehabilitation techniques, ranging from slurry seal, to surface reconstruction with hot mix asphalt, cold-in-place recycling, and full-depth reconstruction of failing pavement, depending on the needs of the particular road or pathway segment.
New systems of accountability and transparency will ensure the public knows that the plan is being followed over time and, if not, why not. Staff will regularly audit road and bike path expenditures and carefully assess whether sufficient city staffing is in place to deliver pavement projects. The FBC is charged with taking an active role in ensuring that this plan is implemented faithfully and to the extent city finances allow.
This plan does not solve all our city’s infrastructure and fiscal challenges. Given the limits in available funding, it will significantly reduce, but not eliminate, a backlog of road and bike path work that accumulated over many years. It will take ten years to carry out this plan; obviously not everyone’s favorite piece of pavement will improve overnight.
However, in the midst of a pandemic and severe recession, our City Council has made a significant commitment to improve our transportation infrastructure and the city’s overall financial condition. And, first and foremost, it will improve the quality of life of our citizens and the prospects for our businesses whose livelihoods depend on a sound transportation system.
Gloria Partida is the Mayor of Davis. Dan Carson is a Davis City Councilmember. Both were elected in June 2018.
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I’ll believe it when I see it. Where I walk each day the streets are disintegrating before my very eyes. At the corner of Cornell and Pine, a place where hundreds of elementary students will again ride once schools reopen each day to and from both Chavez and Willett elementary schools, the road is literally breaking apart at the corners. The City has been aware of the condition of this street for years. Rich Rifkin wrote a column about it several years ago.
I’ll tell you this, Ron G… forgetting the financing piece for the moment, what is proposed is what essentially had been proposed by staff, since the mid-’80’s, but the political will was not there to back staff… neither by encouragement, nor by financial backing. Seems like they’ve finally “got religion”… for the time being, we’re facing a 30+ year ‘debt’, caused by a lack of action/commitment/common sense.
One anaolgy might be ignoring regular, daily dental hygiene, bypassing twice annual teeth cleaning, ignoring tooth aches, and finally. when the pain is excruciating (and/or teeth falling out), getting upset that one faces major oral surgery, over a period of years, and realizing not all the damage can be corrected in one visit.
Suggest you modify your first sentnce, at least mentally, and have faith at least for a couple of years, that we are finally on the right track… and if the political will fails, if you don’t see steady progress, albeit not ‘fast’, you should feel free to be cynical…
I think they need to do away with asphalt paving all together don’t pave another road tear all that crap out.
Every time they build a new road you find a city workers or some other worker out there nesting in the middle of the road by digging some stupid hole having to fix something in a brand new roadway.
If we simply went back to gravel roads it would slow down traffic the kids can play in the mud puddles and they could throw rocks at each other on the way to school now that’s happiness granted they might have to buy a couple of road graders but I think that be a cheap cost in comparison to paving all the damn roads in the city
But then again that’s just my opinion ?
A very dusty solution, CG.
But does deal with that nasty substance known as asphalt.
Bicycling would be challenging.
Julie Partansky would be proud.
“Julie Partansky would be proud.”
Proving that no growth is not sustainable and leads to decline.
Don’t understand your comment, RG.
Julie was the darling of the no growth scene. But that lack of growth and the revenue it generates has led to the decline of the existing infrastructure. The implication of the term no growth is that a steady state is sustainable but the decline of existing infrastructure demonstrates that no growth actually leads to decline and therefore is not sustainable.
It’s amazing how the failure of a sprawling business/housing development encourages the city to find money that was already there.
I do appreciate the rebuild of the West Davis bike path. I ride that fairly often and that path had gone to sh*t.
I am skeptical along with RG, as years of neglect don’t bode well to being able to get past the clear disintegration of so many roads that are years beyond their renewal date. In the last year or so, I have taken to stopping most days to pick up various chunks of asphalt that have been loosened from a crack to throw it off the roadway so a bike doesn’t hit it at night. (I wish I could also fill the crack it came from with patch asphalt, but I’ll leave that for the City to fix)
Also, why does the City have money now in the middle of a societal meltdown with low revenues, when it didn’t before during the times which led to this asphalt neglect? Doesn’t pass the smell test.
Your last paragraph Alan… my nose isn’t as good as it was 10 years ago, but I, too, am curious, and plan to be nosing around…
To me, the main thing is it appears there is hope, in the present and future, to address the ‘sins of the past’… a ‘renewal’, as it were…
In the past, particularly late ’80’s thru ~ 2010 priorities were ‘scewed’ in my opinion… infracturure operations and maintenance have not been ‘politically correct’ nor ‘glamorous’ for many years… CC’s go for the ‘popular’, more than basic function needs when allocating resources…
I got “an A” in an upper division poly sci class for expounding that in 1976… as a PW intern for 4 years, I understood the reality… all the other poly sci students completely rejected that view… but the lecturer/professor understood. Only poli sci class I ever took… it was about local government and the decision making process. The other 29 students had no clue of reality… just philosophy… they were also correct… decision makers in government play to ‘sentiments’ rather than ‘basic business’… the reason why governments were founded… water supply, sewage disposal, access, public safety… social services, parks/greenbelts, recreation, open space, posturing on other matters, are secondary, as to why government entities exist.
Davisville became Davis (incorporated City) because everyone had their own well, own septic tank, wooden streets dirt roads (even in downtown, when they evenually gravelled the dirt roads), volunteer fire dept. (with no hydrants), and the sheriff’s office. It was not about childcare, recreation, etc.
There were frequent fires, particularly downtown, flooding, impassible roads in the wet season, etc., prior to Davisville becoming an actual municipality… look at any competent history of Davis.
Regular maintenance is not a shiny object. The good of this as I think you would agree is that things have gotten bad enough that something so mundane can now be brought before the public as a shiny object. Shame it takes mass asphalt disintegration to achieve.
The single cost that I believe that hurts all cities when it comes to road construction whether it’s building a new road or fixing the old it all boils down to just one thing called davis-bacon act which is simply the so-called prevailing wages for the State of California which really doesn’t reflect the wages in the area it just simply some figure that unions in the state of California decided they want to pay to anybody that works on your roadways years ago during the depression that was a good thing it helped people but today prevailing wage only helps the unions and the people under that dome in California and that’s all we probably pay about double what we really should be paying in reality which makes no sense but cities and counties they don’t really put up a fight
If we truly had people in government that wanted to watch out for the taxpayers better interest they would fix this problem but they don’t want to.
And this is just one blue collar workers opinion.
Sac is run by corps and unions, so good luck with that. The cities/counties don’t put up a fight because they all know that’s biting the hand that feeds.
I have two questions about asphalt that I’ve always wanted to know but never had anybody around to really ask the question to.
Asphalt is nothing but a big giant heat sink because it’s black why not change the color of the asphalt to reduce the temperature of the asphalt sounds kind of environmentally correct to me it sure as hell would be easier walking on in your bare feet that’s for sure.
Since asphalt absorbs so much heat why don’t we use it to produce electricity?
There’s been lots of work on trying to use lighter and reflective road surfaces, but it has been more technologically difficult than originally envisioned.
This is a link to a product that I was referring to Richard
https://www.dailynews.com/2017/06/23/as-la-heat-wave-bakes-valley-residents-say-cool-pavement-project-is-working/
There’s a link to the company website that provides that particular product
And that was a quick search I’m sure if the city spent a little time with it they might find a lot more of them out there.
https://guardtop.com/coolseal/
That sounds racist. 🙂
Do you suppose there’s some underlying message in there, regarding Idaho?
Regardless, I prefer the term “asphalt of color”, which is probably something that should be encouraged.
Probably a good thing that comments will soon be limited.
Just a reminder:
Starting this week, we are going to go back to implementing a limitation on comments per article—five comments per article per commenter.
https://davisvanguard.org/2021/02/cha-cha-cha-changes-the-vanguard-grows-and-now-changes/
Can’t say everyone wasn’t warned anyway…