From winterety at sbcglobal.net Sun Feb 5 20:53:52 2006 From: winterety at sbcglobal.net (sheryl lynn gerety) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2006 20:53:52 -0800 Subject: [OldNorth] Fifth Street Reconfig Message-ID: Old North Residents: At meetings over the weekend members of the ON neighborhood board drafted the following position on the Fifth Street Reconfiguration to be discussed at Council this coming Tuesday and much in the news in this morning's Enterprise. Bruce 02/04/06 To: Ruth Asmundson (Mayor) and members of the City Council: Sue Greenwald, Ted Puntillo, Don Saylor, and Steve Souza. From: Bruce Winterhalder (President) and the Board, Old North Davis Neighborhood Association Re: Recommendations of the Department of Public Works on the Fifth Street Reconfiguation, CIP No. 8138, dated 26 January 2006. Public works makes two recommendations. In response, we ask that Council take the following actions, respectively: (1) Council should move to neither accept nor reject the staff analysis, but instead ask that it be rewritten in a manner that is responsive to the original direction of Council and the concerns and efforts of the neighborhood; and, (2) Council should move alternative 2b, with the following substitute wording: "Direct staff to return to Council within a period of 6 months with one or more plans for improvements to Fifth St that achieve to the greatest extent possible the goals established in the July 12, 2005 Council resolution." Our reasons for these requests are the following: (1) The current staff report is an odd beast, perhaps best characterized as a technical filibuster, in that -- after seven months of study -- it provides no positive direction to Council, the neighborhood or the town. It is deficient in these respects: (a) it does not respond in a positive way to the mandate given Public Works by the Council to come up with a workable re-design by this date; (b) in its analysis of the three-lane proposal submitted by ON, it ignores or misrepresents key elements of consultant reports commissioned and paid for by the City, substituting alarmist language for balanced analysis; (c) it contains virtually no discussion of safety, one of the key motivating issues for the neighborhood; (d) it invites consternation and citizen mobilization over options that no one, to our knowledge, considers realistic (e.g., tree removal); (e) it presents in different locations contradictory information about the possibility of external sources of funding; and (f) it presents cost figures that do not distinguish among items already completed (EIR), required outlays, optional expenses, or costs that already have been budgeted or will be necessary even without reconfiguration. In all of these respects it is inadequate as a decision-guiding document. (2) As a result of items identified above, Public Works has elicited considerable opposition to the 3-lane proposal -- for reasons many of which we believe are debatable or technically flawed -- but it is a cause of frustration that Public Works has nothing to offer in place of the ON proposal. After all this time, work and expense, nothing here moves the issue forward toward the resolution we seek: a safer street that is user-friendly to pedestrians, cyclists and automobiles. If trade-offs are required, we should have in this report feasible options that lay them out with full discussion and analysis, including impact on safety and traffic flow. In closing, we have attached Don Saylor's original wording of the 12 July motion as a reminder to everyone of the directive given by Council to Public Works: Davis City Council, July 12, 2005, Fifth Street Study: Saylor: ?Let?s see...I move we direct staff to develop a plan for Fifth Street that incorporates the following elements: Bicycle route and network connectivity, Improved pedestrian safety at crossings, Reduced effective speeds, Protected left turns, and Staff should seek grant funds to implement this plan.? ?Second.? By Stephen Souza. Ted Puntillo substitute motion to approve staff recommendation failed for lack of a second. Sue Greenwald substitute motion to approve a trial re-stripe in concept, and direct staff to come back with a comparison of the re-stripe project minus the cost of the pedestrian flashing lights, with the cost of starting from scratch and designing an entirely new project and implementing it also failed for lack of a second. Ted Puntillo asks for clarification: is Don Saylor?s motion to reduce it to two lanes. Told no, just setting policy. He says ?Oh...I get it.? No further discussion. Vote 4-1 to approve motion, Ted Puntillo dissenting. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4598 bytes Desc: not available URL: