Benicia City Council may decide Tuesday the Benicia Safe Routes to School Project is complete and authorize some change orders to the $112,619 effort.

Public Works Director Graham Wadsworth wrote City Manager Brad Kilger Nov. 20 that the project, underwritten with grants, eliminated gaps in the sidewalks on the routes children take when they walk to Robert Semple Elementary School, 2015 East Third St.

Wadsworth wrote that $99,701 of the project came from a Safe Routes to School One Bay Area SR2S grant, and gasoline taxes paid for another $23,917.

Grants also paid for pedestrian safety improvements on Dempsey Drive for those crossing from Matthew Turner Elementary School, 540 Rose Drive, to Benicia Community Park’s parking lot and on Southampton Road, he wrote.
Flashing beacons were installed on Southampton Road to help students from Benicia Middle School, 1100 Rose Drive, Wadsworth wrote.

“Acceptance of the project is necessary to make final payment to the contractor,” he wrote.

JJR Construction of San Mateo was hired July 1 to build the project. Wadsworth wrote that the city’s engineering division is satisfied with the company’s work.

The project was originally expected to cost nearly $124,000, but Wadsworth wrote the city saved more than $11,000 in materials costs.

Also on Tuesday’s meeting agenda are the approval on second reading of two ordinances that will bring the city into compliance with state mandates about transitional housing, emergency homeless shelters and reasonable accommodation for the disabled.

The California Housing Accountability Act requires local governments to make sure zoning regulations encourage emergency shelters and restricts any denial of transitional and supportive housing to homeless populations and those with special needs.

One of the ordinances will amend the Benicia Municipal Code and Downtown Mixed Use Master Plan to assure that transitional and supportive housing as residential uses would be allowed in districts that allow similar uses.

They would be established as a permitted public and semipublic use within a quarter-mile of Military East and Military West, except in open space, in single-family and downtown zones and within areas zoned general commercial and office commercial that are within a quarter mile of Adams Street in the Arsenal Historic District.

Construction of the housing isn’t required, but the state has advised Benicia it must clarify where such housing is allowed, Kilger wrote.

State and federal fair housing laws also require cities such as Benicia to assure reasonable accommodation in housing is made for disabled people, he wrote. This ordinance would amend Benicia Municipal Code and the Downtown Mixed Use Master Plan.

In the past, cities often relied on variances or conditions of approval to handle accommodation requests, Kilger wrote, but the criteria may be insufficient.

The ordinance would allow appropriate requested accommodations, such as wheelchair ramps, off-street parking to make reaching the ramp easier and lot coverage so that a home could be modified with a wheelchair ramp or elevator.

The Council also will approve the results of the Nov. 4 general election.

The Council will meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday in closed session to discuss legal and personnel matters. Two open meetings start afterward, one at 7 p.m. and one at 8 p.m.; at the latter, Councilmembers Mark Hughes and Alan Schwartzman will take the oath of office. Both open meetings will take place in the Council Chamber of City Hall, 250 East L St.

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