Recommendation to request City Manager and City Attorney to draft an ordinance to prohibit pedestrian median access to medians that are less than 4-feet wide or are located on streets with a speed limit of 35 MPH or more.
Motion carries. Thank you. We're doing item 13, please. Item 13 is communications from Councilwoman Price Council Membership Opinion Councilman Andrews Council Councilmember Ranga Recommendation to requires city manager and city attorney to draft an ordinance to prohibit pedestrian access to medians that are less than four feet wide or located on streets with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour or more. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I know I have some residents who arrived here at about 4:00 this afternoon for this item. So I'm thankful and I'm hopeful that they'll come up and give some comment if they are still here. But this is one of the items that I'm happy to be bringing back. Traffic. Traffic medians throughout Long Beach are dangerous places for people to walk, stand, sit, advertise for businesses, raise money for nonprofits, walk dogs or any other activity that is done while not in the process of legally and safely crossing the street. City staff issued a report earlier this year that that made it clear that some medians are not appropriate for standing and cannot safely accommodate a walkway due to insufficient with height, traffic speed, large traffic volumes and lack of accessibility. In the report, they further determined that the traffic safety concerns are heightened when speeds reach certain levels. City data and traffic studies throughout this country confirm that the risk of a fatality drastically increases for pedestrians when vehicle traffic around pedestrians has speed limits of 30 miles per hour or higher. The fatality risk increases between 3.5 and 5.5 times from 30 miles per hour to 40 miles per hour, meaning the risk of a pedestrian being killed at 30 miles per hour is relatively low. The fatality rate is nearly 50% at 40 miles per hour, and 79% of pedestrians struck at this speed sustained serious injuries. It doesn't matter what you are doing on the median. The median is not a place to stand at high speed traffic intersections. So as the city continues to work to improve pedestrian safety and make way for Vision Zero. This is a common sense policy that I urge my colleagues to support. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember supervisor standing in support. Thank you, Councilmember Pierce. Thank you. I want to thank my colleague for bringing this item forward. I did have some questions of. Public works that I see. Mr. Buck here. Yes, I did. I know that we recently approved our Vision Zero contract to start pulling together that group. I wanted to know how we feel that this impacts that Vision zero work. If this is in alignment with that. Councilmember Pearce. I think this is in line with Vision zero one. One of the elements that we don't have yet completed is the safety study. So if you recall last week when we came forward and had a conversation about Vision Zero effort, one of the first components of a Vision Zero effort is to identify what are our worst corridors, where do we find the most instances of vehicle and pedestrian accidents to occur? That information would certainly help inform how this ordinance would move forward. Okay, then I would ask my colleague, is there a time frame that you have on this? I'm sorry. Councilmember Price. I'm sorry. Once it's approved, the city attorney's office would commence drafting the ordinance. And that would be correct. But as Mr. Beck said, we would need that safety study to verify and justify the ordinance before it came back. So we would be working with public works on this recommend if it is approved this evening based upon the information we received from the safety study. So it may not come back right away, but it would come back after the safety study. Great. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure I know that we've spent many years talking about our vision zero. Hopes and dreams. And for those that don't know, Vision Zero. Is to make sure that our streets are safe. For everybody and we have zero. Traffic incidences. And so I just want to make sure that that is in alignment with that. So if it is, then I will support this item. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Andrews. Yes, thank you very much. I fully support this item. Great councilmember area. Given that there was an accident, fatal accident not too long ago in my district, right around Long Beach Boulevard. And Wardlow well, the individual who was struck was not on the median. He was an individual that consistently was on the median. He just wasn't at the time of that accident. So I am fully supportive of this this ordinance, and I hope that it goes forward. Thank you. Thank you, Counsel Juan Gonzalez. Thank you. I appreciate this as well. To make sure we, of course, get to Vision Zero. I also wanted to see if we can include in I don't know how if this would be possible, but we have people that are constantly on the metro rail line as well. And I know we've had a lot of discussion with that. Of course, we have our metro representative here, as in our mayor. But maybe just as a another caveat within this ordinance, we can just work closely with Metro to ensure that people are not getting on, that the tracks, they're not jumping over the fence because it becomes a huge issue as well. So thank you. Thank you. We're going to move on to public comment a public comment on this item. Please come forward. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon, city council members. My name's Gay Shelton. I live here in the first district a couple blocks from here, and I appreciate this item. Public safety is, of course, one of the reasons that we're here. However, it mentions here that the staff report that was issued last September, I imagine, was a two from four. I'm sorry I never had a chance to review it dealt with the feasibility of these actions, and the report that we have in hand says nothing about feasibility. So I'm curious about it. Feasibility to me means cost. And when it comes to public safety, maybe cost isn't something that we care to talk about, but feasibility when we're talking about spending public funds to do such things as I would imagine would be required to prohibit people being on these medians, would be landscaping, fencing, bollards , maybe, and the maintenance and and so on. That goes with any signaling that might have to be added to intersections or areas where there's where there's median strips, lighting, perhaps striping. That would change. What we're looking at is something that that we don't know how feasible it is in terms of how many thousands, hundreds, millions. Who knows how many dollars would have to be spent in order to do this? We also don't have any sense from the public's perspective of how much of an impact there actually is. Where are their median scripts that are less than four feet wide? How long are they? Are we talking about only at intersections or for miles and miles where there might be a narrow median that would have to be somehow protected from from pedestrian occupancy? So if we're really going to do this, I think the public deserves to hear something about the costs, about how many miles of medians have been identified, just what this is all going to look at. Again, we understand the need and it's simply repeated in this in this document. But the public is in the dark as to the feasibility and the cost. So I do appreciate hearing from you guys any questions that you might have for staff that could illuminate us on that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nic. Speaker, please. Stephanie Dawson, CEO, Democratic Socialists of America, Long Beach Branch. As we discussed, as Councilwoman Pryce illuminated, this particular ordinance has been pretty much constructed in a way that makes it almost bulletproof to any particular challenge that would happen from, say, for example, the ACLU of Southern California as it's been constructed in a to provide a what's the word? Again, I'd rather describe it. It lacks a discriminatory intent. However, the discriminatory impact of this law will be unavoidable in combination with the recent prohibition against the bike shop, baking bicycle shop, chop shops and other type of actions that are being there designed specifically to be able to cut off revenue for homeless people. I mean, this is by doing this, we are essentially facilitating the removal of these folks and making them come over to a next city while doing so under the pretense of public safety. If right now, I mean, if you're applying for general relief, that's going to be under 50 bucks. If you're applying for Social Security disability, that's going to be, what, $600 a month or so? You know, people need a way to be able to live, especially with the rising costs of rent in Long Beach, which I think we'll be discussing later. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Heather Jordan, when I appreciate counsel bringing this forward. And the concern for safety that has been outlined today, if only we were more concerned with the that the people who this will mostly affect, you know, besides this ordinance. You know, I've seen the fences go up on seventh and seventh near Bellflower and PCH, and I've oftentimes close to Long Beach Boulevard and Wardlow. So I see the people who are out there on those medians there. You know, Councilmember Price listed a lot of people who might be on the medians, you know, nonprofits. But the the people that she didn't talk about are the people who are most often there are those that are houseless, people without homes, people who are trying to earn money. And I'm all for safety. I'm all for keeping them safe. I think they do deserve that. But on top of that, I think they deserve other things as well, like a roof over their head. So I just want to make sure. That whatever happens when we implement this, that the people who are there aren't going to be severely punished because if it's a fine or something like that that they're given, these are people who can't pay that literally cannot pay that. So I hope when we move forward with the safety ordinance, we keep those people in mind. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. He has told us what is good and what the Lord requires to deal justly. The same God of the flag. We are saluted tonight. One nation under him, he has said to deal justly and to love mercy. The people, my clients. I knew that they were the subject. They are the only people that are on the media and by and large, the homeless. You don't see a lady nursing her baby on the median. No one coming from the grocery store with the flowers in the hand on the median. It's the homeless. And some of you are running for re election. You said you were going to represent everyone. Yes. Everyone in it is offensive. But you have not probably shaken one hand of the homeless. One hand. How can you? How can you? That is not justice. To now say to these people, we don't want to say, you asked for money. We're not giving you a nickel of our spending. We don't want to see you with a sign asking for a nickel. It's why you're saying it. God sees it. That's what you're saying. Guilty. Your local charity. Don't give out to panhandlers. But there are no local charities where those signs are posted. The mediums is all they have. And I will continue to take food on the median. Matter of fact, I'm going to start printing up some signs. Give these people your dollars because it's against the law for them to ask you in jail to say, give to those who asked, to give to anyone who asked you. I am defending the cause of the poor. Some of you said you would do it. Where are you now? Yes. The shame is what it is. We have officers surrounding him with guns and sticks and they will protect you. I was protecting the homeless. I mean, protect like the officers with their weapons. It is offensive to that God you saluted tonight. It's an offense. Thank you, Mr. Bouchard and the speaker, please. Well. I think you guys said you represent the public and everyone with a balance. So I just wanted to say that my name is valued. My address is on record. This is my 47th wedding anniversary in a heck of a way to celebrate a wedding anniversary today. I was not going to. I was I was not here to speak on this. But when I noticed that. We have two parades in this city every year, that people jam on the medians. This may be left unsaid, but we need to make sure that. We protect those people. During a Belmont Shore parade and the Veterans Day parade that when they're on the mediums are not breaking the law. So there's got to be some type of exception to it, I would think. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Liz Waites. I would just like to comment. On a particularly disturbing and frankly sickening trend that I've noticed. Not in Long Beach. But also it's happening in. California, is these very thinly veiled attempts at shoving the homeless away out of sight. I noticed with the CSC or the Public Relations Department, there was some sort of collaboration about let's teach people to not give money to homeless people, give it to shelters. And I don't know if you guys have got the memo, but shelters are pretty brutal. And I just have to say the intention is transparent, the intention to force people out of sight and to not deal with them. You're not fooling anybody. And it's cruel and it's sickening. And I really you are here to represent everybody. And just because the homeless people out there cannot, like spare $20,000 doesn't mean that they are not worthy of protection. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes number public comment on this item. So we'll conclude public comment. I will go on to the rest of the council. Vice Mayor Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. And I just wanted to chime in and I you know, I tend to agree that meetings aren't the safest place for things to take place. But I think the audience raised to two questions that I would just like for city staff or the originator motion to speak to. So first, Mr. Lurch, thanks for raising the issue of the meeting. And so we want to make sure that we protect, you know, whatever whenever the street closures and and we actually have the opportunity to engage that meeting. We used it really well this last year in the Veterans Day parade sort of a line things along the median food trucks, things like that. So first I want to just address that. So, Mr. Beck, is there a way that we can make sure that we really take an accounting of when we do utilize the media and make sure that's reflected in this? Y would defer to the city attorney, but I would imagine we could easily add in special events would be excluded from any provisions that get written. I would agree with that. I think that the the ordinance and when we talked about when we would the delay in coming back is the safety study that's going to be conducted has to justify both the location and the action that the ordinance would be taking that to show that it is truly a safety issue and it's not a pretext for removing people from medians. So you're not going to have all medians qualify for this. It'll depend on the safety engineer and the safety study to justify the location. That makes a lot of sense. And then so the second thing I'll just raise, which was raised raised by the community here tonight, I want to make sure that we're not taking a step toward penalizing criminally or fining for creating a perpetual system where people can't pay the fine, but rather figure out ways to make medians safer and and sort of a discouraging activity. In the meetings, for example, we had a lot of activity on Jordan High School, people running across the street from Jordan to the apartments. They lived across the street and we wouldn't use the crosswalks. So we just built a nice decorative treatment in the median and people respected the crosswalk respect meaning use the crosswalk. So I would love to see industry, I would love to see sort of public works best practices utilized to achieve whatever is the best outcome so that there's no appearance that the intention here is to sort of penalize any particular group. And I know and and I would assume that that's not the intention here. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Austin. Thanks. And the first mayor, you actually stole my my thoughts here because I was going to say, I think the makeup of the motion, the intent here when you look at the language here, is talking about traffic and, you know, speeds of high speeds of 30, 40, 50 miles an hour. So I think the intent of what what is being proposed is to deal with traffic safety and prevent people from being hit by by vehicle vehicular traffic. Secondly, I think, you know, to your point regarding the treatment that near Jordan High School, I think more of that needs to be done. We need to engineer traffic safety measures. Well, we know we have have problems or potential problems. And so I'd like to see more of that type of those type of solutions on top of this from from our public works department. So just thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Thank you. I just wanted to echo the same concerns that my colleagues recognize and anything that we can do to beautify the areas instead of just putting up a fence that we have some best practices and that this comes after, again, Vision Zero. I know that that Vision Zero will help guide us to make sure we're doing it in the right corridors and the right median. So thank you for that. Okay. Thank you. There is a motion and a second on the floor to approve item 13. Please cast your votes.