SANDPOINT — City staff are moving forward with the design of the Cedar Street reconstruction project after receiving direction from the City Council on Wednesday evening.

The council gave direction on three items: the process of saving a silver maple tree, street width and sidewalks. The street’s width was most contentious topic, which the council voted 4-1 to make the road 22 feet, below the staff recommendation of 24 feet. 

Council President Deb Ruehle alongside councilors Kyle Schreiber and Pam Duquette led the charge for a smaller street and travel lanes as a traffic calming measure.  

The 22-foot-wide street divides into 11-foot-wide lanes, which prompted concerns from maintenance crews in the area about their ability to plow snow and make other repairs. Throughout the process, the crews consistently asked the city to uphold its standard of 12-foot travel lanes to increase efficiency and safety during winter. 

“Many communities are moving towards right-sided streets, using narrower lanes to calm traffic, even with standard right of ways, prioritizing walking and biking,” Ruehle said. “I feel so much for the streets guys, but sometimes change is hard, and maybe we need to have some room to have an experimental street and see how it goes.” 

Councilors Rick Howarth and Joel Aispuro said they understood the need for traffic calming but wanted the city to look over other alternatives. Howarth, the lone dissenting vote, suggested putting speed tables in the road, while keeping the 12-foot travel lanes. 

“I'm very much in favor of the 24-foot wide. I think that's as narrow as we want to go,” Howarth said. “We already do have a demo street. It's called Sixth Avenue, where we tried narrower lanes with the bulb out, and it was a disaster. I don't think we need to do that again on Cedar.” 

Public Works Director Holly Ellis said the maintenance crews were open to the idea of speed tables. However, Howarth's motion for a 24-foot-wide street was voted down 3-2 with only Aispuro joining Howarth in voting ‘yes.’ 

The decision to go with 11-foot-wide lanes is a slight change from prior council direction, which asked staff to design the street with 10.5-foot lanes.  

“I think we need to be aware of how our decisions affect the people who live on the street every single day of their lives,” Schreiber said. “I recognize this doesn't fit our current standards, but those standards haven't been updated in more than a decade.” 

The council’s other two decisions were unanimous, with far less discussion. The council directed staff to use $50,000 of the project’s budget to save a silver maple tree at 1600 Cedar St.  

The cost is set to be split, spending $35,000 during construction and $15,000 after it's completed to take care of the tree. In order to save the tree and surrounding grove, the street will have a chicane design pushing the street slightly north around the middle of corridor. 

After the unanimous agreement on saving the tree, Duquette became overwhelmed with emotion and thanked the city for helping save the tree. 

“I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to really get into this,” Duquette said. “I don’t want to get emotional but thank you.” 

During prior discussions, the council discussed exploring a multi-use path on the south side of the street. However, project manager Rachel McKinley said that it presented numerous complications with the design and increased cost. 

McKinley said the path of least resistance would be to build and extend sidewalks on both sides of the street, increasing pedestrian access to a street that currently has inconsistent sidewalks.  

“There's a really high number of newer households in this area that could benefit both from having sidewalks on both sides,” Ruehle said. “On this particular street, because of the park in the library, I like the idea of two sidewalks.” 

The project will run from Lincoln Avenue to Division Avenue with construction expected to begin in spring or summer 2026. The project has a budget of $2.5 million, according to the city’s fiscal year 2026 budget that was passed in June. 

More information and the full Dec. 17 council meeting can be found on the city’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/@cityofsandpoint.