Follow the meeting live on Twitter and read the full agenda at the bottom of this article.
Bicycle lanes for Hillsborough Street will be back in front of the full council again this week. Council’s public works committee approved the bike lanes unanimously—for the second time—last week.
If approved, the bike lanes will go along the section of Hillsborough Street across from N.C. State University.
According to the committee meeting minutes, Eric Lamb with the city’s Public Works Department said that the Hillsborough Street construction project is under budget and funds for the bike lanes can come from that surplus.
The committee also recommends doing a parking study for the area between Hillsborough Street and Clark Avenue, from Oberlin Road to Gardner Street.
Downtown bike rental
Bicycle rental is coming to downtown. The city could approve a bid this week to have City of Spokes, an offshoot of the successful Raleigh Rickshaw company, provide the downtown rentals.
The city also received bids from the national bike rental company B-Cycles, which has a partnership with the Trek bicycle company, and from a new company called WeCycles, which is a student-run startup from the Keenan-Flagler School of Business at UNC-Chapel Hill.
City staff recommended going with City of Spokes because, the agenda says, of the company’s “proven track record in downtown.”
American flags for Fayetteville St.
Forty American flags could soon show up on Fayetteville Street if city council approves recommendations from the Downtown Raleigh Alliance this week. Council asked the DRA to look at putting up the flags after a resident asked council to consider the issue. The flags would go on the light poles along both sides of Fayetteville Street during five holidays and potentially when certain events are at the convention center. The memo to council says nothing about how much this would cost.
Fee increase
City council could increase the fees for new water connects by $350 next year and another $350 for the year after that. In a memo to council members, Kenneth Waldroup with the Public Utilities Department, says the increase could raise more than $500,000 next year and $1 million the year after assuming new connections stay at the same pace as they did last year.
Parking tickets
City council could shorten the time people have to pay parking tickets from 30 days to 21 days. The measure, if adopted, would also change the time people have to appeal tickets from 48 hours to 21 days.
