City Traffic Commission - Regular Meeting

Great. And I'll have the clerk call roll.

We'll be quick begin roll call now. Vice chair Ritchie? Here. Commissioner Barbado? Here. Commissioner Hamilton? Here. Commissioner Georges? Commissioner Chavarria? Here. And Chair Felice? Here. We have a quorum present with Commissioner Georges absent.

Great. Thank you. With that, we'll move on to item two point o, which is public comments. At this time, members of the public may address the commission on matters not listed on the agenda, which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission provided that no action may be taken on off agenda items unless it's authorized by law. Public comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Do we have any public comments? Yes, we do. Great. With that, we'll have David Schlip come

up. Everybody has my name.

You can correct me.

My kids went to and I went to. Everybody said it like that. You switched the I and the o. No problem. So I tried to get other people from my street and the next street over to come, but I gave them late notice.

I live on East Altura, off San in between San Diego and the 55. Been there for twenty four years. And the traffic from Olu in the morning and afternoon is problematic. I have a list of things that I suggest on South Santiago at both East Deltura and East Villa Vista Way that they place because I've asked for printing on the street saying do not block. Hulu has that, but we can't get that.

At least put up a sign that says do not block on the intersections because people park right across our street on both East Altura and East Villawista Way on the East Side of Santiago, eight twenty feet along the curb going east because that's now in state law that you're not supposed to park there. If it's red, then people will actually maybe obey that. On southbound Santiago that they put pillars along the stripe. I have pictures and some other stuff that I'll give you. To keep the Oulu drivers, what they do is they pull in there.

That is blind because of the way San Diego kind of wiggles. And they go up against the curb. The kids come in the car they pull out into traffic and I'm still waiting for a bicyclist to get killed, but it hasn't happened yet. Enforcement of the no stop signs along San Diego. Orange PD does not do that.

The lady in the house next to me used to be the secretary for the principal, and they used to go out and tell people not to do it. The OPD said, don't do that. That's our job. Then they never did it. I've been told by a resident that Oulu has about three orange policeman kids going there. It might be a factor in they're not doing it. Deal with the blocking of because I've talked to people on East Way. The parents come in and we'll block the intersections that they pick while they're picking up their kids in the afternoon. Deal with drivers pulling into East Villavista Way. So what they'll do is write off San Diego, northbound on San Diego, turn in and make a U-turn right in that intersection.

All the people who live in those houses right there get seriously impacted by that. And then southbound on Santiago, at East Riding Way, which is the first street north of Meats, parents will frequently pull out, goes south on Santiago, make a U-turn right there, and I have a geology degree. Know what my pace is. They paced off that. Thank you. And that's not safe. So I'll leave this.

Yes. You can hand that off to the clerk.

It's more of a write up.

Great. Thank you. Appreciate hand it over to Francisco right there. Alright. With that, we will move on to item three point o or three point

o three

which is 3.1. Sorry. Excuse me. Which is the approval of the minutes of the Orange Traffic Commission regular held on October 9. Francisco can grab your information and we can have staff reach out to you. Thank you. Do we have a motion to approve? Do we have a second? So first and a second. Motion to approve.

Great, that passes unanimously. Perfect. With that, we'll move on to item 4.1.

And then, Mr. Chair, I'm going to recuse myself from this item. We have a subject property pretty close by.

So I'll hang out in the back. Great. Thank you. Perfect. With that, we'll move on to item 4.1, which is the timed parking on the West Side of South Citrus Street, South of West Chapman Avenue adjacent to the medical office building at 1010 West Chapman Avenue and the associated parking lot south. With that, we will call for the staff at work.

Good evening, chairman and members of the traffic commission. Item 4.1 is a request for one hour time limited parking on the West Side of South Citrus Street along the commercial frontage of 1010 West Chapman Avenue and its associated parking lot. The city received a request from a resident on the street to present this item to noting the lack of parking turnover and commercial truck intrusion. Staff visited Citrus Street and confirmed the demand for curbside parking is high as shown in the existing conditions photo. The majority of South Citrus Street near the study area is composed of residential properties to the south and commercial properties to the north.

Currently, along the residential frontages, parking is by permit only. On the east side of the street adjacent to the commercial frontage, there is an existing one hour time limited parking. On the western frontage of the commercial properties, there is some existing red curb near Chapman Avenue into the south adjacent to residential properties. Both commercial properties on either side of Citrus Street have off street parking lots for customers. The site sketch illustrates the proposed limits of one hour time limited parking.

Approval of this request will encourage parking turnover for businesses in the vicinity. It should be noted that time limited parking would only be enforced from 7AM to 6PM except for Sundays and holidays. Staff recommends the commission consider the request for one hour time limited parking on the West Side of South Stitcher Street. This concludes my report and I am available to answer any questions at this time.

Any questions for staff? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and open the public portion of this. I believe we have a few speakers. Up first, we'll have Tony Ortiz. And on deck, we'll have Fernando Martinez, Jr. Good evening.

Hi. I'm Tony Ortiz. I'm the building owner of 1010 West Chapman Avenue. And I'm here to kind of express my safety concerns regarding putting in one hour zone on the parking there. Because there's a lot of cars that actually turn in really quickly into the citrus side.

And so if you were to have a one hour zone, there's potentially safety concern that people might get hit because there's a studio right across the way that people would park. So the one hour zone that's on the other side kind of makes sense because they will get out and go there. All my patients, they park in my parking lot, which is on the citrus side. So having one hour parking zone is going to increase the probability of people getting hit by cars that are turning into the citrus side. So where that comes from is that I've at times parked there myself, and every time I have to look left and right multiple times because cars are going there at least 20 to 30 miles an hour.

So, and I'm a brain scientist by training. Most people are right handed, and what that means is that you process information through the left side of the brain. So when you come out of the car, you look towards the right. You don't look towards the left. All cars are coming to the left.

So this will, in time, if this gets approved, I want this to be on the record, because if there is an accident that occurs, I'm going to reference this conversation that we're having here, because this is a grave concern that I have. And don't see the logic of having a one hour zone there at this point in time. All my patients park on the parking lot, so it's not going to benefit me at all. And I think it's to increase the probability of an accident due to the people that are going to park there and they're to go across the way to the studio. They're not going go into my office at all, because I have sufficient space.

Since we brought up a map up think, I I discussed that never was discussed with me at all. I never got a notice at all. And since it was part of the map, I wanted to bring that up as well. It's not part of the issue, but just kind

of thought since the red zone is there. The red zone

And

able get bit of then,

after him, we have a senior.

The business has been there for over twenty five years, at least owned by him for twenty five years. I've been there for nine. Obviously the biggest concern I can understand is the trucks just being parked, it a little narrow. And I get it. Everything we've been trying to do is get customers to pick up their vehicles sooner.

I don't understand why people I will call and be like, hey, your truck is done. Two days later, three days later, come by and pick it up, which is that is the real reason why we're here is because they're sitting there for so long. I've tried to get customers to pick them up faster. We've got a sign in the office saying you don't pick up your truck within a day. We're charging $50 It still stays.

Can't really be next level rude to customers like, hey, I'm not responsible for everything because I kind of sort of am. But we've been doing things to kind of keep that from happening. I still get people that leave their trucks weeks, days, what ever it is, obviously it just sits there. I have a very limited lot and business, you guys know, you can't have a restaurant with a seat not being used because you're making money out of it. So I can't have a truck sitting there just sitting when I can put something else here to make some money.

So doing everything I can. I understand their situation. I even tell them like, hey, how would you guys like it? You get home. There's a giant truck parked in front of your house. So some customers get it. We get fire department, we get police officers, and they all say the same thing. You guys need a bigger lot. Like, yeah, I need to pick up your truck faster. That would help too.

Customers know and understand, but half of them don't seem to want to do anything about it, which is hurting me or us. And, yeah, it's not really in our favor, I guess. But I'm just here to say I'm doing everything again, to lower the vehicle that are there, to lower the chances of whatever risk may or may not happen. But, yeah, that's

pretty much it.

Thank you. Well,

I'm senior and the thing is I've been there for like twenty five years and if you guys are really concerned about safety, what you're trying to do is not gonna improve the safety, it's actually going to make it worse. And the reason is like Tony says, that people are going to be parking and moving, parking and moving a lot more and cars come in a little fast. When they see the vehicles there, actually most of the times people slow down a little bit because they see it's a little narrow there and Tony got a good point that's more prone to have an accident you guys start doing that because there's going to be people coming in park and get out of the car and go across the street to the studios and pulling the cars out of there. So when they pull the car out of there, cars coming from Chapman, there's more chance to be an accident there than if you just leave it the way it is. And again, we're working now, we're trying our best to fix the problem with the customers, but this is not something we can really control with the customers when they're going to come and pick it up.

They, you know, we sometimes wait for them to actually authorize a repair. We get the car in, we have to inspect it, and then we have to call the customer with an estimate. We cannot just fix it for the heck of it. There's laws in California that you cannot fix a car without the authorization from the customer, the owner. So we sometimes we have cars that they sit in there for a week or two weeks before we get an okay to do the repair and then they we finish and then it takes another two weeks for them to come and pick it up because sometimes people either don't have the money or they're waiting for money or they just don't have the time to come and get it.

That's one of our problem is not it's not us and we try. You know once we finish a job, we want to get people to pick it up and we get paid because we already invest parts and time on fixing the vehicle and we definitely want to get our money back. But it's something that we, you know, we're having an issue with that for a little while or most of the years is people come in and get their vehicles on time. And then I don't know what else we can do, you know, we tried many things and again a lot of customers say, oh, you need to get a bigger place. Yeah, we got these places paid for, we don't have a mortgage payment on it to get into another place now these days with the prices is not easy.

I mean you guys have to understand and we hope the city also helps a little bit because you know we the business the small business are that like the back bone of the economy here on taxes for not just the cities the counties the state and even the whole country is the small business.

Thank you Mr. Martinez. Jerry Holden.

Hi, I'm here. I represent the the neighbors on citrus. You have and I'm sure Gabriel gave you an email that I sent a long time ago which you did. We did get a one hour parking on the east side of the street which I thank you. The problem is that it's not really enforced.

The parking enforcement very rarely comes down there and when they do, they have to mark the tires, leave for an hour, they move the cars over to the medical buildings parking lot or whatever they put them, and then they come back and do it. On the west side of the street, just totally congested. Driveway that comes out of that medical building, if cars are parked on both sides, it's really hard. A car can come out and you don't even see it when emergency vehicles are parked, such as fire truck there's no way you can get cars down the street because it's they're too wide and we've also submitted she's also submitted to you impact statements from the neighbors for you all to read I mean I can go over what they've read, what they've said but it would just be redundant for me to stand here and talk about what you can read. I've also talked with them in the back.

I've tried to come up with a solution with them in the back and I see where they're coming from, I do, but where we're coming from it's total hazard for us. But if you want see of the of to

the

the

and they move their cars and stuff. I'm okay we're okay with that and we can revisit if it doesn't work. That's about it.

Thank you Mr. Any other comments on this? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the commission for discussion. I do have a question for Gabriela. How many parking spaces of the one hour parking would this incorporate?

There would be about five spaces.

Five spaces. Okay. And then the red curve that's to the north, do you know approximately the length of that curb section?

Adjacent to West Chapman Avenue is 15

feet. 15 feet. Okay.

Well yeah, now they can. When you did this, we're doing

doing We're We're clarified, the daylighting law only affects the approach to the intersection, not the departure.

Not the departure. Anybody else have any comments? I be a little interested in the red curve that is to the south side. Kind of understanding that a little bit more as well. And I would also, if we did take some action, I know we couldn't take action on that portion of the red curve. We'd have to direct staff to bring that we'll And then able commission commission back. Able

point.

I important think that's residential neighborhood. That is that's heavily impacted. Those permit parking just beyond the red curb section. I would be supportive of going in that direction, but I'd like to get some feedback from the rest of the commission. Proposing to increase the north or the east side of the street to 20?

West side. West Okay. So that would increase increase one by by one space presumably? The parking space you guys count for is 20 lineal feet or 20?

Could you repeat the question?

The way you guys count as a parking space, what's the lineal footage?

Generally, use 22 feet.

22 feet.

So you're slightly under four cars at this point. Would need to make a motion. You make a motion for the amended For the amended space. For the amended space on the West side. You said that was 15 feet, correct? For the red curve?

So the motion is going to be on the red curb, extending it.

The motion would be to approve the one hour with the red curb going to 20 feet

instead of Yes,

it is 15 feet of red curve adjacent to

Chapman. May

tell us that we need to bring it back.

Excuse me, commissioners, yes. That's not on the agenda tonight. Just this item. So I don't think we can amend

for that. I'd like to amend my motion that we direct staff to bring this back and incorporate the 20 foot red curb on the north side and provide provide some direction on the curb to the south side.

So if I may

But we can deny this and then direct staff to

do that. Sure. So because the introduction of the additional, I think five feet of red curve doesn't operationally impact how many spaces it doesn't reduce any parking spaces on the street. That can that be is that something that the commission can take action on today given that the impacts are negligible?

My only concern with that is that it wasn't on the agenda. So I would prefer to do the way that we first suggested.

Okay.

And we could do it as a separate item. I mean we could look at this one and then take the other item back at another date, the red curve.

Sure. So just so I'm understanding, the commission approve this item as is today and then direct staff to come back just to look at the red curve at a future commission date?

Correct. My

only issue with that is that the work may take place, so maybe double work to come back and paint. That would be my only concern about doing it that way.

So then we could just deny this at this point, but then have staff come back and bring it with the red curve as well, that analysis. That's fine.

So again, I'll amend my motion to deny the request and then direct staff to bring back with the Red Creek Incorporation. I'll motion it. Do I have a second to support it? Any further discussion on it? Seeing none, call for the vote.

It didn't pop up on our screen. Okay. With that, the denial goes in staff will bring us back some direction on the record. And I apologize. I'm kinda losing my voice at this point. With that, we'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting. The next meeting will be held on 04/09/2025 at 05:30PM. Great. Thank you.