City of Davis

City of Davis

by Steve Tracy
This past Tuesday evening the City Council considered changes to the design of the 5th/Russell corridor, between A and L Streets. Opportunities to put missing bike lanes on the street and deal with ongoing safety issues have been missed in the past. We hope this time the community can learn from the experience in other similar situations, set aside fear and emotion, and support a decision to create a safer street that will serve everyone better.

In February of 2005, the timing of the traffic signals was modified at the intersections where F and G Streets meet 5th Street. The new timing, called “split-phase” in traffic engineer vernacular, allows only one direction of traffic on 5th Street (eastbound or westbound) to flow at a time.

General Plan

The Davis City Council last night began to embark upon their discussion of how the General Plan update process should proceed. There was considerable discussion as to whether it should even go forward at this point given the current economic situation, given the costs of proceeding, and given the uncertainty of our times.

The consistent question that arises and is never really answered by those councilmembers who support going forward with an update is why we need to do so now, rather than take the Housing Element that has already been adopted and perhaps modifying the plan with more modern and general principles of sustainability.

General Plan

On Tuesday night, the Davis City Council will start take steps towards developing a plan of attack for the next General Plan Update. According to the staff report:

A General Plan update would potentially address all of the Council goal categories of: Infrastructure; Fiscal stability; Downtown Davis; Housing; Sustainability; Safety and Health; Organizational Strength; Civic Engagement; and Long-Term Visioning.

City of Davis

As we reported on Saturday, the City Attorney Harriet Steiner suggested that she erred in her assessment that Councilmember Sue Greenwald was not conflicted out of a vote cast on November 4, 2008 against a redesign of the 233 B Street property. Therefore the city staff determined that the applicant could request a rehearing without going through the normal reconsideration process.

The council will meet at a later point to modify and correct conflict of interest policies. We have discussed this at length already.

City of Davis

The city-county two by two met on Friday at the Davis County Offices for the Board of Supervisors. The two by two is comprised of two members of the Davis City Council, Mayor Ruth Asmundson and Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor, and two members of the County Board of Superivisors, the two Davis representatives, Helen Thomson and Jim Provenza.

One item that was discussed was the issue of the Frontier Chemical Superfund Site and the recent discovery of TCP that has been covered extensively not only on this blog but in this community.

Will Council have to revisit November Vote on B Street Project Based on FIVE Feet? On November…