Welcome to the City Council's study session. City of Beverly Hills today is the 27th. 27th, I think so. 21st. 21st, all right. You don't rush time. We get it. All right. So welcome to the study session 21 August 2018. I have three moments, three comments, public comments, items that are not on our agenda. If you would like to address us for items that are not on our agenda, please hand one of these yellow sheets to the city clerk. Also just safe with sort of said expectations here today. We have a hard stop at about a quarter to six. So as things progress as our conversation today progresses, If you're here on an item that's lower in the agenda, you might want to pay attention to that. All right. First is Mr. Tom Roberts. Each speaker in non-agentized communication gets three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Roberts. Before I start on this, I just wanted to mention one thing is that I realized that when I'm talking about two of the council members were not involved in anything to do with it. That's Mr. Friedman and Mr. Wonderlick. And so several weeks ago I emailed them both copies of the relevant information and ask them to review it by today. And Mr. Wunderlick emailed me yesterday and said that he had reviewed them and this morning I got an email from Mr. Friedman who said he would decline to do so. If you could just- I think what I said was I declined to do it until it's agendized. That's more words, but it's exactly the gist of what I said. Can each of you please look at these so that when I bring them up, you'll be a little bit more familiar with them? Ready? I'm going to go ahead and move on. I'm going to go ahead and move on. Okay. Ready. Time to. Pardon? You going? Okay. As you know, I've been here before with this topic. What I really wanted to know was what happened to the proposed pedestrian promenade that was so prominent in any proposals when he won the referendum. What actually happened was in the administrative, administrative modification. It's proposed that he was granted what was built now. However, in going through the complete proposal for that, there's some really glaring inconsistencies and what I see. If you look at the first one, I made a notation on it. It shows a terrace. There's no walls, no trellis. The little part where I said not correct, it doesn't built that way. If you look at the next page, once again, there's no walls, there's no trellis. If you look at the next page, oddly enough, this was the number two page in the pictures. And it shows nothing at all of what it was. And this didn't propose that it was a previous incarnation. The only place that anything relating to that shows up is in picture number four. There's a couple of things about picture number four. One, why is the glass behind that lit? I propose so that you can't see what's in front of it. And if you actually look at that, it goes all the way from Santa Monica Boulevard to where he's continued all of the construction. Now, since it wasn't on any of the other data and since it was so obscurely placed in the scheme of things, what is the legitimacy of that? The other thing is this is there's two things. Either your time is up. Pardon? Your time is up. I have like another two minutes please. I'll give you one. All right. There's two possibilities here. Either it was stolen by the Hilton or it was given away by the City Council. And if it was given away by the City Council because it was voted on with the referendum, did they have a right to give it away? I personally think it was stolen. I don't really believe that the Council was fully apprised of what was in those documents. And I don't think that they were fully informed of the discrepancies. So I find it hard to believe that the council was able to make a wise decision in that regard. We know from listening to Nancy Crasney, she not only did not know where the outdoor dining was, she also did not know or have any comprehension of the fact that there was going to be a wall because she commented that why would anyone want to sit out there with all that noise? Thank you. All right. I would like to ask you, you please keep those Individually I'm going to come back this evening and ask some questions of you so if you could keep those I'll Be able to reference them for you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Mr. Steve mayor I'm going to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to expanding notice requirements for all major projects to be consistent with planning, such as a 90-day notice, thousand foot radius from mailings and newspaper advertisements. Examples used to justify the requests were the Burt May meeting project where there are only a few residents involved and learning of the availability of the draft Metro MOU through Vicki Talberts article in the courier. But an hour after the yesterday's meeting, the last 12 and 13 residents received a notice for the next public participation meeting. It is scheduled at 3 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day weekend. Lionel Efram, who have spearheaded the efforts on last 12 and 13 and cannot be here today, told me his wife exclaimed, they want no public involvement. All it can do is concur with her because of my last experience with public works was several weeks ago when it discovered that my letter to the editor regarding Burton Way was included an attachment to a agenda item, whereas refuted point for point. I remain dumbfounded that a letter to the editor require any staff time. I can understand that at all. Why should a commission care about a letter of the editor? But when its author is purposely not invited when it's part of an agenda item, it just raises eyebrows. But I misspoke when I said that my last experience with public works was several weeks ago. In tonight's agenda item regarding the Metro M.O.A. staff failed to include all written comment from the previous meeting. I do not believe that this is an issue of competence. I believe this is systemic. And thus I would urge you not to consider approving the Metro M.O.A. tonight, especially since you have the time, but until you get to the bottom, it was really going in public works. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Phil Sabinick. Thank you for hearing me. I always address you with great respect in this room. I like to come in with happy things but today isn't one of them. I have to report on the imminent demise and destruction of our beloved 90212. We have lived there for 60 years, within the last three weeks, something happened that has completely changed the quality of life in our city. We knew that the disruption from the Metro was gonna be a disruption. We had no idea it would be destruction, or that it would be this quickly. Basically, the Wilshire Boulevard is gridlocked. the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road to the road avoid the problem at Beverly Drive and Wilshire. We don't know what to do with it. It's going to be there for three, five years, seven years. It is the destruction of our neighborhood. Please help us. I'm going to come back later and talk about the agreement for the work because we are losing our neighborhood. It will never be the same. It will never come back. All I can ask is that we plan so that when the subway comes in, we have a better city and not just more problems. But if we have thousands of people coming into our residential neighborhood on Reeves, and there is no security in the station, and there are no toilets, we are creating a disaster for 90212. Please I'll be back later. It may not be the appropriate time, but we have a problem. It's not going to go away and it has ruined the quality of life in the south. We cannot get to our streets. People on lending cannot pull out of their driveway because that's a cut-through street. So people go 50 miles an hour on that. We have ubers we have limos in all of our preferred parking polishing their cars waiting for pickups when the subway comes we don't have a loading zone we don't have a parking space we have nothing I'll be back later we have trouble right here in never-sitting. Thank you sodie, maybe we can have traffic enforcement. See what's going on down there and understand what that is better. Great. Okay, anybody else like to address us on a non-agentized item? All right, seeing none, we will close the public comment and move to item number one on our agenda. This is a request for a mid- crosswalk on third street. And who is going to present this? Good afternoon, Mayor Gold and members of the City Council. This is a request from Mr. David Gingold for a crosswalk on 3rd Street adjacent to the post office. And I'll run by some history and background from here. Sarah Brandenburg from Fair and Pears is also here to address any questions they may have. So a little bit of history is in November 30th, 2017. After review, we installed 8 10-hour meters on the north side of a third street. That was intended. That was a request to add parking in the area. It was also intended as a way to narrow the street in hopes of slowing down the traffic. In early December, Mr. Gingold requested that we change the 10-hour parking signs on the north side of Third Street to one hour. And we, and also to install an on-street ADA space. That space was installed on January 3rd of 2018, and the 10-hour parking was signs were changed to one-hour parking in early February. Also, in March 2018, Mr. King gold requested installation of a mid-life crosswalk after these changes. In April, we went to the Traffic and Parking Commission and although we didn't necessarily oppose a crosswalk, the building still was under construction and is still not occupied. The parking lot for the post office was not open, it is still not open. And our recommendation was to delay consideration to see how the traffic and parking changes with the occupancy. And then also we are developing a crosswalk policy as part of the complete streets program. After presenting to City Council, we decided to take this out of the complete streets and we asked fair and fair and fair and memorandum identifying options for a mid block crosswalk should the city decide to place one there. In June, July of 2018, the Traffic and Parking Commission reviewed a draft crosswalk policy. They have not taken action on that, but we will be presenting that in the fall. A little bit about a draft, a crosswalk policy, unlike signals or a signalized crosswalk, there are no warrants established by the manual of uniform traffic control devices, kind of the guidelines for traffic engineers for mid-block crosswalks. Mid-block crosswalks are established based on city policy. And again, in Beverly Hills, what we've, as looking at policies, some of the elements that we are looking at is we don't see mid-block crosswalk to be installed in the city without more than just plain signs of striping. Elements that we will look towards are bullbouts, raised crosswalks, rectangular flashing beacons, and other items to really bring attention to what the crosswalks are. And in fact, of our existing midblock or non-controlled crosswalks, we are in the process of basically retrofitting these with additional treatments. We also have a minimum of 20 crossings at peak hour. That does, this crosswalk does exceed that the number of crossings per peak hour. The question is, is if we put a crosswalk there, would people actually use the crosswalk or are they going to cross on either side? And typically a minimum distance from a crosswalk, most policies have 250 to 300 feet. This crosswalk would be 150 feet. Again these are our guidelines to go by and our maximum speed of 35 miles per hour. So our, the options that we have identified is improving the crosswalk at the intersection, which we will proceed with regardless of what happens. Considering the mid-block crosswalk after the building is occupied and the parking structure is open, we have two types of crosswalks. Should the council wish to go forward? One is high visibility mid-block crosswalk with bullbouts, enhanced signage and lighting. These unfortunately do carry a price tag because they're a civil engineering work that's required. We have to do a survey and address the drainage that tends to be the highest component of these costs. Another option which is what we've done with Beverly Gardens Park is install high visibility, mid block crosswalk, this would actually be a raised crosswalk. I just see that there and there. And then we did develop another option would be instead of the crosswalks is to add a second on street 88 parking space. So those are the options. What went to get clarifying these are the meters. As you can tell, there is one on street to stable space near the post office, loading zone for two spaces and meters on both sides of the street. These are all one hour meters. If for the options for either the raised continental for the options for either the raise, continental crosswalk or the bullbout, that would require removal of basically for parking spaces we would have to on the north side, there would be two spaces in order to have sufficient space for the ADA ramp, then it would also be the two space loading zone. We would have to adjust that should you go forward as there is likely a need for a customer loading zone to remain. So opposite to this is what the bullbout would look like. There's already pavement markings and red curb have the bullbout and then go directly across the street and then this is the same configuration with the raised crosswalk. For this meeting we we mailed to 663 notices to neighborhood properties we hand delivered to the property managers primarily of the post office we also posted notices at the post office 63 notices to neighborhood properties. We hand delivered to the property managers, primarily of the post office. We also posted notices at the post office. In your packet, the correspondence is the request from Mr. Gingold. Two residents have expressed opposition. One resident has expressed support. The 325 Maple property owner did some of the correspondence and they deferred it to what they thought was best for the neighborhood. And so we are seeking city council direction on the requested midblock crosswalk installation and are available if you have any questions. Thank you, sir. Okay. We're going to take public comment on this, David, and consideration of your advocacy here. Why don't you go first? And... David will set the fire distinguished. I'm David Willsette Clark. I'm Mayor, Distinguished Council Members and guests. I am David Gingell, the resident in Beverly Hills 60 years. I'm currently representing 3000 PO Box holders who have PO boxes at the Maple Third Street Post Office. I'm also representing the disabled people in our community, the weak, the sick, the elderly, and all the patrons using that post office for packages, bundles, and boxes of letters, and other boxes and presents. Aaron submitted a packet, an agenda packet to the city council. What I did is what I call cut and paste. I cut out things that he said and posted that for you and then I gave a response underneath it. I'm assuming that all of you council members had that in your packet and had an opportunity to go over his documents as well as my responses. If not, I'm here to either answer any questions or concerns that he raised and I might answer for you and I want to go over some of my responses with you. When the 10-hour parking was first put up on the north side of Third Street and was put up because mail trucks used to go there with the old post office but now that the new post office there was no need for mail trucks. The consultant said they would put up parking there and Aaron Coons and the director's staff in our city hall decided on their own to put 10-hour parking up. I know he put up a bicycle rack there also. He said he wanted that for his for the entertainment people in Maple. But they came up with something that really is just pure speculation that 10-hour parking would slow traffic down. I said that we needed one hour parking there for people for the post office, and we need one disabled space. Traffic and parking commission, when it was first presented, said no, we don't even want to hear about it. When the 10 hour parking was installed, proper notice was not given to the community. No notice was given to the 3000 PO box holders, only to a couple of apartment people on the side who didn't matter. Proper notice would have been to give to the 3,000 PO box holders, as well as to all the patrons of the post office. I also wanted one disabled space share which was once again denied by traffic and parking. Lily Bosse mayer than dispatch George Tavis after I filed an appeal and we work things out and we got the parking and the disabled. Aaron says in these documents and says to you today that on January 3rd they had a disabled parking space installed at the post office. What he doesn't tell you on January 4th at the TPC meeting and the document is in here, he said he wants one handicap space, he evaluated in two months for removal. Anyway, my evidence is the fears and pierced evidence. Fierce and pierced said we need traffic calming there because cars are speeding five miles over the speed limit There's 6,000 cars going there daily and there's 600 cross scenes there of people crossing daily That's why he said they need a traffic calming of 10 hour parking. I said at TPC in numerous meetings If you want traffic calming you could have put in a speed bump or you could have put in a crosswalk. All those requests were denied. Where Aaron says that he wanted to wait for occupancy of the building. That's totally irrelevant to the safety of the people who crossed. It is dangerous crossing there without a crosswalk. Your own consultant and you have this in your packet, they don't say pedestrians crossing and they say J walking on third street, 600 people a day. And when you start to walk across the street through the post office with the middle of the block, it might be clear on one side and suddenly a car's coming this way, a car's coming that way and your sandwich in between. Like Rodney Dangerfield said, I get no respect without a crosswalk. But I'm crossing and cars are coming. It's very dangerous situation. This is the report of the 600, what they call J-Walkers, a day. I was over at the police department and Sergeant Culture was nice enough to give me the code for J-walking. J-walkers can be cited. It is a dangerous situation. We really have choices. We can continue being J-walkers and walking possibly get hit by a car. We could put in a crosswalk in mid-stream. We're Aaron says it's 150 feet not true. I measured the distance on the north side of Third Street by the parking meter right across from the post office. Aaron Coons, Nushan Mascarity, the rest of the Transportation Commission said they want people to walk all the way from across from the post office to maple and cross a third street in maple walk all the way back. I measured the distance with myself with this public works tape measure that I got on public works day at the farmers market. It's a 10-foot tape measure. What I measured was you have to walk 100 yards, 310 feet this way, 100 football field in an end zone, cross 20 yards and another 100 yards. So, they want people carrying to walk over two football fields, starting in September, people are going to be carrying boxes and packages sending their college kids gifts items for their dorm And Christmas people are going to be carrying boxes for presents to be sending around The world wrap it up. Thank you Let me okay, what's my 10 minutes up? Well, you're at eight Okay, then I have a couple more minutes. Thank you two more minutes Anyway, I drew here its two football fields. I also enclosed so many pictures of photos and I brought these to so many city councils about different kinds of post, about different kind of crosswalks. Option one or two are totally unacceptable just to fix up the crosswalk that's existing there. Option three or four are both good. Either one would really be your choice. I'm very simple about it. You know, the city said for all the whole time we don't have a crosswalk policy. Yet in October 2017, crosswalks were approved for North Santa Monica boulevard in front of Lily Pond. And crosswalk would I be very happy with just the painted Crosswalk ladder borders, but whatever Crosswalk you feel is necessary, that would be wonderful. We have, there's notices here. I want to, you know, the Joan Magnum who writes the Society column told me to tell you that she would like a Crosswalk there in honor for husband Stan who's in a wheelchair. You have a letter here from Mitch Dawson, former planning commission chairman who says that he lives in the area right at Maple and Burton Way, but he has said, viewed firsthand, he sees people almost getting killed. In my packet, I have a letter from a wonderful postal employee named Dietri. She is at a counter right here looking out where you are is total window. She has a letter in right here in the testimony that she sees people almost getting hit and run over by cars. It is dangerous. We need a crosswalk for the health, safety, and general welfare. And I want to tell you how honored I am to have this crosswalk being judged by this very distinguished tribunal right here. We have Wester Friedman, who's the most prominent workman's comp lawyer in the city and maybe the state. And he earns his livelihood by getting benefits for disabled people. And now he has a chance to help disabled people here. I'll wrap it up to the disabled people here. We've got, I wanna thank John Mirsch who took this out of complete streets because he realized the seriousness. He's a son of a philanthropist and he has great values who learned about helping other people. Our mayor Gold, who's a doctor and part of his hypocriticals, is not just art and science, but to have compassion, understanding and warmth for people. For Mayor Willie Bossy, who was faltered into a council member when she came to the city to talk about what was going on with the community center. We call her our people's princess here because she's for the residents. She saved the businesses on little Santa Monica Boulevard. Her whole theme is mayor was healthy living. She had a flock of 300 people following her for healthy living and of course Robert Wunderlick who said that he's an Economist and he's able to think things out Anyway for the health and safety of the people crossing there I think there's enough evidence that it is a dangerous situation There was even a canine police officer Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Even a canine police officer there who takes his dog in the goy there for a little pee break. He's looking at the traffic and says, yes, we need a crosswalk. Any crosswalk that you want to put there, whether it's three or four or a ladder, I will be happy with. And the community will be happy with. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Vierre Markowitz. You need to sit down, David. Please. Thank you. I am a resident of Beverly Hills. Low everyone on the council council and thank you for hearing my I also have a bill own a condominium on the corner of Maple and Burton way as well as where I live and I use that post office a thousand times and many times have had to go. Jay walk across the street. You don't hear me? And I just want to say that I totally support putting a crosswalk there. I think it's critical for the residents. I think it's critical for everyone who uses the post office. And it's not only residents who use it, but many others. So I'm here just to say I support this issue and think it's really critical. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Robert Dannamau. Very briefly there are a few reasons I'm here and the first that gives me pleasure to thank you for your indulgence with David. Of course, there are so few people in our community who actually vote in our elections who are eligible and they were still fewer who care so much about the city that they spend the time that he has spent. So it gives me a great deal of pleasure to thank you for the indulgence of having this and what distinguishes a large measure in my judgment. Our city also, I have to confess that part of my participation for the indosence of having this, it was what distinguishes a large measure in my judgment, our city. Also, I have to confess that a part of my participation, I'll get to the ultimate, is that David, a little appears to be a young man, he was at my wife's 16th party. So that looms large with respect to where my loyalties are historically. And the other reason is simply this. Notwithstanding the fact that we have a distinguished sergeant here from our PD, I assume everybody has immunity when speaking to the council, there is a lot of jail walking going on, and an issue of user friendly. And it's up to your determination, really, obviously, of how we can make it more user friendly and comport with making it safe. So we balance those two interests. We come down with what you have done in the past, which comes to mind, not necessarily the crosswalks we have right outside of city hall, because you have stop signs there, it's on. But the structure that was put in on cannon, just south of Santa Monica's Boulevard South, connecting the two sides of that street, we have the parking on the west side and restaurants as well as on the east side of the street. So in some consideration there, I as an individual and in favor of having something done that will help us avoid the issue that David is raising. And the other, that is to say, walking, parking on the north side and walking to Maple. The other point is, once we have the buildings completed, initially, the elevated down the parking lot of the post office went to Referee of City of Post Office, which was no longer part of the post office. So I'm hopeful that that has been taken care of, that there will be elevators going somehow into the new building that will be the post office proper. In any event, thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Mr. Thomas White. in any event. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Mr. Thomas White. Good afternoon. I too would like to thank David Gingold for his diligence and heart and so, and particularly since our residential community increasingly includes an older demographic people that are sick and people that are disabled and too often they don't get the attention and priority that they deserve and I think this is one example. We are obligated as a community to give full effect the Americans with Disabilities Act and wherever we can affect that for the benefit of our residents and others that use a post office over which they have no control as to where it's based. We're doing a public service. I would personally like to see the post office, excuse me, the crosswalk accomplished with the minimum of public tax dollar expenditure. I think that's fair. And also to be active only when there's people that need to cross. In other words, it's not a, doesn't require traffic to be interrupted unless there, unless there is our pedestrians there that need to use the crosswalk. But I think the case has been amply supported by the evidence that David has provided. And I have no problem with staff's representations. And in particular, I'd like to thank Aaron Coons, who gave me his own briefing on the phone a few days ago. And when I asked him two threshold questions, and he answered them the way I will tell you, I was pretty convinced this was the right thing to do. The first question is, to what extent will the parking that is pending for the post office be a mitigation to the demand for people to cross mid block and therefore confirm the utility and necessity of a supplemental crosswalk. And he, Aaron said at that time that it will not provide much mitigation. And secondly, there is ample evidence based on the 600 figure and even if you wanted to use a lower figure. There's ample evidence that there's significant midblock crossing without the benefit of a crosswalk going on right now. These are the market conditions. And if we have to choose one over the other, it must be public safety over convenience. I think that's our mandate. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Machine, Mishgati. Are you speaking on behalf of the commission? Good afternoon. I am speaking as a commissioner, but I just wanted as a commissioner, I just wanted to let you know that they thank you. That the item did come in front of us, but because it's an item that the staff and traffic engineers have to decide, you know, we deferred it back to the staff to decide. But I personally had gone and visited. We do have people with walkers trying to cross. So it's indeed safety measures that we need to think about. So whatever solution you will look at, I'm hoping that you'll look at something with some safety measures there because just having a cross walk may not be. And also I wanted to suggest if staff could look at also having working with the post office because all of these started when the construction started and post office removed the boxes and moved it somewhere else and maybe we can work with the post office to see if we can put box on the other side of the street as well because a lot of these people walk not necessarily some of them are not necessarily post office owners, but they do drop their mail. So if we have a box on the other side may prevent, but that doesn't mean that we don't need a crosswalk. I mean, just something another safety measure to take. So we can reduce the number of people crossing. Thank you. Thank you. I have no other speaker cards on this subject. I do have a letter that has been asked to be read into the record. Actually, I have two. No, sir. Thank you. The first letter to be read into the record is from the Honourable Nancy Crasney. Dear council, the proposed crosswalk is a necessary convenience for our residents and guests that choose to go to the post office or office building. There's no light signal that would cause a delay of traffic. It just puts drivers are noticed to stop for pedestrians. Each day people jaywalk constantly mid block. This will now make it a safer environment and legal to cross. Cordley, Nancy Crasning. The second from Mr. Charles Sammich who writes, please approve the crosswalk project. Walking is painful and the less of it, the better. Thank you. So those are the public comments on this. Having no further, we'll close the public comment and move to questions, comments. Sorry? Sorry, Dr. Gol, I will be brief. First of all, if there was a post office, it's often gone. I have a post office box there and I've never seen any posting of a notice. I'm very concerned about as to the drop off, whether the bull ballots will actually decrease the utilization of that. That's a pretty big important factor here. And lastly, when Thomas White was talking about how Aaron Coons basically said he did not anticipate the parking being used underneath. That was a condition of the approval. And if that's not going to be happening, then you have an entirely different issue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay. We'll close the public comment. Council Member comments and questions. Thank you. I think the true objective here really isn't necessarily a crosswalk. I think the true objective is access and a crosswalk is one potential solution to that. And so Thomas White spoke about this and then Steve just did also with the, how much would the need for a cross walk be mitigated by the additional parking that would become available or by for example having a second disabled parking spot on the street? able parking spot on the street. Oh, that's hard to quantitative to a quantitative assessment until it opens. What my thoughts in our conversation was that there will still be demand to people who prefer to park on street versus going in an underground parking structure. That was my thought process in that discussion. But the underground parking would definitely assist is there are two disabled spaces located with an elevator that is actually closer than is relatively close that people could use. How about the safety issue of even with a protected or crosswalk, using a crosswalk versus using the parking structure and the elevator? I'm going to ask Sarah Brannemberg to address that. And then there's an airplane. The way the crosswalk is designed, it would be to design standards in terms of safety. If a driver decided to park in the underground structure, that would be a safest path in the sense that it has that pedestrian right once the driver got out of the car and was walking into the post office. It would have its own exclusive right away through sidewalks in the elevator and would not really pass any cross any path that travel of vehicles. So it's kind of a quite the same comparison. quite the same comparison. So the report did have the statistics of number of people J walking. Struckmer is a pretty high number. Sometimes more than one minute averaged over an hour. How unusual is that? Does this really stand out as a particular location in the city that has a lot of J walking? It is a high demand. And so many times when we're evaluating the need for a new crosswalk we will go out and just observe the demand and I think what the demand and the number of people crossing shows is that there is a destination that they're trying to get to. They are parking on the other side of the street and their destination is on the opposite side of the street. So yes, it is a higher demand than we see in many areas of the city. Is there a downside to the crosswalk over the other than the expense? I don't see a downside to the crosswalk. I think the only unknown about it is right now people are generally walking from where they park their car to a cross the street, you know, towards the entrance to the post office. So whether or not they walk slightly out of their way to use the crosswalk versus still walk from the front door of their car to the cross to the post office front door. I think that's what remains to be seen. But the design intention of it is that it's a high visibility crosswalk. It catches your eye. You see it as a safe path of travel and you go slightly out of your way to use it. Okay. And how about the pros and cons of options 3 and 4? The main difference between 3 and 4, both of them provide really good design for pedestrian visibility. Really the biggest difference between them is with the raised crosswalk. That will slow vehicle travel down whether or not a pedestrian is crossing. So with the bullbout option, the bullbouts occur on the edge of the street in the middle. It's just striping. So if there's no pedestrian there, cars will flow freely as they do today. With the raised crosswalk,ping so if there's no pedestrian there cars will flow freely as they do today with the race crosswalk whether or not there's a pedestrian there cars will be forced to travel at a slower speed as they drive over the race crosswalk. Okay so I tend to think that this is a relatively unusual situation for the city. I look at the what seems to be a really very high count of people Jay walking currently. I think this is a situation in which a crosswalk could be appropriate even with additional parking. I guess I, at first thought, we tend to favor the non-raised crosswalk for the reason that you just said of not slowing down traffic when it's not being used. But also I've come to learn that other people in city council have very good views about traffic issues. I'm not going to weigh in with my final answer right now but I would be tending to go for a crosswalk there contingent upon hearing what the rest of city council says about it. Thank you. Councillor Member Freeman. Thank you. So this particular issue on was presented at the Traffic and Park and Commission correct? Yes. And was there a recommendation coming out of the Traffic and Park and Commission? So the Traffic and Parking Commission referred to occurred with our recommendation at that time was that we wanted to see the building open and the parking lot open before making a decision. That was what the Traffic and Parking Commission concurred with staff's recommendation at that time. So in other words, to delay what is happening today? What is happening today, correct? Until we see exactly what the effects are. Yes. In terms of J-walking, we're using that as a general term that is walking not at a corner. But not all J-walking is illegal, correct? That's correct. The term, this is under the California Viala Code would not be considered J-walking. J-walking is when you are crossing between two signalized intersections. That's the definition of J-walking and the California vehicle. Because so technically this isn't J-walking or it's just a different form, a legal form of J-walking. Yes, that could be said. OK. Sarah, in terms of safety of a crosswalk. What is, is there any statistics on the psyche of a person who was crossing at a crosswalk versus crossing midblock? There have been studies done to look at does a crosswalk give a false sense of safety? There's a very old study that people used to cite to say that crosswalks indeed give Did give pedestrians a false sense of safety, but there have been more recent research showing that that is not the case that the presence of a crosswalk does make drivers more aware pedestrians are still paying attention and looking and that overall it does increase safety to have a stripe crosswalk. What are the parking back here? What are the parking requirements once the building does open? What's part of their CUP? For the post office, I have the building does open. What's part of their CUP? For the post office, I have the information for the actual post office parking is the Maple Drive entrance would be exclusively for the post office and there's 19 parking spaces including in and that includes two marked ADA or disabled spaces. And that would be off the entrance on maple on and the entrance on maple, although the elevator comes up just next door basically to the post office on third. And the entrance to the post office boxes is that same entrance that you just described off maple driver is that on third? That's the same. All of the post office use the the the the the the the the the the the the the the Office is correct on 3rd Street. The underground parking for the post office is accessed from Maple Drive with the elevator that would come up next to the post office on 3rd Street. And that parking that is available, the 19 spaces including the two that are marked or is that that's including those 19 spaces is there a cost that is associated with a person using those spaces for the post office there is not a cost there is We've met with the property owners Initially there will be no cost if they do if there's a occupancy issue, they will still provide validation for post office users. So in any event, the building or the post office, one or another, is going to provide 19 spaces at no cost to any patron of the post office. That's how they've represented yes Are there any Accident records that we have that would indicate that there were traffic accidents along Third Street of people crossing We have we don't have any records of recent collisions and just one other thing to mention regarding that is that the parking on the north side of the street is still fairly recent, right? So it's been about, I believe, approximately one year that people have been crossing mid-block and as far as we're aware, no collisions have been reported. And as far as history going back, even prior to that, we don't have a pattern, we don't have any established pattern. There are new stated there were in terms of city policy that there should be at least 250 to 300 feet between crosswalks or what was that figure you were giving us? Correct. And again, the crosswalk policy is in draft form. Typically, as a guideline for policies, most cities have a general guideline of 300 feet or 250 feet. It's between that, is your typical distance from a stop sign. And if you measure as a crow flies between where the proposed crosswalk would be and the existing crosswalk is, the number is that 150 feet? It's 150 feet. If you went to the reason we would recommend this spot is if you did go the 250 feet, it would be where the parking structure and the alley are. So that's the ideal distance would not work in this state case. In terms of the meters on the south side of Third Street, there are how many meters there? I forgot what the, I guess I can look at the picture. There are six meters have have limits on them in terms of how long a person can park there. They are one hour meters. So was there any thought given to the fact of rather than having those short long term meters reducing those to 20 minute meters so that there was be a higher turnover and people could park there. Was that discussed at all? We did discuss perhaps adding to the customer loading zones. We did discuss that internally. And that was an option that was considered by the Traffican Park Commission, or is that go back to the fact that everybody wants to wait and not able to? That item would not discuss what the Traffican Park Commission is with our initial discussions with Mr. King Gold. So that option in terms of changing the side, the south side has not been discussed at all with traffic and parking. It has not even come up. No, it has not. Noor has a customer loading. Both customer loading, noor 20 minutes. No, it hasn't. No, it hasn't. And you said something about speed limit. The guideline is that the speed limit be 35 miles an hour to have a crosswalk. What is the speed limit on Thursday there? The speed limit's 25 miles an hour. Okay, my feeling on this is that it may well be necessary to have a crosswalk, but I don't think it's necessary yet. I don't think that there is enough information that we have to determine that a crosswalk would be appropriate at that location without knowing exactly what the 19 spaces that are going to be made available will do, nor what a change in the length of time on the meters would be. So although it may be necessary, it would be my recommendation that we wait until we see exactly what happens when the dust settles. Thank you. Thank you. So I went to the location. This item was supposed to be before us on Tuesday, July 24th. So Monday, July 23rd, I went to that location and sat on the north side from 9.30am to 10.30am. I have videos for any of my colleagues that want to see and I was shocked at how many people crossed mid-block to go to the post. I was literally dumbfounded by how many people who were literally parked in a way where they parked south where the stop sign is, where they could have just gone and walked right across the street where the stop sign is, and they still walked and J walked. I called Aaron and George, and did a conference call with both of them to make sure I was standing in the right location even because I was amazed. And literally within the time frame that I stood there, there was not one person that crossed legally. And I counted and I have it all, you know, again, I have all the videos, 40 people in that time, that crossed mid-brock block. And the other issue is that cars are going fast. And so even before Mr. Gingel brought this up, the other issue is that cars are going fast. So even before Mr. Gingel brought this up, this is an area that Fair and Peer said required traffic calming. And that was why, I mean, because to me, conceptually to put 10 hour parking anywhere in Beverly Hills makes no sense. And if the reason why we put 10 hour parking was for traffic calming, that in itself tells us we had a problem without even looking at a crosswalk. So I think we've already ascertained that we had a problem by saying that we put in 10-hour parking to address the traffic calming. So for my real life experience by sitting there for an hour and a half while I was on the phone, I was said to George and Aaron, you were on the phone as well. Oh my God, I cannot believe somebody just kept crossing and crossing right in front of me. So to me this is a necessary and quite frankly I think this is an emergency because I think this is unfortunately a scary accident that potentially could happen, somebody could really get hurt. So I thank you, Mr. Gingold, for bringing this forward. I think this is something we need to do. I feel very strongly we should do the raised crosswalk because that will slow down the traffic. That's why we have the raised crosswalks now just north of North Santa Monica. And I would ask my colleagues who are considering not supporting this today to look at my videos or go and look at that location and I would be 100 present convinced that you would see that this is an emergency that we need to do this. Thank you. Please Mayor. Thank you. What is the distance from Maple to Foothill on that block? Less. It's approximately 750 feet. 750 feet. What's the normal length of a block? And I don't mean north of Santa Monica. I mean, let's say in sort of the south part of town. Yeah, a four to five hundred feet. So this would be fair to say this is an extremely long block. It is a long block, yes. And the measurements that Mr. Gingold included to from the street to the proposed crosswalk are about 300 feet. Correct. So that's not quite, but almost halfway, approximately. I believe he's referring to the furthest, western most... You can have the crosswalk between where the driveway is and the post office entrance, for example, or around there. Okay, the driveway to Maple Drive would be approximately 300 feet. Okay, so from my perspective and I've also because I use that post office as well, I completely agree I don't know why we need the 10-hour parking. I mean in theory that's for employees and all those buildings should have employee parking and buildings should have employee parking. They should have visited parking as well. So if the reason we're doing that is for traffic calming, then a raised crosswalk also serves the purpose of traffic calming. So from my perspective, this isn't anything that needs further study. I think we should do a raised crosswalk there. You can look at the exact location. The question is, what kind of traffic is there from the driveways and should it be there? But it should clearly be close to the post office entrance. It's a long block. It makes sense from my perspective, and I wouldn't delay it. Thank you. Thank you. I'll do it. Thank you. Thank you. So what's in context of J-walking or maybe not the technical J-walking piece, but the city experience with people who don't cross at a crosswalk, who cross midblocked. How frequently do you think that happens to the rest of the city? Do you think that 70% of people use a crosswalk or 50% of people use a crosswalk? So that would be difficult from a Beverly Hills perspective because we have so few mid-block crosswalks. I don't know if Sarah has any experience from other communities. My perception, and I'll just speak to two Beverly Hills, but in my experience, most people are using marked crosswalks in the city. You know, in the last couple years as we've been evaluating different crosswalk locations, there's one other location that's come up that people were using as a crossing that wasn't marked, but for the most part they are following the March crosswalks. And in the course of this conversation was the notion and I think Chair Meshgadi mentioned it. I'm actually putting a mailbox on the north side. Anybody discuss that with the post office? We have looked at it. It's, and we have had some initial discussions. It's been a little challenging finding the right space with given everything that's going around, but we can look at that. Actually, our office had been in contact with them. I think one of the challenges is the granite sidewalk that we have on the north side. So we're trying to identify locations where it doesn't damage that issue that we have to work out. But I don't think they were resistant to putting an adamantly against putting it to some out of the finding the proper location. Just to address your question since I sat there, every person that crossed over, they actually went into the post office as opposed to going to mail a letter. They went into the post office. So I think I don't think it was a function of trying to mail something. I think they needed to go into the post office for something. I don't know what it was. Well, my experience may be a little bit different from yours. First off, people, Jay Walker, who Jay Walker, I'll use that generically. Across the Maple Third Street crosswalk, the one at the east end, all the time. People diagonally walk across that. People meander across that. Some people actually use that crosswalk. Some people don't. But beyond that, people meander across that, some people actually use that crosswalk. Some people don't. But beyond that, and I've certainly spent a lot of time at this particular post office, people do all kinds of crazy things. They actually leave that car with the engine running, and they run across the street and throw the mail in the mailbox, and then they run back. I see people leave their engine running and run into the post office. I have to say that I will be surprised if putting a crosswalk there actually changes people's behavior. The people I saw were pretty much in a rush. Most of them were headed for the mailbox, not inside, and they just would park the car wherever and run across. I do think that a mailbox on the north side would make a difference. I think it would reduce. That said, I have only some hesitation about $160,000 for a raise crosswalk. And I would suggest that if we want to put a crosswalk, we at least start with a flat crosswalk and see if people actually use it. If people actually use it, then we can take the next step and spend the money it would take to actually build a raised crosswalk. But I'm skeptical about whether or not we're going to get enough people to be using the crosswalk that it would make that kind of investment worthwhile. Now, short of that, if we were going to enforce, and insist that people use it, that would be the other way to do it, would be to somebody stay in there and make sure that people cross what they should. But I don't think we want to do that either. So let's write to bits. Bob, back to you. And the value of listening to my colleagues who presented other benefits of the race crosswalk in terms of traffic calming, so I would be on board for that. So it sounds like you have consensus. We can move on to the next item. You just want to know, Mayor Gold, that we obviously have to do a design and then bring it back to a bid and then issue the project. I also think it should be as close to the post office door as you can get it. This is the initial evaluation of the South Santa Monica Boulevard pilot project. question. Good afternoon again. I think your car switches gears. Good thing when you car switches gears. Okay. Before I begin, I would not acknowledge Chair Mishgati, the Vice Chair, Solnet and Commissioner Henry are here in the audience. This is the South Santa Monica Boulevard pilot project. And as we all know, we've back in April the Council made a decision to return parking to both sides of the street on South Side Monk a boulevard that were removed during construction. And what we had some discussions with is take this opportunity to test the one traveling scenario. And the idea behind this is it would be a test to collect information for a potential future village streetscape project. We're making South Santa Monica Boulevard a slower traffic more of local serving street. When I point out a couple things is South Santa Monica Boulevard is 50 feet wide curb to curb. So it is relatively narrow street considering all that is going on there. By contrast, a large-mount village is 70 feet curb to curb. And the pilot that we selected was of any place within the city that to reduce it to one lane This was projected to have the least impact of all the alternatives If we tried to do something Further to the west at Wilshire we were concerned that would be more impactful due to The Wilshire Western in excuse me the Wilshire Western, excuse me, the Wilshire Santa Monica intersection and potentially a direct traffic to the south. If you look, we just did in the westbound direction, there's no clear movement from Berkmanway, south Santa Monica Boulevard, to North Santa Monica Boulevard. Our test was intended to begin data collection after three months, which is coming up. We have started collecting data to present to you and we would have an analysis by six months. We have had a lot of feedback so we are bringing this to you just a little bit earlier than we anticipated. To review the project is one eastbound travel lane from Bedford Drive to Beverly Drive. There were seven new parking stalls, five on the north side. That is those five spaces are between Beverly and Roe deo on the north side and there are a couple on the south side. We were also able to retain the westbound turp pocket at rodeo during construction. And what is the result of this is wider travel and parking lanes than the pre-construction condition. We forget south San Markovovar was very narrow prior to construction and it was often people felt difficult to get out of their cars. Our preliminary observations is some eastbound traffic has shifted back to North Santa Monica Boulevard. I think we probably have all witnessed South, North Santa Monica Boulevard. I think we probably have all witnessed south north Santa Monica Boulevard traffic is definitely back. There is a eastbound bottleneck that's staying at Bedford Drive particularly in the evenings. One can expect that there will be some sort of bottleneck when you reduce from two lanes to one lane. The question is how much that bottleneck will occur. For instance, on Melrose in West Hollywood, it goes from two lanes to one lane at La Siena Ga and it's been in place, I think 15 years, and there's still a bottleneck occurring. The pedestrian environment has approved, improved with the added parking, with the buffer. The on-street parking is very well utilized. We have seen some delays in the vehicles exiting the alley immediately west Bedford to the congestion. One thought long-term is reversing the direction of that alley. That would require working with property owners, a city national bank, and then also building towards the north to redirect the travel pattern. So that would be more of a long term project if we continue this way. And then the eastbound evening travel time on South Santa Monica Boulevard pretty much has stayed the same. It was since we started the pilot. It was the first few weeks were definitely the most difficult with adjustment. We weren't quite done with North Santa Monica Boulevard and the buses were there. However, this travel time has pretty much stayed the same. Since we implemented the project, we've done adjustments as signal timing. We've installed changeable message boards. We had traffic control officers up during the peak hour up until about three, four weeks ago. They stopped when we added the delineators at Bedford Drive. We are looking at extending the left-term pocket at Roxbury Drive, but with these adjustments, we have noticed that there is a decrease in people changing. They are adhering to the right turn only at Bedford, and we see fewer instances of people crossing over passing illegally based on our observations. And to remind people with pre-construction was nine foot travel lanes next to seven foot parking lanes. There were limited left-term pockets and one of the complaints was weaving around parkers and left turns. had basically two turn pockets. One was eastbound at rock, excuse me, yes, eastbound at Roxbury and then westbound at Lyndon and the other intersections did not have turn pockets. Beverly Drive did have turn pockets throughout this process. During construction, we removed the parking that was, that added straight from the lanes, added additional turn pockets, wider travel lanes. And the turn pockets in blue are what were added to during the construction, westbound at Bedford, eastbound at Camden, and then both places, both eastbound and westbound during at Roedale. And the volumes increased by about 20%. We also noticed about an increase in travel speed. The post pilot project, this is the pilot program. Seven new parking spaces, again five between Roe deo and Beverly. the wider lanes and continue the valuation we have quantitative data which would be traffic counts, travel time studies, parking occupancies, and then orange and destination surveys which are actually relatively rigorous that identifies what cars are pass through versus cars that have the destination within the city. And then part of any evaluation like this has a lot of qualitative data, the pedestrian environment, the community feedback, and then the response of delay versus benefits of pedestrian improvements versus the delay that occurs. improvements versus the delay that occurs. The, some of the data that we've collected so far, you will notice that North Santa Monica Boulevard has, from pre-construction during the peak hour, has increased somewhat. South Santa Monica Boulevard, the vehicle volumes have definitely decreased. I would point out that some of this, the vehicle volumes have definitely decreased. I would point out that some of this, especially in the morning, could be attributed to, this was the most recent traffic counts were conducted during school hours, so there could have been lower counts due to that. And we do the travel time. Unfortunately, since we had an planned to do this pilot project before we start construction, we don't have the travel time data from pre-construction, but if you look at it compared to North Santa Monica Boulevard,. In the morning, basically all times, North San Monica Boulevard takes longer than South San Monica Boulevard, except during the evenings on the Eastbound direction. And a couple of things that you can see the Eastbound, these are some of the counts that we had. The evening, it takes 8.3 minutes to get from eastbound to get from Wilshire to Crescent Drive. The mornings in the midday are not as long. The midday is not quite as long and then the morning it runs basically the same as previously. And then you contrast that to the westbound which has two lanes. You're looking at more in the two to four minute time frame. Some observations that we conducted going out there of our traffic engineer Kevin Riley spent a lot of time out there. In the midday, after it settled down, we have seen definitely a less of an eastbound traffic queue driver generally could go the speed limit. In the afternoon, around 3 to 5 p.m., it started slowing down, and the eastbound queued back to Roxbury sometimes, Lyndon Drive. And then in the evening, it would get back to almost to Wilshire Boulevard. We did observe that drivers were observing the right turn only restriction after the installation of the delineators and then two to ten vehicles were exiting the alley. We experienced 20 to 30 seconds of delay waiting for the green light at Bedford. We also discussed pedestrian scrambles to install scrambles at Bedford, Camden, Rodeo, Drive. The benefits of pedestrian scrambles are they do minimize conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians. They allow pedestrians across in any direction. It does help with the right turning vehicles waiting for the gaps in pedestrians and also for the left turning vehicles. The big con and this is why we have not installed them yet is there is a delay an additional 20 to 30 second delay of all red time with the scrambles you're adding a 20 30 second delay to an intersection with the scrambles because you have read for that time. And our concern was that that would create much more of a backup than we were already experiencing. Then also there was concerns about vehicles queuing between North San Monica Boulevard and South San Monica Boulevard. Our recommendation with scrambles is that we are recommendation before we install them is really wait until we have an established baseline so we can really measure what the impacts of the scrambles are to traffic. community feedback. We've received, especially at the beginning, 16 emails, 25 phone calls, tweets, Instagram, Facebook messages. Almost all of them were complaints about the delay of being experienced, access from park instructions in the alley and primarily negative against that. Although a several notices did complement North San Maqibal, Barton, the improvements that we've made there. And those are the advantages and disadvantages of the pilot program so far. And so options proceed. We had planned to initially this was set up to collect data and do analysis over the next three months. That would be an option to continue. The pre go back to pre construction. That would require eliminating the westbound left turn pocket at rodeo drive and approximately seven park installs installed on the north. Of course, we could go back to the during construction scenario. Another thought would be removing the parking on the south side only that would be the same as pre-construction but with lighter parking lanes. Again that would still eliminate the westbound left turn pocket at Roe Dail and the new park installs on the north side and then finally the go to two lanes in each direction, but eliminate left turns. The con of that would be access to the Sanamonc by park and structures. So those are the options that we identified to proceed, and we're here for any questions. Thank you, sir. So we'll take comments from the public first. If this is something you would like to address us on, please fill out a yellow slip. And each person will get three minutes. I think it says Michael Farronick. Sorry, sir. We owned the property on 450 North Rocksbury Drive, so we are in the corner of Rocksbury and Santa Monica. Coming out of the parking lot at this point, from our parking lot into Rocksbury, quite self is a three to four minute event because there are cars parked lined up on North Rocksbury to make a ride on Santa Monica. And if there's a pedestrian going through Santa Monica, you're only going to get one car making a ride. So there's normally 10 or 15 cars lined up on Roxbury trying to make a ride. So at this point it takes us four to five minutes just to get out of our parking lot to be able to make a ride into Roxbury. Once you're on Santa Monica there are a lot of drivers that can't make a ride into the next street so they're trying to go to the left lane because that street on the right hand side you're supposed to only making a right into Bedford. So there's a lot of drivers on the left hand side trying to go to the left lane. So there you have a huge bottleneck as well trying to get through Santa Monica. And it literally takes us from our building going to Rodeo, it's a five minute drive, it's just since the spots were put in, it's just been complete madness as far as anything in that area is concerned. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Sonny Sessun. Good afternoon. First the Qtoes, the park looks great. Remodel of the park really was very nice. I take my bike through it almost every weekend. And I love the little curb. You can ride over and just cross into the next park. As far as some of the analyses and some of the metrics Aaron just showed you, I think it might slightly be skewed because the rest of the park construction is not quite finished, especially towards Beverly Boulevard. So the suggestion I have is whatever the outcome is today, is just to wait a little bit until North Santa Monica Boulevard is complete. Now as far as my experience, pre-construction, post-construction, I own two properties. I actually have a family office right in the corner of Bedford and South Santa Monica Boulevard. We operate upstairs so we're right in that corner and we own the building on Beverly Drive and South Santa Monica Boulevard where Chipotle is on the corner. I can tell you categorically on behalf of the merchants there they were crushed when the parking was taken away. 30 to 50%. And I'm sure all of you have driven through Weston East bound. And you've seen how many stores were shut down. I'd say an average of two or three four-least signs per block, especially in the height of the shutdown of the parking spaces and in the height of the shutdown of the parking spaces and in the height of the construction. So my appeal to you is just a way, let the construction end in full. That's happening throughout the parks, north of Santa Monica Boulevard. I think that will help alleviate some of the traffic that's westbound and eastbound on south Santa Monica Boulevard. I would leave the parking there as is All of you have walked through it now. There's life there. It's vibrant there The merchants are happy there notwithstanding you know some of the office owners that might have Some issues and I think that will be alleviated once North Santa Monica Boulevard gets more frequented. Thank you for your time and thank you for the work and everything you do for the city. Thank you, sir. Mares, a fix your restaurant? Iona Reston and Lira Santa Monica with the microphone. Thank you. Iona Reston and Lira Santa Monica with my husband. And I was paying attention to your presentation and I saw that it was very detailed about traffic but there was no, no word about the merchants that are present on that street. That we are completely saw our business diminishes the minute that we had this incredible traffic in front of the restaurant. First of all, we apply for valet a few years ago, but the city denied it because they say they probably after seven o'clock to put a couple of cars in front. The rest was a major blocking traffic, so we don't have a valet. And then the smog there, it's insane. Our business penalized also, we start actually, after seven o'clock. And people take Uber, they have to drop and walk to the restaurant, which is who wants to go through that to eat a plate of pasta, even if it's delicious, but people don't want to come. And then there is no way for elderly or people that are on a wheelchair to stop in front of the restaurant because it's breaking the law, we stop traffic. There is completely madness. And the traffic is a business killer. So we are talking all our dimensions over there. And as far as much as cost rent, all the taxes that we pay, which is not really simple, I was thinking, maybe a portion of my rent to the center to the seat of Beverly Leaves, all the respect. It's a joke, but it's not a joke. Because as I said, the traffic and everything, it was so much better when on the big boulevard, you guys were doing construction to make a beautiful boulevard much better. And we didn't have this crazy traffic that we have now when the big boulevard is so beautiful and done and we didn't have this crazy traffic that we have now when the big boulevard is so beautiful and done and we happy about it. So in your consideration of the traffic is you have to think about people, they may be living there, we support other families because we have employees and you pretty much are killing our business because if you wanted to see on my phone, I can like your remote, my schedule for tonight dinner, they all come in at seven. So we, the elderly people, they're not gonna come because by the time the traffic's gone, probably they are sleeping. And then the people, they will chair, there is no way, because they parking down on the structure behind the restaurant, the rocks, very parking. And there is no way for them to enjoy life, which is I don't think because Beverly is like their people and their community as much as I like it. And I wanted to be part of that. I really thank you for my time and thank you for listening. And please think about the people that are on the little Santa Monica. And it's not about traffic. Thank you for listening. But please think about the people that are on little Santa Monica and it's not about traffic. I appreciate it. Thank you. David LaReta. Thank you for having me. Oning the notch for 12 years, pretty much everything been smooth, traffic, even during construction. In North Santa Monica, we managed to dodge the bullet. Everybody did a great job in with traffic and directing traffic. And since the new seven parking spots and the right turn on Bedford, it's been a nightmare. It's absolutely nightmare. I don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know what are you looking at, but from one PM on this traffic, my busy time is lunch. I'm losing business every day because people refuse to come, if you have a meeting, if I'm in Beverly Hills, say, let's meet at the Nash, people don't want to come. And I hear complaints all the time, it's traffic, I can get in there. Trying to get out of the parking lots, it's a nightmare by itself. I'm not talking about buildings, even I'm talking about the parking lots between the two Sanamonicas. It's very, very difficult to do business like that and we're losing business. Not to mention that all the sidewalks are broken and that's by itself, and that's a separate problem. But the way it is right now, it's a disaster. We're filling it, we're filling it in our pocket, we're losing business customers are not coming, and we're not getting the lunch business meeting that we used to get as much as we used to get them. Thank you. Steve Webb. Good afternoon mayor Mayor Councilmembers. The object of this program was to accomplish three things. One to create more parking for the merchants that were on the little Santa Monica. Two to make it more pedestrian friendly, having the buffer of parking. And three was to try and slow down the cars that were coming through using Little Santa Monica to get through, not the local traffic. But the idea was hopefully over time, people would decide to go to big Santa Monica and they would leave little Santa Monica for the residents and the people that were shopping. And I think we're moving in that direction. Yes, I have no doubt there are some problems that we're experiencing today. Part of it is because people are experiencing something new. And I think hopefully over time, one of the objectives that will be achieved is that people will decide not to, the through traffic will decide to avoid little Santa Monica and go to the north. It's too soon to tell. And so my recommendation is simply, if some tweaks can be made to make it a little better for some. But let's try another three months. We'll have a better idea of whether any of these things are working or not. I think it's important. I think three months, especially since this started while construction was still going on, you don't have enough data enough real time. And so hopefully you can balance some equities that would allow us to continue with this trial program for three months and maybe work towards alleviating some of the specific problems that have been pointed out. Thank you. Thank you, sir. James Anderton. Good afternoon. I have the retail store West, which is right in the middle of all this between Rodeo and Camden. I was one of the strong advocates for the return of parking, and I thank the City Council profusely, Lillian, in particular, for taking that issue up and hearing the merchants and bringing the parking back. I mean, you really restored some livelihoods of several mom and pop businesses on the street, on both sides of the street. I do hope that that option that, you know, I cringe when I see option B back up there to once again take up that issue of maybe taking the parking back off the street or back off the south side of the street. back off the street or back off the south side of the street. That said, I would agree that I hope that there can be some tweaks. You know, I don't. I agree that I do look directly out at that long line of cars coming the one way in the eastbound and seeing that long term, if that is the trend, something would have to be done. I'm not opposed ultimately if you have to go back to two lanes each direction and the parking. One idea I had that I proposed or mentioned earlier before even the big Santa Monica project may be worth looking at again, particularly on that south side of the street, is there any value, is there any consideration? What if those meters were a lane of traffic during the morning and afternoon hours and were meters during the business hours? Is there any viability to something like that? That opens up two lanes. We don't need the parking before 10 AM. We do need it during the business hours. And I will tell you what fueled this. And I know this is totally legal. But for all the vocalization I've done about parking, I cringe when I go outside, my storefront, and I have two beautiful spaces. and what's happened is someone that works in a local store comes in with their handicap placard and they're there for the day and I know that happens to I wouldn't be surprised if it's 30 or 40 percent of the parking that we've worked so hard to put back I mean if you walk down the street and see how many placards are there. I have no qualms about the legitimate use of those, of course not. But when it's abuse of you know local people who are working doing it for the day, it defeats all that hard work we did for parking. So then I thought well I'd taken to putting my car in front of the store until like 10 am so that these people couldn't take it for the day then I go put it in the garage then I have a space that's available as a meter in space for the day and then I thought well what if those meters weren't available during those hours and then I kind of thought well maybe that would help if that were a later traffic during that time Anyway, that's all thank you very much. Thank you, sir. David Gingol. I put in a card for this agenda item to talk about the bottle neck at Little Santa Monica in Bedford. I've lived in this city since I'm 16, so I've been a resident 60 years. I'm pretty well versed what's going on in Trusdale. I'm going model neck at Little Santa Monica in Bedford. I've lived in the city since I'm 16, so I've been a resident 60 years. I'm pretty well versed what's going on in Truesdale, Southwest, Little Santa Monica Boulevard. When I'm coming from, let's say, Beverly Drive or City Hall, and want to go to my home in Roxbury, and I want to make a left turn at Bedford in Little Santa Monica. It is almost impossible because all the cars coming from Century City, they don't stop right at Bedford, but they block the intersection. So by the cars blocking the intersection going east on Bedford in Little Santa Monica, the people in the left turn lane cannot turn left. I have two suggestions for that particular intersection that you may want to tell traffic and parking commission to put it on their agenda for next time or tell traffic and parking staff to work something up. And these are my suggestions. Where cars are going east and they're at the corner of Bedford and Little Santa Monica Boulevard, it should be painted in the street, keep clear as it is on Rexford in front of the police department. The alternative would be to put up a sign, do not block intersection. And those things would alleviate traffic. Cars would be able to go left to Bedford, and then the cars going west would have much easier time going. And I also want to say to this esteemed tribunal that we recognize Lillibasi, who was on traffic and parking commission from 1997 to 2003, was even Chairman of that Commission, to Lester Friedman, who was on Traffic and Parking Commission from 2011 to 2017, also Chairman, and Dr. Julian Gold, who was also on the Traffic and Parking Commission for six years from 2003 to 2009. So sometimes in the meetings when people come up to explain things to you, a lot of us has assumed that this was all new to you, but you're obviously so well versed being on those commissions. I just wanna say, take two seconds to say, I agree with Mayor Gold to go with a very plain crosswalk of paint. What you did on North Santa Monica, there's nine of them in front of Willie Pond and Bedford and Roxbury and all of those by Beverly Gardens. That is all we would need to start out for the crosswalk there on Maple. Even Tom White said go with the most expensive one. And I would be in favor of that. It's a ladder crosswalk. Borders on the side for a women line. go with the most expensive one and I would be in favor of that. It's a ladder crosswalk, borders on the side for a limit line. You dig into the sidewalk and you got it done very easily and inexpensive. I hope that's an option. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Robert Reader. I'm going to go ahead and ask for your consent. My name is Robert Ryder. I own Beverly Hills postal place. I've been there 21 years over on Santa Monica and Bedford right next store to AT&T. The first 19 years have been very smooth. Businesses increasing. Beverly Hills has treated me very well. The last three years or so business has been taking a very steep decline. I believe it's due to the traffic that we're having now. The Ford, the construction, I thought everything was fine. The two lanes go in both ways. People were able to park and get into my store no problem. Since then I'm having mail, I own, I rent mailboxes. There also have over 2,000 people to come in and out of my store. Weekly, they are telling me they don't want to come to the neighborhood because it's very difficult to get in and out of my location now due to the traffic that is lined up. I heard someone mention it after 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock. It backs up. Sometimes I see it backed up past Wilshire. And that's even more of a problem. When you can't drive Wilshire past Santa Monica and there's cars stuck in the middle, we have a problem there. And I just want to say that I think it's better the way it was with the two lanes going both ways and I hope that we can fix this in getting going. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Cammy, Hibernani. Hi, all. My business isn't in the little Santa Monica for the past 26 years. I have to say, I never seen the traffic as horrible as this idea right now. Not only is horrible, it's dangerous. I've sent numerous emails to each and every one of you. I do get a response from most of you guys, but we need to do something about it. Is destroying our businesses, we pay a lot of rent where we are. It's not cheap. And we need to benefit from every single minute that we're there. And we're not doing it. I have customers that don't want to come pick up the cars because of the traffic. In the afternoon, when we want to leave, good luck. For me, it takes me two to three minutes just to be able to go one inch forward to get out of my driveway. Besides that, it's dangerous. You guys talk about people called J-walking here. We do opposite lane traffic on Little San Monica. The speed is 25 miles an hour. Nobody drives 25 miles an hour going westbound. That's dangerous. And if you don't do anything about it, you're winning our businesses. And from what I've been hearing from Aaron, everything is sugarcoded. Everything is sugarcoded. The traffic is back to pass peninsula towards Beverly's high school at the time. You know all you need to do is at peak hours go take a drive. We'll take a drive and see how horrible it is. Some of you guys that live and work in the neighborhood you know it and for you guys not to do anything about it, you're hurting our businesses and our lovely hosts. So please, I would appreciate it if you take it back to the way it was. Two lanes eastbound, two lanes westbound, God bless the meters. They've been there for the past 26 years that I've been here. We had no issues. And that's all I have to say. Please help us. Thank you, sir. Mark Agerman. My name is Mark Agerman. I'm sorry. My name is Mark Agerman. I'm here representing Royal Motors, which is located on the southeast corner of Linden and Little Santa Monica Boulevard. I'd like to start out by thanking Aaron and his staff for doing a very comprehensive report, allows a discussion of what we all want, which is the best traffic management plan possible to get traffic either through the city or to its location within this city. The city is actually very fortunate through several decades of wonderful parking management planning of having a lot of public parking in this area. There are the five public lots adjacent to North Santa Monica Boulevard. There is the Bedford and Santa Monica lot. There is the Creighton Barrel Lot, which runs from Beverly Drive to Cannon Drive, just south of South Santa Monica Boulevard. And there is of course the City Hall, Amundsen Lot at the eastern end of the Triangle. As was stated in the staff report, one of the goals of the project was to quote, test the ability of the street to function with only one through lane. I believe that it is the overwhelming consensus of those who use South Santa Monica Boulevard and head in an east vertically direction that one lane simply does not work. It is mandatory that there be two lanes running in an east or lead direction as there are two lanes running in a west or lead direction. I did submit to the clerk 10 copies of petition signed by businesses on South Santa Monica Boulevard just under 90 signatures urging that the city return to the configuration of two easterly lanes and two Westerly lanes. As the staff report indicated, Eastbound mid-traffic travel times from Wilshire to Crescent increased to close to five minutes, a three minute increase, over double. PMP hours Eastbound travel from Wilshire to Crescent increase over 8.3 minutes. You can literally walk that distance in less time than you could drive it in the PM traffic hours. During the 7 PM hour Eastbound, traffic is backed up to Wilshire Boulevard and speeds are 20 miles per hour. That's per the staff report. There can be two westbound and two eastbound lanes. One more minute. Very easily accomplished either by returning to the old configuration before construction or if wider lanes are desired by staff for safety purposes, removing 13 parking spaces on the south side. That is only a net loss however of five spaces because we're up seven over pre-construction. So by giving up five spaces net on pre-construction, we can have two lanes in each direction and wider traffic lanes or we can return the old configuration and maintain the extra parking. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Roger Levy. Thank you. I just want to share with the council and everybody here, I live on Durant. And since the problem, and I do respect the presentation, but I didn't see any photos of when there's traffic, it just showed two, three, four cars. It wasn't like the peak hours. And the reason why I'm here is because I live under rant and I want to tell you that people from Century City going eastbound on little Santa Monica don't want to go that way anymore. They're cutting over to Moreno onto Durant and Durant is backed up between Moreno and Charleville. So I can if I park on the street, I can't get out. And if I park in the alley where my parking spot is behind my building, I can't get out that way. I went from Durant and Charleville to Bedford a few weeks ago, and it took me 20 minutes to get from Durant and Charleville to Bedford. You know, it is what it is, but something has happened that has impacted my street, which is a ways, but now Durant is a thoroughfare. So I just wanted to share that with you, hoping something could be done. I'm not moving. I like where I live. And sure I could walk if I long to, but I just miss what was practical. What has happened is put a tremendous strain on traffic. And when somebody previously spoke and they said, it's backed up to Wilshire traffic on little Santa Monono it's backed way up to Century City so I just wanted to share that and perhaps there could be a solution. So thank you for listening. Thank you Daniel Fink. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you, City Council. As you, Mr. Mayor, know from this very morning and Mayor Bossy knows I walk and I walk into the central triangle two or three times a week. This is based on personal observations. The goal of traffic calming, a pedestrian environment on the South San Monica is laudable. I'm not certain it's realistic anymore. I would agree with Mayor Webb that we really can't evaluate right now. There's still a construction going on. North Santa Monica, the Metro construction, Wilson has just balled things up. So I don't know. It's certainly worse as many speakers have said. I don't know what the cause is, but I also suspect that the changes on South Santa Monica are indeed unfortunately part of the cause. We have to view the traffic pattern in Beverly Hills as part of a system, which includes the, it's about east-west now, the cities to the west, including Century City Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Los Angeles and West Hollywood to the east. And there are four or five major east-west thoroughfares, sunset, North Santa Monica, South Santa Monica, Wilshire, Olympic, I guess you go as far as South is Pico. And each one of those is gridlocked at rush hour, morning and night. The morning rush hour starts about six or seven goes until 10, the afternoon rush hour starts at one or two, both directions and goes until seven or eight. That has led to cut-through traffic south on Gregory and Charlottesville, north on Carmelita and Elivado. There's over development by a sort tell, by a LaBrea, Sentry City, within our city itself, the Hilton development, the proposed 23 story tower, and whatever will be built, eventually Robinson's. The backup, it goes all the way to Marano, maybe in Sentry Park East, the Eastbound Traffic. It's not just to Wilshire Boulevard. We have to look beyond the boundaries of our city. I would agree with the gentleman who said, keep the parking, but not a peak hours. I would see that as one very feasible suggestion. No parking until 10 and then parking somewhere three or four in the afternoon hour and perhaps differential on the north and south sides of the street. I that could be studied. I assume it's not too costly to take a parking meter on or off or even just unscrew the thing and repaint the curb. So that would be my suggestion. The disabled placard misuse is a whole another issue that we as a city, we as a county, we as a state need to develop. But that if people are taking parking that's meant for retail purposes with 20 minute, 30 minute one hour and misusing that. That's probably 30 to 40% of the problem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, sir. Okay, so I have no other cars. I do, and before I call the Traffic and Parking Commission, I do want to reflect that we're in receipt of three car respondents, all of which are complaints about the traffic there, as well as a petition called statement of business owners on South Santa Monica Boulevard between Worship Boulevard and Beverly Drive. It's addressed to the City Council, the Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Persons. The undersinder all business owners on South Santa Monica Boulevard between Worship, Boulevard and Beverly Drive. We wish to bring to your attention the insufferable traffic conditions that exist on South Santa Monica Boulevard regarding traffic, traveling in an easterly direction. At best, traffic is extremely heavy. During rush hours, traffic is at a standstill. The present conditions severely, negatively impact our businesses. We request immediate traffic mitigation measures to improve traffic flow and promote greater safety and reference to traffic heading in an easterly direction on South Santa Monica Boulevard, Queen Wilshire Boulevard, and Beverly Drive, including but not limited to the following one, placing of no left turn signs at the intersections of Camden Drive and Rodeo Drive. Number two, installation of left turn arrows at Beverly Drive and Camden Drive. And number three, restriping of South Santa Monica Boulevard so that there are two traffic lanes for traffic heading in a westerly and easterly direction. And I didn't count, but there are probably 90 or 100 signatures here. So we'll reflect that. That's the public comment with the traffic and parking commission, like to address us on this. Find out. Afternoon, Jay Solnett, Vice Chair, traffic and parking. I just want to be brief. Our commission does not have a recommendation to help you with this because we have not had any data presented to us. We were told it would be probably September or October. Three months is just gathering data. So we have no recommendation. We've only had one person come speak to us. That was Royal Motors. We've had no one come speak to us pro or against this. And so we really don't have anything to recommend for you. Thank you, sir. Chair Mr. Carter. Thank you again for the time. Yes, although we haven't looked at this trial time completely, but what we know for sure is what the council passed as a trial basis included the pedestrian. So we didn't complete the whole thing. We left out the pedestrian portion of it. And I'm sure that will add up. But one thing is last week I went with Kevin, our traffic engineer, and also with Aaron. We sat there at the Pika, or looking at the traffic. One of the areas that wasn't mentioned was the alley from North of FedEx, North of East, South side of the building of the South Santa Monica Boulevard. There is a alley pouring into South Santa Monica. And that by itself, because it's right before the right turn, which adding the delineators has helped, because it guides cars whether they want or not to make the right turn into the bed, into bedfurt. But that alley adds traffic and adds chaos, because people are making a right turn, but they don't want to make a right onto Bedford. So they stop backing up the traffic, trying to switch lane to get down to the next lane over. So that's one of the areas and maybe we talked about it, maybe they can look at reconfiguring some of the pathways of the buildings and direct the exit to Wilshire. Again, we look at that exit to Wilshire, you're going to have a problem at this time because Metro is going on. One of the speakers that spoke, you know, there is an ongoing problems right now in our streets, Metro and also we're not completely done with North Santa Monica. And one thing that we have to remember, prior to construction, we have the 10,000 building Santa Monica that has almost fully occupancy. So you have all of those people that have cars that are getting gone. And you have Boldorf that completed. Those those people that have cars that are getting on and you have Waldorf that completed Those are people that have added so the traffic is not constant So if if people think that you're gonna go back to the Tulane and everything is gonna go away It will not because we already have a lot more cars added to the streets But I know I know at one point the night that the city decided on this trial basis was that the night that everyone thought about going to the village type, making South San Monica a village type street so that community can use and merchants can be happy. If we're going in that direction, these are the steps that we're taking. If we want to make it into a parkway, yes, then that's something else that we have to look at. Less parking and faster traffic. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So with that, we're going to close the public comment and move to councilmember questions and comments. One thing that's not a solution for me at least is to turn little Santa Monica Boulevard into a highway. I mean, in my view, just in general, we've given up too much of our community already to cars and we shouldn't make little Santa Monica Boulevard a highway. We also saw the impact on the businesses and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the park and the of art. But we are faced with the issue that we do have gridlock. I have been up there during the time period of gridlock. And it's serious. I mean, you can almost sense the road rage in terms of people waiting to make turns to get onto a little Santa Monica Boulevard. It is a very real problem. This seems to be something of a disconnect between travel time and the sense of gridlock. Is that because a lot of the gridlock is associated with turning on to little Santa Monica Boulevard? And so that's not really captured in the travel time if you're already on little Santa Monica Boulevard. Does that explain the psychological difference between what you feel as a driver there versus if you measure the actual time? I failed to introduce Michael Meyer from my terrace. The travel time runs that we did were largely geared towards trying to monitor, has it gotten better as people got used to it. So they were strictly travel time runs on Mostly on South Santa Monica Boulevard itself, and then we did North Santa Monica Boulevard for comparison and There is sort of a psychological aspect to it You know even if you're only maybe taking two minutes longer than it used to be, if there's a lot of horn honking and there's a lot of merging and there's people pushing trying to get in, it feels like it's worse than just two minutes more. And that certainly is the feeling of being there, the feeling of people pushing, the feeling of the horn honking and all of that. And I do think it's, we went from basically no parking and quite a relatively smooth travel on South Simonka Boulevard during construction and with the change that makes it seem like it's a lot longer and it is longer. And in the report that seems to me a little bit of ambiguity of that things might be improving, but what are the reasonable prospects for the remaining amount of work to be done on North Santa Monica Boulevard and for that to or other measures that we might take to mitigate the current gridlock that is there? I know it's a hard thing to answer definitively, but reasonably, how much do you think that it could be mitigated? Honestly, I don't think it's going to be easy to mitigate. I mean, the data shows that it takes longer using North Santa Monica Boulevard than it does on South Santa Monica Boulevard. And yet, people still do that. So I don't see how we can get pushed much more of the traffic off of South Santa Monica Boulevard. And that's what it would really take to make it work well with just one lane. How about the issue of the possibility of no parking during the more extreme hours? We looked at that when we were trying to come up with the pilot program and there's a number of difficulties with it partly. If we were trying to do it in both directions, you know, like maybe have two lanes westbound in the morning, but not midday and two lanes eastbound in the evening, but not midday, to try and find the appropriate locations again to have during those time periods when you are going to have parking, where you're going to have that merge happen. And particularly for only doing an a fairly short segment, you're going to have the same kind of quote unquote gridlock happening in both directions where those mergers are happening. And it would require a lot of overhead signs, changeable signs. Like if you envision right now, if we tried to have that eastbound lane that now turns right only at Bedford, if we wanted to say, OK, we're only going to make it right turn only during 10 AM to 3 PM or something like that. Then during those hours where the parking was prohibited and they could go straight, I mean you wouldn't be able to have those ballards or delineators that have made it work pretty well. So you're gonna end up again. Everybody will be still trying to go through there, or line everybody, but you know, people will be ignoring the overhead signs that say, right turn only during these hours. So it's difficult to do for such a short segment where you see more effective use of the parking lane for a travel lane during peak hours. It's like on Olympic Boulevard, where it goes on for miles, not for just three blocks. I have a, what's the relationship between traffic and little Santa Monica and the current congestion on Wilshire and the congestion on Wilshire that's only going to get worse with the metro construction? So the relationship is, I do believe there is a greater demand on both Santa Monica Boulevard's with Wilshire being down to two lanes in each direction. There's a demand on all adjacent corridors. Right, and so it's not a perfect world and little Santa Monica Boulevard will be a partial relief valve for what's happening on Wilshire. Correct, and the potential as I think a few of the speakers noted, there is more traffic than when we started construction. So I would imagine there's gonna be more traffic. It's awesome. And just one more question. What are the prospects for trying to diminish to an even greater extent past the traffic to really hinder traffic coming out of Century City, really trying to hinder people just passing through Beverly Hills to get to Century City and so that little Santa Monica Boulevard really could be more for local transit. Well, I think that's one of the things that this staff was referring to in one of the slides where it said, you know, really to look at this as a conversion to a village type street and really slowing it and traffic coming it, pedestrianizing it, requires us to look at the entire length from the city limits on the west to, and then the question becomes to where on the east. That's a hard part to figure out where would you transition when you get to Burton Way. But you know my personal feeling is I think in the long run if you wanted to go that way we'd have to do something where that crossover intersection is just to the west of Marino Drive and make it just one lane entering Beverly Hills there. But you'd have to get LA to agree to that. Because really, you can't control it until you get to Marino. And if you've nectodounded one lane at Marino, a lot of the people are going to turn south and go down Marino into the neighborhood. So it's a really big challenging issue. And we have to look at the whole length of the street because it's going to cause traffic to be pushed to other places. OK, so here's how I think I shake out. We have a variety of unattractive alternatives. Given that we have the current gridlock, I lean towards going back to the Tulane's Needs Direction with some tweaks, with maintaining the parking, so going back to an improved version of pre-construction. But ultimately, I do want the village concept for little Santa Monica Boulevard. Ultimately, I would like us to move to really discouraging the past through traffic, to have it one late in each direction, to really make it prohibitively unattractive for people to use it to get back and forth the century city just to pass through the city. But I think realistically with the metro traffic, with traffic that's going to be happening, this doesn't seem to be the time to do that. So even though that's what I wanted to be, I'm not sure that for the next few years that that's what we should be doing right now. But on this topic, I do like to hear from, you know, somebody else spoke about all the knowledge that we have on City Council about traffic issues. So I do want to hear that, but that's where I'm shaking it. Now, sir, Councilmember Friedman, didn't get me very far of the last issue. I agree with what Bob said at the bonnets. The notes I wrote was, while I agree that the long-term solution is not to have South Santa Monica Boulevard as a highway, I think, I don't think that that's what's going to be good in the short term because I think we are going to get more and more traffic there. And the traffic like water is going to find the area where it can flow the easiest. And all we're going to have is continuing gridlock on South Santa Monica Boulevard. But having said that, I'm intrigued by the idea of the one lane at LA City. In other words, having them cooperate with us. I remember when I was on traffic in parking, I think I suggested something about something on Olympic Boulevard, the left turn at Olympic Boulevard going to Central park east and that didn't get us anywhere. They were not interested. But have we approached LA City? Is that something that's feasible? Right. My experience with LA City, we would have to have a really strong court or study and basically an environmental report to be able to convince them of the change that we have to look at. I mean, we would need to present further evidence that it would benefit both cities. So the sign that as you enter Beverly Hills, which is on the OASI, this is local access, or does they local access only, or is this local access? Yes, it does. Right, it's local access. I don't believe it says only, but. OK, so the fact that at one point in time, that was put up as a sign there. Would that be indicative of any study having been done at that time? To add the sign, that was just perseverance on our part to have them put the sign that way. You know, we have 90 plus businesses that have indicated that they're impacted by this traffic. My office is right on Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire and I can attest to the fact that each and every day trying to get out of my driveway which goes on to South Santa Monica Boulevard just before Lyndon is a formidable task. Not only that, I'm also witness to the fact. And I see here in the staff report that at least police officers have noticed some of the things that I've noticed, which is that people drive on the wrong side of the road because they want to get into the left turn pocket so that they can make the left turn pocket so that they can make a left turn onto Roxbury so that they can avoid South Santa Monica Boulevard. And my guess is that traffic has increased on Roxbury between South Santa Monica Boulevard and Carmelita, but I don't know if we have any statistics on that at Dewey. So in the staff report here, it says there were five citations issued for failure to drive on the right side of the road. Two of those citations, I'm sorry for the right side of the road. One citation for failure to obey a posted sign and another one for making a U-turn in the business district, which is another thing that I've observed personally, which is people get into that gridlock. And when the Westbound traffic, which is in the evening, is does clear people make those U-turns so that they can avoid that. And those are dangerous conditions that are occurring. And I have not seen a police officer posted there as an assignment. It's probably, although I can't attest to this, incidental that they were able to get those citations. But I think that's another thing that if we had a police officer posted there and they weren't observed by the drivers, that you would see these things going on from 3.30 or 4 o'clock up until 7 o'clock. And I think that's a dangerous condition. I also am concerned about the businesses that say that something needs to be done about it. I think we do need to look at it. I don't like any of the solutions that were presented. The one that I think that I could support would be the one that I believe, if I'm not mistaken, the Traffic and Parking Commission came up with initially, which we as a council did not go for, which is to reduce the parking a bit. I think Mr. Atherton discussed it if I'm not mistaken or somebody discussed it and which would be a loss of 13 spaces. But that's 13 spaces, new spaces, but it would only be five of the old spaces. And that's something that I think that we need to look at so that we could have two lanes of traffic. I do believe we need two lanes of traffic each way, whether or not that's at this moment or whether or not we need some more data is something that I'm willing to look at. Thank you. Councilmember. Thank you. So I have to tell you that I'm very frustrated and I feel like in the movie Gaslight because I rewatch the meeting that we talked about the parking. And the agenda iced item and the conversation that we had was about whether or not to return the parking on Santa Monica back to either the north side, the south side, or not to have parking at all. That was the agenda as item, and that was pretty much what the conversation was about. We talked about the fact that the way the street was working at the time during the construction was to have no parking, which is what was occurring during the Santa Monica construction. It came back to us because the Santa Monica construction was about to be done and we needed to look at what we were gonna do going forward. So the options provided to us were either keep the existing situation that was the temporary situation which was the no parking or what was suggested to consider was to have parking only on the north side of the street. That was actually even a recommendation. And another option, which was the option that we landed on was to have parking on both the north and the south side of the street. That was the conversation. We never at that meeting talked about turning the street into a one lane Santa Monica Boulevard. It never came up and If it had come up I can assure you that I would have been the first person If or maybe the third person since I'm third in line to speak that would say to turn that street into a one lane street Whether you have parking whether you don't have parking, is a disaster. So I was shocked that we're even having this conversation because it wasn't a conversation we had when we were talking about parking. So we did a trial period without a conversation from the day us, and we did a trial period that was destined to fail. So I'm very frustrated and again I thought was this a conversation that we had and for some reason I was so focused on the fact that I walked the street to make sure that we had parking on both sides that I missed it that I went back and watched the tape again and I can tell you that there's no period in that conversation that we talked about turning that street into a one-way. and I can tell you that there's no period in that conversation that we talked about turning that street into a one lane. When we talk about Metro, we talk about the effects of a one lane street. So it's clear that when we're talking about little Santa Monica, where it is really a cut through street, we're going to have a problem when you're turning that street into a one lane. This is again I cannot tell you how frustrating this is that we're standing here even having this conversation. I apologize to our community that we even put ourselves through this but clearly this has to change. And again I really want to know how we got here, but I guess that's a conversation for another day. Based on the experience that we had, I completely feel that we must go back to the situation that we had earlier, where we had the two lanes of traffic both ways and parking on both sides of the street. I know that it was discussed earlier, and intuitively, I do agree that it sounds good to change the time of the parking. I know that some of the stores open at 10, but there are some stores and shops that open earlier. For example, some restaurants that are true gems in, I mean, I know that we had the Nosh. The Nosh open earlier. For example, some restaurants that are true gems in, I mean, I know that we had the nash. The nash opens earlier. People go for breakfast. They count on having parking early in the morning before 10 to go to the nash. There's a coffee place that opened up that counts on parking. There's La Colom. I'm just doing this for memory, but I walked it so. I know it. There's Locke Colombe. I'm just doing this from memory, but I walked it so. I know it. There's Locke Colombe, which is a coffee house that opens early. There's Ilkot to Tan, which opens earlier, that when I went and walked that street has been in our city for 17 years, not as long as the Nasir others, but told me they were going to close their doors if we didn't bring the parking back. So even though I do think intuitively, it sounds great to change the timing. I think we will be hurting other businesses so I don't support it. I think the first step that we need to do is get rid of that one lane that none of us approved or talked about and go back to the two lanes and two lanes with the parking on both sides. We can't support one side of the street and not support another. We just saw that exactly even with the post office. You can't support one side and not support the other. At another point, we can look at what other traffic calming situations we can do. But for me, what's important is I do believe that when we bring back the parking and we put the two lanes back, we already are going to have more of a pedestrian experience. As soon as we took away the parking, we turned that street into a mini-freeway. And that, to me, kills everybody. So it's very clear how I stand and clearly I'm very frustrated. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. that to me kills everybody. So it's very clear how I stand and clearly I'm very frustrated. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah. Thank you. Well, it's a little bit of a dilemma. I mean, on the one hand, we want parking for the stores. On the other hand, we're saying that having the parking creates traffic, which is unsustainable because no one wants to come there. And so I guess it's also a question ultimately of expectations. And we need to have a plan that at the end of the day, when we institute it, hopefully we'll signal to commuters. This is not the place for through traffic. Like councilmember Wonderlake said, you come here if you want to spend time here like large-mont. I don't think there are a lot of people who use large-mont as a north-south access road. It just is too inconvenient, but you'll go there if you want to. Part of the problem does seem to be the traffic coming from century city and I would like to look at ways of perhaps reducing it and maybe you can do a no right turn on marano and in theory if you did limit the traffic at least coming into the city to one lane that could ultimately perhaps reduce some of the traffic or ultimately it could cause people to change their patterns, the way they act. Los Angeles, my guess, doesn't want traffic calming, so whatever we do, we're going to have to do on our own. Los Angeles would like to expedite as much traffic through our city as possible and then sometimes unfortunately they permit developments which create traffic and they don't care about the impact it has on us. So, but you look at areas for example also like Robertson. Well in Beverly Hills Robertson is two lanes. If you go up to sort of West Hollywood kind of the border there, it goes to one and it becomes more of a pedestrian-oriented area. And that actually seems to work, even though that is a connection between Santa Monica Boulevard and for many people, Robertson goes down to the freeway. So there must be a way of doing it. In the interim, I don't mind if we go back to the pre-existing condition that we had, but we really need to figure it out, because as we know, you add a lane to a freeway, it doesn't mean that you necessarily reduce your travel time. It's a question of water seeking its own level or induced demand. So again, I also think that the issue of parking, which was so critical for the businesses, now we hear, well, much of it is being used by, or abused by disabled placards, by people by employees parking there. So we did hear from someone who said they wanted the parking, but now they're not so sure because those spaces are used by people who are employees who park their all day. And that's a separate problem as well. But I do think we have to have the vision for little Santa Monica. And by the way, someone mentioned that it's a major thoroughfare. Well, it really isn't the way that big Santa Monica is. You think about it, and it ends at our city's order more or less. And it also ends then more or less. Burton Way is not a major traffic thoroughfare. It really is being used that way. So I think that we have to plan ultimately the long-term vision of what it is. And much as you have in certain Australian cities where you have actually the names of the street big and small, I do think that the goal where we looked for a scramble and that sort of thing has to be a pedestrian sort of area. That's our goal for the city as a whole. And little Santa Monica is sort of more central to the triangle than big Santa Monica is. So I think we kind of have to do two things. And we have to one, try and figure out an immediate solution. I think the traffic problems now are being compounded by some of the multi-construction efforts, including Wilshire Boulevard that, you know, one thing somewhere has that ripple effect and Santa Big Santa Monica as well. And I think that when the construction on Big Santa Monica is done, although Wilshire Boulevard will remain, will be in a better position to look at longer term solutions. Again, so I don't mind right now if we want to move back to the preexisting conditions, but I want us to have a vision that says we're going to have scrambles. This is going to be pedestrian. It's not going to be us facilitating people going from century city to miracle mile or something. That's not what our city is about. And so the pedestrian experience and complete streets, I think, is paramount. As said, at some point, there may be, in this case, I don't think it's true because of the construction. When we move to our plans, we should look to do a glide path. There may be some initial chaos as people learn to, that this isn't a place to use to commute. But I don't think we've created that pedestrian experience yet, so that people understand, hey, this is large-mont, this is North Robertson, this is a place where you do not use to, to, to, as through traffic. And we haven't done that yet. And until we do, people are still going to look at it, unfortunately, as a commuter route. So I think we need to have that vision in place. And we need to then figure out how we're going to get there. Because I think all the businesses will better be served ultimately by having a large-smont style area where people are walking. You're shaking your head, sir. And you may not like large-smont style area where people are walking, you're shaking your head, sir. And you may not like large-smont, you may not like North Robertson, and you may like, you know, freeways. No, no, no, please finish your comments. No, no, sir. So, so what I'm suggesting is we need to figure out a way to get there. And I know, certainly, know that the little Santa Monica area on the block where you have between the city limits and Wilshire and Santa Monica where you have all of those small little stores and that sort of thing. I know that that's something that they share. And the notion is, as said, that for whatever reason they were able to, large-mont, north Roberts and pit other pedestrian areas, were able to create that. And that needs to be the goal, and we need to figure out how to get there. And I believe that that's the decision and direction of the council. I'm in agreement right now that we need to do something to alleviate the traffic chaos. And one thing we may be able to do immediately is to at least at certain hours of the day to ban turns. I know that we do that in some areas. And banning turns, left turns, or right turns might work. Now scrambles actually, I believe, help, you know, we tend to think that it's left hand turns that create all of the traffic. But in many cases where you have pedestrian areas, it's the right hand turns that do because there are people walking there. And that's where a scramble can help, I believe, is because at that point, everyone can go to where they need to go during the scramble and then afterwards lanes are cleared for left and right hand turns. But in the meantime, we may just need to, at certain of those intersections where it's the worst, we may need to eliminate turns either during certain hours of the day or throughout the day. I know that there are many areas that do that and if I could ask you, Aaron, what would that, how would that look and is that something we consider? Yes, we definitely can look at eliminating turns. The ones that come to mind are each bound at Roedale. We know that there's very few people that access the parking facility there. We do have a peak hour return restriction that Eats Bound at Camden, and that's something that we can look to explore. Is that confusing? If we maybe eliminate turns there just period? Does that alleviate the issue as well? That can eliminate the turn. So we will go look and we've been concentrating on these bound, we will go back and look at what the west bound as well. But these bound I think there's definitely some possibilities. To me that seems to be an obvious, if you look at the people who are actually waiting to make turns and the ripple effect that has on traffic, that would seem to be something that we should be looking at and we should be perhaps, no shame did you have something to say? Right. Okay. Chair Mascotti, that's one thing we have to consider is the access to the San Monica five structures And that's why Rodeo there we did count the cars that that had a limited access or limited movement there But that's something we would have to look carefully at Camden to make sure that there was proper access That's true, but in some cases you just make people will have to plan ahead or they'll need to go up to Santa Monica and just go around. I mean also the question is, is there any way to indicate because sometimes people will make the turns and the Santa Monica 5 will be full? So is there any way that we can, I don't know, maybe have street signs there that allow people to see what parking is actually available and where and directing them? Because some of the traffic is caused by people making turns thinking there may be spots available in some of the Santa Monica 5 that aren't available. And I think that again, we know the impact of cars circling for finding parking that that has a multiplier effect on the impact of traffic. Now, all of that is local traffic. And those are the people we want to serve. So if we're able to figure out a way to direct people who do want to use those facilities on how to get there, and it may not just be with an app, it may also be with actual signs on the street that we have that indicate the number of, you know, or how to get there, way finding, if you will. I think that's something we should look at. Thank you. Okay. So I'm going to try and be brief. I think that there is clear consensus that the current circumstance is terrible. I don't think anybody thinks that the way things are working today is the way we want them to work. And I think that in doing this, however it is that we are, I do think it started with a conversation about large-mont and pedestrian oriented and things like that, plus adding back the parking left us with a scenario in which the amount of space we had to work with was itself limited. And I think that's probably how we got to where we did. But having said that, it doesn't work. I think it's pretty clear. I don't think anybody here sent us a piece of paper thinks that this works. And I have to say then for my eighth year on the council, I don't think I have ever had as many people as unhappy about any decision we've made as they are with this one. I mean some of the mildest mannered people are just outraged at what we've done and it's pretty clear that we're going to have to change it. Now how we engineer that, I don't know and I don't know that we can do this off the dais. Obviously that's what your job is. I do think that if there is to be a long-term vision for changing the nature of the street, I think that we have to start at one city limit and go to the other. I'm not actually sure where the city limit. Does the city limit start on the east side of Moreno, the middle of Moreno or the west side of Moreno? The middle of Moreno. Is it really in the middle? It's in the middle. Exactly in the middle? Pretty much. So if we, so we're entitled to Moreno East. Correct. So if we put up a wall that only allowed one car through it. At Moreno, so you could go one way this way or you could take a right turn on to look. We could actually do that. You could block it. I would not have to ask anybody's permission. Anyway, you guys go figure it out. Julian you could block out Marie. Well we'll get to the ballers and all of that. But I think that clearly what we'd like, what I would like for you to do. Councilmember Friedman handed me a note and he said, the question about what the format of this would be eliminating the pre-construction five spaces and I don't know if you wouldn't expand or go back to the way it used to be Sure, and I don't know if that's a discussion. We want to have now where we want to defer to traffic and parking and to I would let me let me just put my two bits into this I would actually ask you to go back and come back with a plan that's got two lanes of traffic in both directions and parking as it is. And in some reason why you can't do that, tell us why. Tell us what the impediments are getting that done. My recollection was that that is what traffic and parking came up with. Wasn't there a plan that was presented? No, they took away spots. They took away spots. So the original plan that we called the hybrid would have taken the parking off the south side. It would still have been a one lane eastbound from Bedford to Beverly. But going back to the pre-existing, really what, I mean, the main difference between the pilot to the two lanes and retain parking on both sides, the main difference for going back to the pre-construction condition would be there's five spaces on the north side of South Santa Monica Boulevard just east of rodeo that were added. Those would have to be removed because we need to continue to maintain access into the alley by the almost former Brooks brothers and we would lose the Westbound left term pocket to Radeo other than that it would be striped to original condition. And part of the driver before no pun intended but was the notion that because the lanes kind of wiggled and it was close to the park cars that had created a dangerous condition. So part of the question would be would we have to recreate that dangerous? If then fact that were dangerous would we have to recreate it? So I would classify it as a dangerous condition. It was a very narrow condition in almost most of the collisions were property-type like rear-view windows. But that with parking on both sides and four lanes, we would be going back to the narrow roadway. Aaron, but could you also look at the idea of limiting turns beyond what they were limited before because I think that that can have a very positive impact? Yes. You also look at figuring out in their systems, I don't know if, you know, not Chad might know, but about signage that can direct people to or alert people to the availability of parking in the Santa Monica 5 because if people know about that, then they'll know which lane to get into and that could save a lot of traffic as well. Councilmember Bustray? Yeah, I just want to give a little history just because two of our colleagues were not on the council when we talked about that councilmember Friedman and councilmember Warner. Look, we're not on the council when we gave this direction. And when we took away the meters at that time, the businesses at that time were concerned about us taking away the meters. And we said, even though we don't like to use the word promise because we recognize things changed. But we did say that the intention was that after North Santa Monica Boulevard was done, that we would bring the meters back. We never talked about changing any of the configuration of the street at the time. One thing we did talk about was bike lanes. And at the time, we didn't know at the time specifically that we were going to vote on having bike lanes on North San Monica, which we ultimately did. So from my perspective, I feel that there is no time to waste. And I would say that for me as one council member, my direction would be starting today to go back and bring our street back to the original configuration of the two lanes of driving lanes on both sides and the two parking on both sides, the original configuration before we were doing the construction. And we know how to do it. That's how the street was for all those years. I think we should do that as soon as possible. That would be my direction. Okay. And the only thing I would add to, I mean, if there's a way to do it better, I mean, there's no reason to do it the old way if there's actually a better way that can straighten out some of those zig-zags and maybe create a little more space. And if it really means losing a turn lane someplace to make the difference, I would at least want you to think about what that would look like. Made a decision to go back to where we were. But you know, let's not draw this out months and months. I mean, it shouldn't take long to do it. Mayor Gold, I want to make sure that what we get to is to the satisfaction of the council because I think we want to make sure that we get clear direction. Let's go if we're going to make changes to the pre-existing configuration. It has impacts on certain things. So let me just say, Maddie, go back to the tape. Watch the meeting. We never talked about turning that street into one way. Let's give clear direction now and start with government. And that's exactly why I want to make sure that we all get clarity about what direction is so we can under. Okay. You know, we move on city council time, which means we only have meetings every so often, you know, as opposed to the business world that has to deal with this more immediately. What would be the detriment of having few changes of any relative to where we were before, and then having a process that if there were tweaks to be made we could modify that subsequently as opposed to keeping status quo and then going to be, we have to basically restripe the whole boulevard and we have to take all the striping out and put it back in. I write off hand and we can go look at it. I can't see, like just take changing one block because basically you have one eastbound lane between Bedford and Beverly. So we have to restore the two lanes eastbound for the entire lane. No and I'm not saying. So we pretty much have. I was trying to make a different point. I think it wasn't changing things block by block. It was to move towards where we were pre-construction. And then if we have to delay to do additional decision making about potentially eliminating some kind of a sort of eliminating certain turns of things like that that would improve upon it, do that after we've already taken steps to move back to pre-construction. I think we all need to recognize that if there's going to be tweaks, it will require reshiping to the extent of which is unknown at this point until we determine what those tweaks are. And I think that's important to convey. And so are you saying that we shouldn't do it that way or just that we should recognize that it might be one more round. If the council wants to take, you know, quick and expeditious action is we'll return it to what it was before and then let us work on possible changes that we will bring back to the council and then the council can bless that and then we can move forward. But it's very difficult to do this incrementally at this point. Well I think I would favor us trying to move quickly and not having to wait. I think our next council meeting is a month from now with our particular schedule and so that's a pretty long delay when your business is being impact. So are you supporting what Maddie suggests? So I think I'm supporting what Lily was suggested. Well I think he and she said the same thing. That's it. That's it, yes. Which is to put it back the way it was and figure out what we're going to do next as we go forward. Yes. So let me ask a question for us Mike. The old configuration was not optimal. Would that be a fair statement in terms of the roadway? Well, you know, it depends on what your goal for the road is to judge whether it's meeting those goals optimally. But I mean, it was a very tight configuration. I'll say that. And the fact that it had a number of locations where the through lane was also a left turn lane was not optimal in terms of through traffic flow and caused a lot of weaving around stopped left turners. So I think if I'm hearing you right what we should do is put the lanes and the parking back the way it was but look to see if maybe some time period left turn provisions might make it work better during those time periods when you want it to flow. So is that something that both councilmember Bosse and Wunderlick are starting with Bollock? Stay in order in order Bob you okay with that With that require waiting for our next city council meeting to approve No, okay, so I'm good with that are you okay with that and I'm okay with are you okay with that? Yes, that's basically what we've done before you know to mean that that's okay Are you okay with that? I am but I would like to see if you can eliminate some of the zig-zag's like that, because I do think those are conditions, you're not allowed to maybe use the word dangerous, but they're certainly not optimal conditions. And so, that's what I'm saying, is I think that we can improve upon what we had before with some changes, including looking at limiting turns. And then eventually I would say think about the impact of having a scramble. Because as said, I see the traffic is blocked as well by people trying to make right hand turns. Normally you think that flows. But the fact is is that in many cases people can't make right hand turns because of pedestrians. And that ends up blocking traffic and so people are weaving. They're weaving because as someone going to make a left turn, you're okay with this. I am, but again, I am okay with it, but I think I don't think we just send it back to the way it was and then say we're going to start all over again because I think there are improvements that you can make when it comes to those turns and that sort of thing to avoid the weaving in and out and that's what we should do. Isn't that what we're, I think that's essentially what we're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it looks like we almost got to, yeah. Well I didn't, I, less, do you have anything else to say? No, I, I thought that what John what John was saying was was what where I was at and I thought That's where the two of you were okay. I just want to know a timeline When when can this be done for everybody that's here that is being impacted and as well as the entire community What's the timeline when can we expect to see the change? We will we do need to negotiate an agreement to get a striping contract. I talk to the Bellic Works we were looking, it's probably going to be about a month, month to six weeks to get somebody on because it takes a whole week to restripe the roadway. Okay. I need more clarity. So today is August 21st. When can this be done? So I will refer to as our public work department. When I talked to them today, it was one to two months. I can get a report back at the next meeting. I'm not saying, you know, we should. No looking at the first week in October. Yes. So, and we will try to get the dial. I just want the businesses in the community to know that they can expect from what you're telling me that the first week of October, they will go back to the two lanes on both sides with the parking. Is that what you're saying? Right. It was one to two months and we will do everything we can to make that happen by the first week of October. Can we get enforcement with police officers there in the meantime to help alleviate some of the flow? Maybe if we need to have a traffic officer at some of the major intersections to stop gridlock, that might work at least as a temporary. And we have had to actually, you see, it was deployed at those intersections. And there's a big difference between one month and two months, it's double. So if you can please, Maddie, if you can please try. We will work on a timeline and we'll communicate that to everybody. So everybody's on the same page, please. Thank you. All right, so I think you have consensus, and we'll communicate that to everybody. It's quickly. It's on the same page. Yes, please. All right, so I think you have consensus, I think. We're done. We're going to move on to the next item. All right. That was easy. This number three. Thank you all for being here. Thank you all for your participation. I hope you don't have a lot of traffic going home. This is recommendation by the recreation of parks, liaisons, gold and freedmen regarding priorities for restoration at Grace Dunn mansion and gardens. I'm hopeful to get through the number four also. I said a quarter of it so Nancy is going to only speak every other word. Good afternoon Mr. Mayor members of the City Council today we're here to talk about the recommendation by our recreation and parks commission liaisons mayor gold and council member Friedman regarding priorities for restoration at Greystone Mansion in Gardens. Just a little background and I'll zip through this at the February 7th, 2017 meeting. At the study session we reviewed the Historic Resources Group Master Plan report for the mansion. And set of priorities was established at that time through the budget process this year. There was a request by a couple of council members to raise the level of priority of the Greystone Theatre Restoration. As a result of that request, there was a liaison meeting that took place on June 25th, and out of that meeting came a three phased approach to address priorities at Greystone. Phase one would complete the library restoration, which is already underway, would restore the theater, would continue to address fire life safety issues, continue that as a very high priority, and provide for a study and adaptive reuse study for lower Greystone. Phase two would restore the entry would work of the mansion when you first walk in the main front door of the mansion there. And phase three would be to carry out the recommendations that are made from the adaptive reuse study. I won't walk through any of this since I know you're in a time crunch, but we have completed quite a bit of work over the last year and change. Some of the big projects up there were the terrace renovation, installation of a gate on lower Grace Stone, fixing the case work in the kitchen and working with the friends of Graystone, the recreation and installation of furnishings in the ladies lounge and the replacement of door knobs and hardware, so that was a donation by Baldwin Hardware. There is quite a bit of work that is currently underway. I'm not going to walk through all of these things, but there's a lot going on. So this is Phase 1. So again, Phase 1 is to complete the library restoration. The rough cost for that is approximately $750,000. That would be city expense. The Fire Life Safety Projects, it's a big number, but there are a few major projects that are costly that need to be completed up there. There are the projects that are underway, so completing the projects that are underway, the list that we just looked at. There's a restoration of the theater, cost for that, and then completing the adaptive reuse study of lower graystone. These are just rough numbers at this point. We haven't bid a lot of this, so it's just rough guesses. So the total funds required to complete Phase 1 would be about $4.2 million. Just a quick note on a couple of items on the Phase 1 projects. We are well on our way on the design process for restoring the library, which again will be reused as a museum to display a lot of the dohini treasures that the Friends of Grace don't have. These are a couple of images of the historic theater. This was built as part of the mansion, and was adapted when AFI, the American Film Institute, was located up at Greystone. So the seating that's installed there, and things like that, AFI, installed. So this is the space that we're talking about when we refer to the theater. Phase two, again would restore the entry woodwork for the mansion. I won't go into the long history of the woodwork at the mansion, but it is extensive and it will be spectacular when it's restored. It is extensive and it will be spectacular when it's restored. Phase three is to be determined. As I mentioned in Phase one, we'll do the study. Once the study is complete, which will require a lot of stakeholder feedback and input, we would then implement the findings of the study. So in lower-grace stone, there are a number of buildings in that location. There's the historic greenhouse that you see here. There's the stables, the garage, there's potting shed, and we also have our demonstration garden down there where we hold classes on gardening and victory gardening, master gardening, etc. Outside of the recommendations from the liaisons because we didn't we were the community. We have a lot of concerns about the community. We have a lot of concerns about the community. We have a lot of concerns about the community. We have a lot of concerns about the community. We have a lot of concerns about the community. We have a lot of concerns about the address could cause deterioration down the line. So that is what this item is about. So just to summarize, as we discussed phase one would be the largest phase. It would be about 4.2 million. Phase two for the woodwork would be about $350,000. Phase three, because it's the reuse study of lower gray stone that has not been done yet. We don't know yet how much that would cost. Then there's the deferred maintenance which is a recommendation by staff and we have the projects that are currently underway but are not yet complete. So the total to complete all of that, not including the lower gray stone study results, is about 5.4 million. The funds that are available are listed here. City Council has already generously appropriated $3 million to be used for graystone, so that's already available. We do have funds that are in the Recreation and Parks Fund, so fund 160 that are currently unappropriated. They're unallocated. They're funds that are sitting in the fund that haven't been appropriated to a project already. So potentially we have up to $8 million that could be used for projects at Greystone or other recreation and parks projects. But it does seem at this time that, you know, over the course of time we have sufficient funds that could carry out this three phased approach. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm going to start with the liaison, so Council Member Friedman. I had the opportunity to tour Greystone with Nancy and ran into Lily on the way back. And I'm embarrassed to say it's the first time I went to Lower Graystone and there is a lot of work that's gonna be needed to be done at Lower Graystone. At this point in time, it's certainly my feeling and Mayor Golds and I think from what I've heard from Council on the day us that the theater is something that we really should give a higher priority to and we certainly feel that way. Can you go back one slide I just have a question as long as I'm doing this. What would fund 160 be used for or what is it there for in general? So it's the Recreation and Parks Fund. It comes out of square footage that's added as projects are built out. This is, it could be used for, Roxbury could be used for La Siena get, could be used for any of our parks. So this is money that's currently sitting in the fund that's unappropriated. We do have funds that are appropriated, not only for Greystone, but for other projects in the city, other parks and recreation-related projects in the city. We do have additional funds that come into the recreation and parks fund every year as well as development occurs in town, but that's what the fund 160 is about. So I think that placing a higher priority on the theater will give the opportunity for people to come and see Greystone and see what I saw, which is an absolutely fantastic piece of property that does need work, but I think that'll give the opportunity to people to come and visit. Hopefully have some programming there. So that is part of the reason that I supported it. The only thing I would add to that, certainly I'm very supportive of this too, I haven't for a while. But we did have some conversation about probably in, unnecessarily phase one, two, or three. But to be doing the lower graystone assessment, at the same time that we were working on, both the theater, and depending on how long it takes, and subsequently the wood. So it's not necessarily a linear thing. Some of this could happen in parallel. But I'm also very supportive of this. What's the big cost driver? $2 million. You know, face of it, there's a lot of money. The library was $750,000. So what's one or two items that brings the cost up to $2 million? For the theater project in particular. So there is currently no, I won't say no, there's not nearly sufficient infrastructure to support a theater operation there. So there's no HVAC, there's no electrical to speak of. The plumbing is questionable. certainly all of the audio visual equipment and access is very difficult because it's a historic mansion and so you can't just put something on the roof and pull it through, you have to try to follow historic you know guidelines. One of the other challenges is ADA access providing you know accessible spaces in a historic space. It's something that we want to try to achieve equal access. And so it does get expensive with putting in lifts. As you can see in the theater, it is almost entirely woodwork. Woodwork that has been damaged unfortunately by water intrusion over the course of time. And so that all needs to be carefully restored. One of the questions that we need to work with the liaisons is, what do we envision for this theater? Is it a state-of-the-art theater with the latest greatest technology? Are we restoring it back to sort of that type of era? Either way, it can be very expensive. And so we did bid just the infrastructure portion two years ago, and the bids came back around $750,000. That doesn't include touching the interior of the space. So it's very, it's unfortunately very expensive for all of those reasons and probably more. I support it. Great. Thank you. That's Dr. Niles. Oh, nothing else. That's all we're welcome. Thank you. Just a question. What type of process are we going to do in regards to the vision that you're talking about? Because this is a lot of money and just want to allow for a lot of public input and visioning from our community. What's the process that you're going to do for this? Yeah, we have not laid that out yet. And I think it'll be a bit of a challenge because it's sort of chicken in the egg, especially the lower part of Greystone is not used heavily and so people aren't even necessarily aware that it's there and what it could be used for. And so I think that this project in particular is going to take quite a bit of outreach to the community. It may take initial just site visits, come in look, come in tour, come in talk about what the possibilities could be first. And then we decide on a plan of action after that. Because I really think there's probably an education component that goes along with it that needs to take place first. Do we know in terms of space how many people can actually use that space just in terms of the actual dimensions of it. I mean just looking at it and I've been there seems pretty limited. I couldn't say I wouldn't want to answer off the top of my head. There is you know there's a lot of potential but it depends on what we want to use the space for and so there's the lot of potential, but it depends on what we want to use the space for. And so there's the potential for classrooms down there. We've had a conversation about that. I've heard, talk about maybe we put a museum there. I've heard all kinds of different possibilities in that area down there. So I couldn't really even say. Okay, so yeah. But you're already answering my question that you've already heard some interesting ideas and all I would ask is that we remain very open to hearing all the different types of vision that people could come up with for this space. Yeah, absolutely. So I support it. Thank you. I'll go backwards. I go with lower graystone and I agree. I think there are some incredible opportunities there. We have the demonstration garden. There's a lot of other things we can do. I do think we need to have public outreach and listen to some great ideas about what we can do. You know, museum, all of those things that you've said, classrooms. It's really an opportunity to build upon the magic of Greystone itself, which isn't even complete. And that brings me back to the theater. I'm really thrilled that the liaison wanted to move this up because I think that this is an amazing opportunity. We do do concerts there. We've seen in the minstrel gallery, which was also recently restored. There's really no place like Greystone for a concert. We've done concerts in the courtyard as well, open air. Wonderful. The theater offers us an opportunity to do everything from chamber music to one woman shows, to plays, theater 40 I can imagine can do, plays there and other things, and also movies screening. So, for example, we could have a festival of the movies that actually filmed at Grace Stone, at Grace Stone. The lesson a month ago I went and looked at the theater and I know the AFI did some damage to it. They built two theaters there and it's kind of a elongated shape. But if I looked at it correctly, it could be made to seat, is it between 70 and 100 seats, something like that? Is that the potential capacity? So what I can say, I don't know the answer to that. What I can say is that the plans that were drawn up previously and were sent out to bid, which may not be the plans that we want to do today. It's seated around 40 people. 40? Those were reclinable seats that were fixed and had the trays, you could have food. Like an eye-pick theater or something? Yes. And so I think, again, it just depends on how we see that space. If we want a very flexible open space, That could be a very different thing then. So I think we should look into that. I do think my gut feeling says that it should be historically accurate but state of the art. And of course, that's possible. It should be made to have a feeling of authenticity. This is how it was in the days of the Noenis. But with all the modern technology, everything from digital projection to if there are sound systems that we can use and that sort of thing. And again, the flexibility to be able to do shows, concerts, lectures, and films in terms of programming, I think that would be important. Now question, this is obviously completely supportive of this. This is obviously now a council priority. How quickly can we make this actually a reality? That's a great question. What I would suggest is let us do a little bit of work and come back to you with that. Because the work that was done on it previously was before my sort of involvement in it. And so I think we just need a little bit more time but we can get you that answer. So I'd like with the council's permission. I mean this is obviously being moved up. Let's see if we can fast track it. I mean the sooner this is up and running, the sooner we're able to actually take advantage of this and have events. We see that the next item is also a fund razor. We can do fund razors. There's tremendous possibilities. So I'd like to ask with the agreement of the council for this to be fast tracked. And we'll go with it. Okay. Mayor Gold, I think what we can do if the council is okay with that is we can focus on the infrastructure. We can get that movement since we have developed some planning on that process, and then that gives us maybe some time to work out the interior design. But let us take a look at that. Halloween and the haunted mansion. I think that, as in my recollection as I may be wrong, but obviously when this was created, it was created with a real projector that had a big hot bulb and the reels and the whole thing. That actually uses a lot of space and it creates a lot of heat and other issues that you won't have if the technology is modern and digital. Fire issues. They have a fit filming those days. Right. Right. So it may be that in the reconfiguration, you make a little extra space that could put another row of seats and things like that. So I think we're all supportive, you have a direction for that, don't go away. Number four, recommendation by Council, special event liaison's Golden Bosse, to sponsor Friends of Greystone, joined to the holiday's program. Yes. Shuffle some to the holidays program. Yes. Chef Wilson paper here. Okay. There we are. Okay, special event events liaison mayor Gold council member Basie recommend that the city council approve the sponsorship of the Friends of Greystone join the holidays program to be held November 29th through December 2nd. This program would be promoted as a part of the city's holiday bold program. This program would be comprised of a cocktail party the evening of November 29th followed by tours of the mansion on December 1st and December 2nd. The mansion would be decorated in a holiday theme. We'd have carolers and musicians, food and gift items would be available for sale, et cetera. Friends of Greystone estimates that the cocktail party will draw approximately 300 attendees. Tickets for that would be about $85. Friends of Greystone further estimates that the tours on December 1, and second will draw 400 people at a cost of $35 per ticket. OK, I'm'm gonna stop you there. Okay. Because I'm gonna try and move us along. Are you okay with this? Yes. I'm sorry. Lee is on. I was just gonna say yes yes yes. Why knew you were gonna say that? All right. The friends of Greystone back there. Oh you said yes yes yes yes yes. Yes okay you okay? I am, but here just I want to point something out. I mean, basically we're spending including our fee $72,000 to make $46 profit. This would not meet the standards of our charitable solicitation committee. And that to me is an issue. We should be looking at the same standards of everything else. She's saying that's not incorrect. That's incorrect. These figures are wrong. Well, then we should have correct figures because looking at. Come on up. So it says here that the total expenses are 37,500 plus 35,000 city expenses for a profit of 46,000. So that means we're spending 72,000 to make 46. We're giving 35,000 of city money. We gave- We gave us an updated financial plan. If we gave 12 more, they wouldn't have to do anything. And I believe- And I know the event. But most of the others is forget. OK. Maybe you'll get us an updated financial on that too. Sure. OK. But other than that, of course, you know. All right. So you have consensus we'd like to see. While you're standing. Yes. Number five, because I see Commissioner Kay there. It's been four minutes. You know, recommendation by the Fine Art Council Layers on Mirish Embossy to implement planting and other measures to protect the art piece, EO, by Carol Vove. Yes. EO by Carol Bové was installed in Beverly Gardens Park in September 2015 by October of that same year, the piece was showing scratches and black marks, particularly on the lower portions of the piece. There's some pictures here. Conversations with the gallery began immediately with the gallery providing some suggestions or services To alleviate the problem however none of the options that were offered were Approved to be a permanent solution So I'll skip forward Staff engaged the services of mea-layer and associates the landscape architecture firm responsible for the recent redesign of Beverly Gardens Park. Mieleur and Associates produced three options which allow for the raising of the piece which was a council direction and plantings around it which was also a council direction. After consideration our council liaisons, Bosse and Mirish, recommended the attached rendering, which will raise the piece and put plantings around it. The rendering would be in a bow tie-shaped planter around the piece, which would be planted with flowering, cyanosis plants, which grow to about one foot high. plantar around the piece which would be planted with flowering, CNOTUS plants which grow to about one foot high. Then the piece itself would be raised a foot so that it appears to be sitting on top of the plantings. The estimated costs, again we have not bid this, the estimated costs to raise the piece and install a plantar around it is currently approximately $35,000. The City Council liaisons recommend that this planter be established around the piece and that it be raised as per the etched renderings. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It was nice. Nice to meet you. We thought that this was a good way to stop people from skateboarding on the piece, which evidently created a lot of it, and we thought the sort of floating piece in those beautiful flowers. We thought that, we thought it looked great, and it wasn't fenced in or anything like that. And I think we were convinced that this is the best solution. Absolutely. And keeping with the beautification of the park by using Meal Air in terms of her vision, I think it actually in my opinion, I think it even looks better with the planning. So we wholeheartedly supported it. Yes, a great solution. A couple of questions. The cost includes whatever restoration of the piece needs to be done in terms of the black marks that are on it already. So we do provide regular restoration of the piece using the city's art restoration companies. So they come in and they regularly remove the black marks. Now just so Council's aware, there are also scratches in the piece that are very difficult to remove if not impossible. Those may just live on with the piece, but we are able to take away those black marks that you saw in this picture here. Okay, and the other question I have is, and I don't know if we've ever done this before, but we ever employ somebody to look at a piece and say, okay, this is what our concept is. What psychologically are we missing that some person who wants to climb on that might do? Do we ever do that or is there any thought about doing something like that? I think, you know, I think, I mean, this is just my perception, my individual perception is that we have learned over time that people for whatever reason treat the art and Beverly Gardens Park differently than they do pieces, very similar pieces, exactly similar pieces that are installed elsewhere and so I think that you know staff in the commission have learned over time that we just need to be cognizant of the fact that people will interact with these pieces in a way that is very different than it is elsewhere. So the new piece that's coming later this year, the Tom Friedman piece is stainless steel. So whether you like erratic or not, the silver piece that's in the park. That's held up beautifully at stainless steel and so the new piece will be out of that same type of material. I'm certainly supportive of this and I just think that we need to consider what we think people will do with it. We do want people to interact with the art, but we don't want them to destroy it. So it's just something when we get a new piece that I think we need to give further consideration to. a new piece that I think we need to give further consideration to. Is are those plants prickly? I believe they are. They are the the the liaisons wanted something that was a bit prickly that would flower because the the sense was if something's flowering you don't necessarily trample it. And these are pretty bad if you step in it. Right. the sense was if something's flowering you don't necessarily trample it and these are pretty hard. You should just feel bad if you step in it. Right. So it's they're very hearty so the hope is that they will provide a visual beauty but will also provide some protection. Okay I'm supportive of this too. You might want to put a bear trap or two. Okay. Yes. Alright. Thank you. We're going to adjourn to close session for those items on the close session. Next. And we'll do that the next.