Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, find that the area to be vacated is not needed for present or prospective public use; and Adopt resolution ordering the vacation of the alley portion south of 520 West Willow Street, east of Daisy Avenue. (District 7)
through Measure H. And so I want to make that announcement and and thank you thank you all for your support on that on that important issue. With that, we're going to go ahead and go right into the first hearing. So, Madam Clerk. Hearing item one is a report from Public Works recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and find that the area to be vacated is not needed for present or prospective public use. And a resolution ordering the vacation of the alley portion south of 520 west Willow Street, east of Daisy Avenue, District seven . Thank you. And to turn this over to staff. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The staff report was given by Deputy Director of Public Works John Crumby. Good evening. On a Roman Council item, each one seeks to move forward a vacation of the portion of the alley south of 520 west Willow. The recommended action tonight has three parts, which are to conclude and conduct a public hearing, find that the alley is not needed for public benefit and adopt the resolution for vacation, said Alley. This item has had a general plan consistency finding by the City Council on February 14th of this year. Also, a notice of intent to vacate occurred on May 9th of this year. I'm available to answer any questions that you. Kate, thank you. So thank you for the staff report. Let me move that public comment on this hearing or public comment. Please come forward. Home EC to put up these two? Absolutely. So we got to. The. Perfect. Just a test. Because you're paying attention. Sitting back there just a little bit. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and members of the city council. My name is Delgado. My address is on file. I represent Raymond Jensen, who is here. And we are opposed to the to the proposed Ali vacation. The way I have organized this in the interests of time and I believe this will save us a lot of time, is to have each of the people that are speaking in opposition speak very, very briefly. First, Michael Polley, who is a private investigator who I retained to do some work on this. And he did some counts of. Of vehicles in the area. Secondly, the owner of the adjacent property property, Raymond Ginn, on third, Esmeralda Zambrano, who has for more than 20 years been the general manager of the Priority Care Medical Group, which is at 500 West Willow Street. And then Dr. Dariush Kashani, who is the medical doctor at Priority Care Medical Youth Group. And then Dr. Sam Gibney, all of whom will take it very briefly, and then I'll sum up. So first, I would have Michael Polley address you. Good evening. My name's Mike Pauley. I'm a private investigator, licensed with the state of California. I was retained by Mr. Otto to conduct observations and. Monitor and document vehicles. Accessing the alleyway today from 7. A.m. to 4 p.m.. And I counted. 339. Vehicles accessing the east west alleyways. 1/2. Actually, Madam Court, can you help them with the fix the mike? We have a little issue with the mike we're going to fix right now. There we go. Okay. Thank you very much. They're much better. The east west alleyway, along with the North-South Alley Alleyway. Next, the property owner from five 500 West Willow Street. Good evening. My name is Raymond Johnson, owner of the 500 and 520 East Crest Villa. By closing that alley, whatever the traffic is, going back and forth is going to come through. Behind our. Property and whatever. It doesn't go there. It double the traffic over there and is not safe. If it is not safe for West Westland people, it would be double for our people coming and going from the parking to the building and for the trucks. Trash trucks. Going there. It is going to be close the alley. How that truck. Can turn and go out from. One way the back up to they see the back side. It just happened last year that the lady got flattened with the asphalt near up near our home. So you have to consider that. If. Next we'll have. Dr. Dariush Kashani, who is the medical director of the Priority Care Medical Group. We can we can turn the clock off. I think it's just a reasonable amount of time and so they're okay, keep going. Good evening, council members and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Doris Kashani. I'm the CEO of Priority Care and Medical Group. I run a nonprofit organization. We serve the uninsured and underinsured of the community. We there. Has been a clinic. In 500 west well over the last 25 years. We just recently took over the clinic over almost about a year now. And the population that we serve are generally low income or uninsured from the surrounding community. So we serve the community for that purpose. The patients who utilize our services are mostly with physical disability. They either have hearing visual, they might be pregnant carrying a baby or two babies on toes. They might be on wheelchair, amputated on crutches. I don't think the city council realized the impact of putting a gate at the end of this alley. What it will cause to people who have to cross the parking lot to come over. These people are not going to be able to react to any impending danger as easily as a healthy body can react to it. As I understand it, next door neighbor is a real estate company and a construction company. These are able healthy bodies that need to cross from their parking lot into their building. If it is unsafe for them to cross from their parking lot to their building in healthy, abled working bodies. How do we expect people who have visual hearing, disability or other physical disabilities illnesses that utilizing the community clinic to be able to safely go from the parking lot to the building? This is a real danger for our community and people who utilize our clinic. Again, we serve the under insured and uninsured population of the community. Most of our patients do come from the neighboring area and I am of great concern for their safety. If this goes in place, all the trucks and delivery and other cars that need to address and go through this alley, we're not going to be able to go through. They will end up having to back up and they will get stuck and will cause significant amount of hazard. Thank you so much for your time and listening to me. Thank you. Now, Esmeralda Zambrano. Hi. Good evening. My name is Esmeralda Sembrano. I been the office manager priority care for 24 years. I don't even see how this is even considered. To close this alley, we use this alley all the time for our patients. We've called 911 several times. Patients have gotten severe sick. And how are they going to have access? How are they going to have access to come in and out fast? When we call them, these patients need access to these alleys. I myself have to go around because if I take well in Magnolia, there's been accidents there. Look in the records almost at least once a month. There's accidents on Willow and Magnolia. People getting hurt every single month. You have to really consider this for our patients sake to really consider closing this alley. It's very important to us. I really appreciate if you consider this. Thank you. Thank you. Then. Dr. Samuel, get Blake. Hi. Good evening. I have a. Practice in the building for more than 20 years and I think definitely we see the impact of the patient and my colleagues have been. Explain how this important if you consider about their safety for sure the patient safety number one definitely is. We see the cars go in and out and it began up like the alley for sure. We're going to have a lot of cars that have to make a U-turn to bring it back to go to the main street. And I think this is going to do impact plus, like they mentioned, the handicap wheelchair. All the kids, you know, the running, walking from the parking lot to the building. So definitely it should take this one into consideration as of the block in the alley. Thank you. Thank you. Then I'll I'll look. Sum up what the argument is here. Basically, when is a street or alley vacation supposed to happen where you start off with the idea that it's a gift of public land? What happens is you're saying we no longer need this public alleyway. And so because it's unnecessary, we're going to let the people that are adjacent to it or have some claim over it take that land. They can only do so, however, with a finding by you that as follows. And this comes from streets and Highways Code Section 6324. If the legislative body finds from all of the evidence submitted that the street, highway or public service easement described in the notice of hearing or petition is and these are the critical words unnecessary for present or prospective use. The legislative body may adopt a resolution vacating the street, highway or public service easement. The process that has to be gone through is that there must be a conformance with the general plan finding and that is delegated to the Planning Commission. This has come up several times over the last couple of years and the Planning Commission has never made a conformance finding. In fact, at the hearing on December 1st after public testimony, the Planning Commission discussed the matter and determined that the proposed alley vacation would not be in conformance with the general plan. The Planning Commission determined that the portion of the alley proposed to be vacated had the potential to provide public use or convenience due to its existing access points to existing residential and commercial uses currently provided by the existing East West Alley. That's the alley that we're talking about and the therefore that the alley vacation had the potential to be detrimental so that the alley would no longer be available for present or prospective public use. Now I've put up two boards here and unfortunately I can't see either one of them. So I'm going to have to sneak a peek so we can talk about this. This board here shows the actual area that is supposed to be vacated. It is the western westerly half. And we've talked about the westerly half of this alley directly behind for a 520 west Willow Street. The other half of the alleyway is where my client's business is. And they purchased that that that building in January of this year. The second board that I have here, I put up to show you just this that alleyway is an integral part of the circulation patterns of District seven and the Wrigley neighborhood. In fact, many, many, many people use that alleyway to get around so that they can avoid Willow and and having to get out on major streets. This is between Magnolia and Daisy. And you can see here how right goes. Right in between Magnolia and Daisy. It drives up just, you know, 50 feet and then it goes all the way to a building. Well, wrap it up the time. Oh, okay. And so that's the process is this I challenge anybody in the city, in the planning department or in the public works department to tell me where a half of an alleyway has ever been vacated before like this. And finally, I would say, no, you can't make the finding, because just today there were more than 300 cars that showed that this is presently in use and needs to be kept as it is and not vacated or given away to someone, which is what's been requested . Thank you. Thank you, Mr.. We're still doing public comment. Hello. Good evening. Can Greenspan from 520 West whether from Westland. So I just wanted to take a few minutes. To respond to some of those comments. And it's interesting to me that the argument is that by blocking off. This section of the alley that we are actually increasing the safety hazards. It would. Seem to me that if we block the access of the. Alleyway, we're going to get a lot less through traffic, through the alleyway. Which is going to make things. Safer. And of those 300 cars, probably 150 of them, give or. Take, maybe even 200 of them came from my office. Alone with my. Own. Tenants and people that are customers that are coming into my. Building where we're going to be stopping those people from driving by the medical office. Which I think is. Is actually an increase in safety. We looked at at the last few times, we came up here and presented we also talked about the trash issue. And found that the trash actually does not. Need to come through that alleyway. There is a. This is not blocking off happening. There's actually a. Three way alley and there is we're not. Blocking off it. Making a dead end to the alley. There's still an exit path through this. Alleyway so that cars can continue to drive through without having to make a U-turn or anything like that. We also did some. Research on the accidents. Reported on Magnolia. And have found no records of any car accidents at the exit of the alley at Magnolia. We've also been able to show through our previous presentations that the circulation pattern here in this area, actually, many of the buildings don't have these alleys behind them. And in fact, our alley, our building is absolutely unique in the way that it has no actual buffer. Between the back of the building and. The alleyway. So we talk about safety from our perspective. You open our door to our building and you are literally in an. Alley with 300. Cars. Driving by. And it it can become a it is a danger with the medical office and the other buildings on that block. They have a good. 20, 25 feet buffer between their back doors and the alleyway. And that's what I wanted to say on this. So thank you very much for your consideration. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hi, Mayor. Council people. My name is Dr. Levy Freed. I'm the co-owner and founder of Long Beach Beer Lab at 518 West Willow Long Beach First Manufacturing Brewery as of Friday. So we're very excited to be here. I'm at 518 and I use the West Land Alley and I use the West Land parking lot. And I'm concerned about the through alley because me and my employees and my staff have number of times always been hit by people zooming through that alleyway. So I think the safety concern should be that we should worry about too much traffic through that alley. And I think that application of that alley and and a stop in there would help people cross that alley on their way to work or away from work, especially my patrons who will be parking in that alley and walking around the building to my entrance. So I'm concerned about them, especially late at night. And well, people are just zooming through on their way, bypassing any sort of whatever on Willow Street in also in the future, I hope to be able to use that alley for some sort of neighborhood festivals that we could do through our brewery and through the community. And having that access to the alley would definitely help that arrangement. If cars were to zoom past, that could be a huge safety concern. So I'm in favor of the vacation and that is it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That concludes public comment for this hearing. So I will go back now to the city council and I'll start with Councilmember Murang'a, which is this areas in his district so customary, Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank all the people who testified today regarding this L.A. vacation just for staff. Can you please review the process as to from initiation to where we're at at this point in terms of the different points of contact and different points of studies that we did starting from the beginning. Just to get a historical perspective. Happy to. When a request for a vacation comes in. To the city, a formal. Application is filed, and the city reviews several criteria to determine if public benefit is needed for the alley. Several things are not allowed or would not be recommended to move forward by the staff. One being we would never move forward. A vacation of an alley that forms a dead end alley. Every alley needs to have a in and out. And that is the case with after the vacation that moves forward here. But petitions are filed and. Notices go to the surrounding properties and they're provided opportunity to comment positively or negatively to the proposed action. And the staff works with with the surrounding property owners that receive those notices. Also, utility companies are public safety departments in several internal functions of the public works department. Go through. That process to determine if public benefit is needed for their services. Within the public works department. Traffic and trash departments are consulted and both in both cases, those departments or those divisions of the department agreed that the vacation could move forward and there would not be an adverse impact to vacation in the alley. A couple. Other comments on a. Few of the things that were said. It's important to note that only a portion of this alley is being vacated, and the gentleman who spoke about traffic counts mentioned northwest are north, south and east west. It's really only a portion of the. East west. Alley that's being vacated. And the other comment was the general plan, consistency, finding. Everything was said, was accurate, but the city council did make the general plan consistency finding in February of this year. Okay. Thank you. Now, when it comes down to the issues of ambulance or emergency vehicles going through to that area to address issues regarding the the medical services and next door, has there was every record done or account done in terms of how many calls for service there were and what impact that would have to that business. As part of the notification process. Emergency services consulted in terms of both in terms of emergency response. On ALS and in this case. The response. Was that. Coverage would be. Still provided at the same service level. As. Whether the vacation occurs or not. Okay. And just to clarify, the accidents that that were alluded to were regarding the alley to Magnolia. Correct. I mean, in terms of either turning north or south out of the alleyway, is that correct? So we haven't. Personally researched those individual accidents. As part of the. Process. Our staff does. Go through a database of accidents to look to see whether vacation has a safety impact. And that was not found in this case. Okay. Well, based on the report from staff and regarding the also the input that was put in by the fireplace fire police departments as well as public works in terms of trash pickup, I support the indication they would ask that my colleagues support it also. Thank you. Okay. There's a second on emotion, which is Councilwoman Gonzales. Any comments? Okay. Well, I see no other comments from staff. Mr. City Attorney, do you have something on addressing? Okay. There is a motion in a second by Councilmember Durango and Councilwoman Gonzalez, our members. Please go ahead and cast your vote. Motion case. Okay. Thank you very much. And thank you to everyone that came out for that. We're moving on to consent. If I can get a motion any second, please, on consent. I. Okay. There's a motion in a second on consent.