Thumbnail photo courtesy of Crescent City
Candace Tinkler was absent. Among the items discussed at Monday’s Crescent City Council meeting.
Underground Utility District: City councilors approved the creation of Underground Utility District No. 1, taking yet another step toward ridding the gateway to Beachfront Park and downtown of most of the overhead electricity and telecommunications lines.
But representatives from Charter Communications and Frontier Communications, which provide cable and Internet service in the area, opposed the proposal, stating that the same work credits available to PacificPower aren’t available to them.
In a May 5 letter to Crescent City, Lisa Ludovici, Charter’s director of government affairs, asks the city not to pursue the undergrounding of its utilities, warning that the cost for the company to participate could be passed onto its customers.
Ludovici’s counterpart at Frontier Communications, Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs Jenny Smith, challenged the city’s determination that the area in the proposed Underground Utility District No. 1 invited heavy pedestrian traffic.
“The map provided does not include a main public recreation area,” Smith stated in her April 29 letter to City Manager Eric Wier. “The civic areas that are included in the proposed underground district could possibly be the city hall, the United States Post Office and the public library. Frontier’s facilities by the library are already underground and around the other areas, our facilities are minimal.”
The utility district boundaries include Front Street, goes up K Street, takes a left on 3rd Street, stretches up H Street, before returning to Front Street, City Attorney Martha Rice told the City Council.
Crescent City has about $2.8 million in Rule 20 Work Credits from the California Public Utilities Commission to supply to Pacific Power to complete the project — about $2.4 million came from Del Norte County. Those work credits must be committed to a project by June 8, the deadline the CPUC set for uncommitted work credits to expire. Crescent City has until Dec. 31, 2033 to spend those work credits, according to Rice.
Though Rice mentioned that the city had received feedback on the project from Charter and Frontier, she didn’t go into detail about the content of their letters.
According to Rice, Rule 20 establishes a criteria for installing utilities underground. That criteria includes the streets within the district carrying a high volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic as well as them leading to cultural and recreational amenities within the community.
“Third and H streets lie in the heart of our downtown. They are frequented by both visitors and locals to shop and do business,” Rice said. “Front Street is the gateway to Beachfront Park and hosts several restaurants that are, again, visited by both tourists and residents. K Street is home to Redwood National and State Park visitors center, which welcomes tens of thousands of people through their doors each year. Third Street, H Street and Front Street are also classified as collector streets, which is its own criteria.”
In her letter, Ludovici said Charter would need to install new nodes, power supplies and accompanying wiring at significant expense for the city’s project. She also stated that undergrounding Charter’s facilities carried no direct benefit for its customers.
“Should the city decide to pursue undergrounding, it would disproportionately shift Charter’s cost of that citywide benefit onto a much smaller subset of citizens: Charter’s customers,” Ludovici said. “In effect, Charter customers would subsidize the project through increased operating costs to Charter and eventually [see] higher prices to sustain service in Crescent City. Absent additional funding being provided to Charter from the city, the costs of this public benefit would not result in the stated intent of the notice that ‘Property owner costs are intended to be zero to minimal.’”
In addition to challenging the city’s determination that the area within the district’s boundaries carries a high amount of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, Smith stated that it must also show that installing utility lines underground would “avoid or eliminate an unusual heavy concentration of aerial facilities.”
“Frontier points out that there is not a heavy concentration of aerial facilities,” Smith said.
According to Wier, the undergrounding project will happen in phases with the first segment coinciding with the final part of the Front Street reconstruction project that will start later this summer. That project will include about half a block of K Street.
Crescent City Career Firefighters’ Association: City Councilors approved a resolution recognizing a new employee association representing the three paid fire captains that were hired with Measure S dollars in 2023.
The Crescent City Career Firefighters’ Association will be added to the four other employee bargaining units within the city. City Attorney Martha Rice said the three paid fire captains have the right under state law to organize and they have fulfilled the requirements necessary to create the firefighters’ association.
According to a petition for recognition as an employee bargaining unit, the association will include Fire Captain Everett Buell as its president and his colleagues Beau Smith and Jason Borges as vice president and secretary/treasurer respectively.
Crescent City Fire and Rescue will continue to be staffed primarily by volunteers, according to Mayor Ray Altman.
The three paid fire captains were included in a 10-year master plan the Crescent City Council and Crescent Fire Protection District adopted in 2019. The costs of the fire captains are shared between the city and the fire protection district.
Pedestrian Improvement Project: Crescent City plans to use federal Highway Safety Improvement Plan dollars and Measure S funding to make it safer for students to walk and bike to Joe Hamilton and Crescent Elk schools.
City Councilors approved a $253,064 agreement with Tidewater Contractors to install ADA ramps and sidewalks to fill in the gaps around the downtown area as well as near the middle and elementary schools. They also signed off on the project’s total budget of $278,064, which includes a 10 percent contingency budget.
The project includes improvements to curb and gutters, the ADA ramps and sidewalks at G and 11th streets, E and 10th streets and D and 10th streets. City workers will also make improvements to curbs and gutters, sidewalks and ADA ramps on A Street at 4th and 5th streets, at 5th and D streets 5th and E streets
According to Public Works Director Dave Yeager, since the Tidewater Contract agreement is about $253,000, the additional $23,000 will allow Crescent City to do work on some “additional corners.”
About $225,000 is coming from the HSIP grant, Yeager said, with about $53,064 coming from Measure S dollars. Each year, Crescent City is allocated about $100,000 out of the revenue generated by the 1 percent sales tax measure to do concrete and asphalt repairs, Yeager said. He added that the $53,064 also accounts for the city’s 10 percent required contribution to receive the grant dollars.
“We’re not asking for additional money because the money that has already been allocated from Measure S, we already have it budgeted,” he said.
City Councilors also authorized City Manager Eric Wier to approve and sign change orders, which modifies the original contract, not to exceed $50,000 in aggregate. Councilors also authorized Wier to approve and sign a single change order up to $25,000.
