The Wall That Heals - Fullerton Observer

Page 4 FULLERTON OBSERVER CITY GOVERNMENT NEWS EARLY APRIL 2012
Council Agenda
cityoffullerton.com
April 3: • Water Rate Study
Results • Proposal to consolidate
police services between
Fullerton, Buena Park, Brea
and La Habra •Proposal to
consolidate fire and EMS services
between Fullerton,
Anaheim and Orange.
•Update on Advisory Boards
•Trans Center Elevator Project
• Conduit financing for St.
Anton mixed use project on
W. Santa Fe.
April 11: 5pm, Successor
Agency workshop at Library
April 17: •OCWD update
on north county water
cleanup project with pipeline
running down Orangethorpe.
CITY COUNCIL NOTES by Staff
The City Council meets on the first and third Tuesdays of each month.
Upcoming agenda info and streaming video of council meetings are available
at www.cityoffullerton.com. Meetings are broadcast live on Cable Channel 3
and rebroadcast at 3pm and 6pm the following Wed. & Sun. and at 5pm Mon.
City Hall is located at 303 W. Commonwealth.
Contact Council at 714-738-6311 or by email to: council@ci.fullerton.ca.us
COUNCIL REPORT MARCH 20, 2012
Councilmembers Dick Jones & Pat McKinley Absent
Girl Scout Troop 1895 led the pledge of
allegiance to open the meeting on the
100th anniversary of Girl Scouts. Each
was presented with a certificate and
Mayor Sharon Quirk-Silva said “These
are our future community leaders.”
Announcements
•Arbor Day: Landscape
Superintendent Dennis Quinlivan
invited everyone to the March 24th
planting of 30 to 40 oak trees at
Hiltscher Park on Euclid.
•MADD: Mothers Against Drunk
Driving victim advocate Helen
Maganya and FPD Lt. Scott Rudisil
presented certificates to ten officers
who had each arrested 25 or more
drunk drivers in the past year. Officer
Ryan O’Neil won the top spot with 51
DUI arrests. Last year there were 757
DUI arrests in all. Maganya said she
became involved in MADD after her
father was killed in 1982 by a drunk
driver. At that time the punishment
for drunk driving consisted of an
overnight stay in the drunk tank.
Since then “MADD has helped
strengthen DUI laws,” said Maganya.
•Housing Report: City consultant Joan
Wolfe presented an update on the city’s
annual required housing element. RHNA
(Regional Housing Needs Allocation) for
each city is allocated by SCAG (So. Cal
Association of Governments) in order that
housing for all income brackets is evenly
shared by cities. The cities are not responsible
for physical construction of units but
must, by state law, have policies in place
to encourage and facilitate housing.
Redevelopment funds were a big factor
in the modest number of affordable units
Fullerton was able to build. Now, with the
dissolution of Redevelopment, that funding
method is up in the air and will
depend on the outcome of Senate Bill 654
and Assembly Bill 1585 which may at
least allow cities to retain existing affordable
housing fund balances. To date the
city has not approved a formal agreement
committing funding to three affordable
housing developments already approved.
Wolfe said that due to the current economy
construction is down but the city is
working with private developers. In 2011,
550 units were built; 120 of them were
New Police Captains
Fullerton Police Lieutenants Lorraine
Jones and George Crum (pictured at left)
have each been promoted to the rank of
captain by Chief Dan Hughes.
Jones, a 26-year veteran of the department,
is the first female officer to be promoted
to the rank in Fullerton’s history.
She is a Fullerton native with a master
degree from CSU Long Beach. She is a
Leadership and Ethics Institute boardmember
and was recently recognized for
her leadership by US Congresswoman
Loretta Sanchez and Mayor Quirk-Silva.
Crum, a 25-year veteran, is a CSUF
grad and holds a master degree from
CSU Long Beach. He is also an instructor
at the Fullerton College Police
Academy and an administrator and trainer
of the OCDA drug recognition training
program.
POLICE DEPT. UPDATE:
Police Chief Dan Hughes updated the
council on improvements at the police department
including upgraded training on homeless/mentally
ill, ethical vs legal use of force,
DAR, citizen complaint and other procedures.
The new policy manuel is available online at
the Police Dept. page of the city website
www.cityoffullerton.com and it will be updated
quarterly.
Chief Hughes announced that an assistant
has been assigned to work with the department’s
homeless liaison Officer Jay DeCaprio.
There will also be a mentally ill/homeless service
worker ride-along once a week to provide
resources where needed.
Other changes include: inviting leaders of
all faiths to participate in the department’s
chaplin program; development of a Police
Advisory Board of 12 to 20 community members;
and restarting the community policing
strategy meetings to reduce crime. There has
been a 23% reduction in crime from Jan-June
2011 which the chief feels is related to the
strategy of concentrating more resources to
higher crime areas of town. An example is the
9-month gang injunction action which has
resulted in 48% fewer crimes.
FULLERTON’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING LAG BLAMED ON ECONOMY
Fullerton’s RHNA goals & Actual
Units Built for 2006-2014 (so far)
INCOME LEVEL GOAL BUILT
•Very Low: 398 10
•Low 329 20
•Moderate 376 61
•Above Moderate 806 455
affordable; 430 above moderate. RHNA
goal is to build 1,100 affordable and 800
above market.
Mayor Quirk-Silva said “Whether you
agree or disagree with redevelopment - it
was used to build affordable housing.
Now it will be more of a challenge.” She
also mentioned that an offshoot benefit of
redevelopment projects is job creation.
Bankhead and Whitaker agreed that the
RHNA allocations shouldn’t be an
unfunded state mandate.
The report is available in the March 20
agenda online and should be posted under
Housing Policy Documents soon.
Approved 3-0
Continued on page 10
Good News for Bicyclists by Vince Buck
Bicyclists in Fullerton and north
Orange County have been having a run of
good news recently. First, the Puente Bike
Path opened (see picture) as reported in
the last issue of the Observer. This link
provides a safe bicycling route from
northern Fullerton and La Habra south
into central and eastern Fullerton.
Mayor Sharon Quirk-Silva was there to
cut the ribbon, along with
Councilmember Whitaker and
Councilmember Don Bankhead (who
had voted against the project). Don
acknowledged that the City had done a
nice job in building the bridge and path.
Also present were Pam Keller who had
supported the project when she was on
the Council. All of the BUSC (Bicycle
Users Sub Committee) members were
there, who along with their predecessor
activists - most notably Alex Smith, Ralph
Kennedy, Alyce Streitberger, Jan Flory and
Karen Haluza, worked nearly 20 years to
make this happen. Also present were two
Council candidates, Jane Rands who
chairs the BUSC and Rick Alvarez, both
on bicycles.
The second item of good news is that
OCTA, under the leadership (and aggressive
prodding) of Shawn Nelson, released
its Fourth District Bikeways Strategy
which identifies continuous routes in and
between cities in the Fourth Supervisorial
District and surrounding areas. This is
the sort of leadership that OCTA should
have been demonstrating, but until
Supervisor Nelson pushed they had resisted.
The Strategy not only identifies
routes but ranks them and gives them priority
in OCTA funding. As a result, in
the next few years we should start seeing
more and more useful bicycle routes in
the area.
A third item is that Fullerton has been
designated by OCTA as the priority site
for a bike-sharing program. This is a program
— already in existence in many
American and European cities — where
riders can pick up a bike at one bike station
and drop it off at another. It will be
particularly useful for getting between the
depot and the University and Fullerton
College. There will be 10 stations
throughout the city with 15 bikes each in
the beginning.
Fourth ( and fifth and sixth), the
Council passed three items on March
20th, all of which have strong positive
implications for bicycle riders. First, in
discussing hiring a new design consultant
for the State College grade separation at
the BNSF tracks, if was promised by staff
and the new engineer (from Mark
Thomas and Company) that room for
safe bicycle riding would be provided in
the undercrossing. This had not been
promised before. (I would be even more
enthusiastic were it not for the fact that
The first bicyclists over the new bridge.
Mayor Sharon Quirk-Silva and former
Mayor protem Pam Keller who both supported
the project when it came to council.
this company did not provide the same
for the Placentia Avenue grade separation
which it also designed).
The Council also approved an application
to submit bids for a “Communitybased
Bike and Pedestrian Mobility
Study” to provide safe routes across the
57 freeway between Chapman and Yorba
Linda. This could possibly result in a recommendation
for a pedestrian and bicycle
bridge over the freeway. At the very
least safer routes ( and there are no safe
ones now) will be identified
Finally, the Council approved seeking
grants to build a “bike boulevard” on
Wilshire between Lemon and Acacia. This
route is an important part of a high priority
route in the Fourth District Plan and
is key to the success of the bike share program.
Somewhat misleadingly named,
bike boulevards provide safe, comfortable
routes for bicycle riding by using a variety
of traffic-calming measures to reduce the
volume and speed of cars on residential
streets. They benefit not only bicyclists
but residents and pedestrians as well,
largely by taking traffic off of residential
streets and putting it on arterials, in this
case Chapman and Commonwealth.
Perhaps even more important than all of
the above actions is what it represents: a
sea change in the thinking of planners,
engineers and other policy makers from
the days when the principal — perhaps
the sole — goal was to get cars from Point
A to Point B in the shortest amount of
time. (The first “Purpose” listed in the
Transportation Element of the 1980
Fullerton General Plan was to “ Reduce
vehicular travel times between selected
origin-destination points.”).
Now serious effort is being made at all
levels in OCTA and Fullerton and other
cities to address the needs of bicyclists and
to make our streets safer for bicycling and
thus make bicycle commuting and recreation
a real option. There is still a long
way to go, but we have seen the first steps.