Recommendation to receive supporting documentation, including the petitions, into the record, conclude the public hearing, and request City Attorney to prepare an amendment to the Long Beach Municipal Code, to establish Preferential Parking District “AC” as recommended by the City Traffic Engineer.  (District 7)
Report from Public Works recommendation to receive supporting documentation, including the petitions into the record. Conclude the public hearing and request the City Attorney to prepare an amendment to the Long Beach Municipal Code to establish preferential Parking District AC as recommended by the City Traffic Engineer District seven. Assistant City Manager Mollica. Thank you, Vice Mayor, again. The staff presentation will be given by Ora Malloy and our Director of Public Works. Vice Mayor Lowenthal, tall and honorable council members. The item before you is a similar item as hearing. Number one, there is a request to establish a permit parking district in Council District seven permit permit permit district called AC. So the residents of the west side of Cherry Avenue between Roosevelt Road and Marshall Place and Marshall Place between Cherry Avenue and Gardenia Avenue, has requested the establishment of a new professional parking district to seek on street parking relief due to overflow parking generated by employees of businesses located along the east side of Cherry Avenue. The residents have also requested that a 30 minute parking restriction from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Sunday except holidays be established within the proposed permit parking district permit parking study was concluded was conducted by staff during the peak periods of activity on Cherry and it was revealed that 75% of existing on street parking spaces within a two block area were occupied at the time of the survey were that was the first test. In addition, we determined that 59% of the vehicles parked were not from the residents and from the outside of the neighborhood. A petition formally requesting the establishment with a 30 minute parking restriction was received by the city, a copy of it which is attached as Exhibit A. We conducted the review of the petition. It showed that 76% of the residents are in favor of implementing a permit parking district and the proposed parking restrictions in order to prevent parking spillover in the blocks adjacent to the proposed permit parking district. The city traffic engineer is proposing to expand the district to include several other streets. The streets are Cherry Avenue, Gardenia Avenue, Roosevelt Road and Bixby Road. Residents of these streets were informed of the proposal by mail and feedback was requested. These streets in the proposal expansion will not include signage or parking restriction at this time. However, by including the streets in the permit parking district, the residents could request parking restrictions in the future. Through a well-supported petition, the city traffic engineer has reviewed the results of the parking study, the resident petition and the feedback responses from the mailing, and has determined that the area qualifies for establishment of a permanent permit district. This concludes my report and we're here to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Malloy and Councilmember Turanga. Okay. Is there any member of the public that wishes to address Council on hearing item two? This is on the parking. Please come forward and state your name. Good evening and thank you for listening. My name's Rama. Cool. I live at 3959 Cherry Avenue and been there for the past 30 years. It's only been within the last three years that we've had the parking situation. That's why we haven't been involved asking for this sooner. Some of the problems that have arised is if you move your car, there's no place to come back to. The other thing is, is it employees that are parking on that street are now jaywalking across Cherry to get to their prospective business openings. And it's going to come down to where somebody is going to get killed out here on that street. They just come out of those bushes and there's been more than once that somebody is almost run over somebody. So we need to do something. And I think this is the right way to do it that we can get. The owners of the companies to understand. They got to work with their employees for the parking and try to get them on that safe side of the street for them. There's not much else I can say to stop. You guys go with it and it'd be great for us. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hi. My name is Cynthia Hindu. Burka and I have resided in the seventh District for 34 years. I have investment properties on Cherry It be south of Bixby. I became informed about this over the next door neighbor website when people were talking over the holidays about this meeting coming up. Up until this point, I have not been notified that this was an issue or being brought to the city council of this permit parking. Although my addresses for my investment properties are not included in that, I am very concerned about the over spillage that will come down cherry and affect my property as well. That car dealers that are across the street from my properties. Whenever my tenants have complained about the people parking there, they've always been very responsive in moving their cars. But I am very concerned that that property owners all along the frontage of Cherry were not notified. I also find other discrepancies about the signage that happens on Cherry. It seems like from north of Bixby to Carson on Cherry, they're allowed to park on the wrong side of the street, only during sweeps street sweets tripping days. But the rest of cherry is not allowed to do that. And I'd like to know why the neighborhoods are separated like that, why one part is getting attention and the other part is not getting attention with street sweeping and this preferential parking. My understanding from listening to the next door neighbors talk about this is that not they're not aware of the fact that the property owners are the ones that have to pay for this permit parking and that a lot of those homes are rentals. And so as property owners, we did not know about that. That means that any fees are going to come across, are coming to us, not to the renters. So I don't know where I can get more information on this or, you know, how all the property owners are going to be made aware of this because all a cherry is affected. So I can certainly have staff touch base with you, Mr. Malloy, and after the presentation will either speak with you directly or send one of his staff members to speak with you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So your greatest concern was notification. Notification. And the. Spillage of the employees that are going to continue to park down the other parts of cherry because it's still the frontage. Okay. Understood. Thank you. Sir. My name is Mark Helmke. I'm a 25 year resident of the the area that you describe. Unfortunately, I am on the next street. I'm on Rose. I'm not on gardening and I'm not on Cherry. So in the earlier in the earlier presentation, one of the gentlemen made a big point of saying that Lakewood Village had preferential parking . And then what happened was the parking situation just migrated to the south. Well, the students that parking in the in the previous district, they're students. They have an option to park in the parking structures. And it's more secure. It's safer for all the reasons that were identified. My question to the council is. Just like squeezing a balloon. If we're going to put permits, if we're going to require permits to park on Cherry and Gardenia, why are we doing that? If it's to accommodate employees of surrounding businesses that have been there as long as we have? They're not going to go on the other side of the they're not going to go on to the rail yard where the lumber is. They're just going to come further and deeper into the neighborhood. It's just like squeezing a balloon in the middle. The air doesn't go out of it. It just moves to a different area. So it seems to me that the issue is not. Permitting the parking. It seems to me the issue is revising the zoning to require parking. Of the businesses that are there for their employees on the southwest corner, Cherry and Carson, there's a there's a U-Haul that's been there 25 years. It's full of U-Haul trucks. The people that rent the trucks park in the neighborhood, the people that attend that work at the businesses on the east, on the west side of Cherry I'm sorry, on the east side of Cherry, if they're not already provided parking, where are they going to go? Not on Cherry if it's permitted, not on Gardenia if it's permitted. But they're going to come to my house. So I think it has to be a greater picture that you have to take into account. The other thing is, is that I got several notices in the last couple, three weeks, and every single one of them, the area that was bounded, was incorrectly indicated as clerk. So I think that a little more needs to be done with regard to serving others in the neighborhood and and the notification this needs to be, I think, continued to another date. Thank you, sir. Any other members of the public that wish to address the Council on this item. I'm not a resident, Shirley Brassard, but I have service that area in the last three, four years for the homeless population. And just listening to this discussion tonight, I don't get the feeling that it has been thought out. You're addressing college students for Cal State, for Lombard City College, which is on Clark. As you walk down, Carson, you run right into Clark Avenue and then to stretch that permit all the way to Cherry Avenue. I don't believe you have very many students except those who live near Cherry Avenue, who are walking from Cherry to Clark to get to school. That seems like a very large area to ask people to have permits to park. And to use the school as as the reason why it seems like you're separating your community where in the long run it's going to backfire in some way. This just doesn't sound right. If I'm asking council members, have you walked the circumference or driven the circumference of area that's being entertained here from Cherry Avenue to Clark? You're confusing. That's your. Mike's not on, but it's. It's a separate motion. Okay. Yes, but thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. I wasn't really going to come. Out here and speak, but none of our group, they are getting cameras or whatever, so I'm going to. Speak for them. Um. My name is Linda Rendell. My address used to be 3923 Cherry Avenue. My mom's lived there. There she is right there since 1965. And what the main problem is, what we're trying to say is the residents in front of the service street right there on Cherry. They have no place to park. I go over there a lot and there's no place to park during the daytime. My mom goes to the grocery store. There's no place to park where. She can, you know, park in the middle of the street and take her groceries inside. So we don't have driveways, we only have an alley. And that's clogged up, too. So what we're just trying to say is it's been like three years now. It's the Volkswagen Place across the street and they do have lots in the back where their employees can park. So there is the businesses over there. They have they don't have to park on cherry. They have parking area in their lots. And there and and like my neighbor said, they are walking across Cherry Avenue in the middle of traffic. And if you've ever been down Cherry, it's very congested and they just walk into traffic and something is going to happen if they don't. And the police, they don't seem to to care if they jaywalk. So I'm just kind of speaking for them and they've been trying to do this for a long time now, and I hope you guys pull with them. And since you're representing the group. Yes, we do. It's not that hard, guys, to get up there and talk. And you're doing beautifully. So are you. Would you say that the group is in support of the motion? Yes. Oh, yes, very much so. I just want to be sure you're reflecting there. Yeah. They're not there's. Not as many as we wanted to show up, but yeah, we're in support of it, so. Thank you, guys. Thank you. And I appreciate that. This is probably the first time each of you has spoken before city council and you did wonderfully. And. And that's that's what civic participation is about coming out for the things that matter to you. I am going to if there are no further if there is no further public comment, I'd like to turn it behind the dais. Councilmember Urunga. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Mr. Malone, could you summarize again the issue that we are being faced with tonight? I think there's some confusion out there as to what this proposal does for the community, for Cherry Street. Jerry. I mean. Absolutely honorable. You rung up the item before you. It's similar to item number one. I think there's a confusion that we're talking about a huge geographical area. The question the area that's in question is Cherry Avenue for two blocks between Bixby and Roosevelt and Roosevelt to Marshall. This is in front of the car dealership. The residents were requesting that a permit parking be established in order to prevent the employees of this dealership parking in front of their homes. We have gone one step beyond and as one of the gentlemen explained about the squeezing the balloon. We know that there could be some spillway. We're proposing that we expand the the permit parking zone, one more block all the way to Gardena. And this this will allow for future residents in if they feel that there is parking problems in front of their homes, they can request the petition. We need to receive minimum. Well, there are two tests that we do in order to establish a permit parking zone. One is that 75% of spaces has to be occupied. When we do the survey. So that means at the peak hours, whatever the peak permit, peak parking is, there has to be 75% of all available parking on that street occupied. And second test is 50% of those vehicles have to be outside of that neighborhood. We will check the license plates for each car. And if 50% or. More. Are parkers outside of that neighborhood, then this qualifies for a permit parking district. So we also have to recognize that these are single family homes. They all should have parking spaces in their garages and their driveways. So it gets very difficult to justify in most districts a permit parking zone. So this this district qualified, which is on cherry, we also we asked the neighbors to participate if they want to expand this, but they're not going to have any signage. They don't have to pay for it. It will be only for residents that are facing on cherry that will pay if they want to have a parking space reserved. But residents on Gardena don't have to do anything at this point. They don't have to pay for any permits. If they choose to expand their district, then it's administrative. We don't have to come to city council because you're establishing the district. We have to establish that first. That 50% or more of parkers are not residents and 75% of spaces are occupied during our peak parking area. I don't know if I explained or clarified the issue that you asked. Yeah, I think that basically that in summary, the affected parking spots that we're talking about are on Cherry Avenue. There's no spillage into the neighbors neighboring streets. I'm Gardenia or Rose. It's basically the most affected area is on Cherry. Now, we did hold a number of community meetings, including the residents along that Cherry Avenue, including the business owners at the car dealerships across the street. We did talk about the parking situation in regards to their employees being having access to parking in their own facility. And that was addressed. However, there was the number of employees based on the number of parking spots available within their their business area, their locations. It was not enough. So there were there is a spillage and that affected the neighborhoods. And that's where and that's what brought us to today. So I want to thank you, first of all, Mr. Malloy, and for facilitating these meetings, and also Hector Rivas and Ignacio Ochoa for also working with our office and working with the neighbors and with the businesses to address this issue for you residents who are here tonight. Thank you for your patience. I know it's been an arduous journey to get to this point. This has been a problem for a number of years now. This is a point where we're hoping it will address your concerns with parking and that the contentious situation that we have with those businesses throughout the street will, if not go away, at least be minimized to to a very low, low point where there's practically nothing there. So I do ask that my council colleagues support this motion and that we're able to move forward with this in. And finally, I want to also congratulate. Aaron Malloy in on his appointment to the city of Pasadena. This is his last council meeting here tonight. Very good report. Although you had to do it twice, but that's okay. Sometimes these could get confusing. And I want to thank you for being here tonight, this evening, for sharing your thoughts on this very important issue to you . Thank you. Are we clapping that he's leaving? Heck, no. Thank you, Councilmember. You're on it. Councilman Austin, would you like to address this motion? Councilman Austin. Would you? Did you want to address the motion? You're the seconder. No, that's okay. Thank you. Thank you. Members of the public, for your comments. And members, cast your vote. Motion carries. Thank you. And we are at the time where we take public comment. I have six speakers who have signed up. Kenneth Roth.