Traffic and Planning Commission Starts Tonight

The Traffic and Parking Commission meets tonight. It’s been a long time coming.

Traffic and Parking are the two greatest concerns our residents have. Financially we are going to be debt-free by the end of the year and we have sufficient reserves in the bank to weather any upcoming storms. On the crime side, our crime rate is at the lowest it’s ever been, and our rank compared to our neighbors has never been better. Without problems in public safety and with our finances in good shape, concerns focus on traffic and parking, and rightfully so.

A week doesn’t go by when I am not working with someone in some neighborhood about their traffic or parking issues. Just last week at my Town Hall meeting, parking permits at La Vaca were the main topic. At the last city council meeting, parking permits for 3 different parts of the city were on the agenda. Last month I was working with the people on Cavanaugh to get them street sweeping signs and the month before the Chief of Police and I were looking at traffic on Canada. And so it goes.

Comparatively speaking traffic and parking are of even greater concern to Lake Forest residents than others in South County, but both of these problems are major concerns everywhere. Why is it then, that it took the City 28 years to finally establish a Commission when there are Traffic Commissions in many other cities (e.g., Orange, Irvine, Torrance,Vista, Rosemead, La Mesa, Moreno Valley, Cypress, Placentia, Murrietta, Berkeley, etc.) ?

Readers of my articles know that for nearly a decade I've been asking for a Traffic Commission. My pleas were ignored until I got on the Council in 2014, but even then, the best I could do was to get a “Citizen Traffic Advisory Group” that proved so unproductive that it was dismissed after a year. The opposition from Council members Voigts, Hamilton, and Robinson meant that we were doomed to face traffic and parking problems with no attempt to correct the problems. Is it mere happenstance that absent Hamilton, suddenly a Traffic and Parking Commission appeared? How is it that Council members Voigts and Robinson adamantly opposed a Traffic and Parking Commission, but when the idea re-surfaced this year, they voted for it?

The sad truth is that for the entire existence of the City, up until 2018, the majority of the Council took campaign contributions from developers and the building industry in general. In some periods, when Tettemer-Herzog-Dixon-McCullough-Rudolph were in office, the entire Council took money. In more recent times, it was a mere majority (e.g., Voigts-Hamilton-Robinson vs Gardner-Basile).

And we’re not talking chump change. By my estimates, developers and the building industry contributed more than $300,000 to get their “candidates” elected and in return, they got “yes” votes on every project proposed, including zoning changes, tandem parking allowances, third story add-ons, etc. Only a few months ago Toll Brothers spent $68,000 trying to keep Hamilton in office.

Never was there any thought to the potential traffic and parking problems because, quite frankly, the developers and the builders don’t live here. With extremely rare exceptions, the people doing the reports for the developers don’t live here either. At a recent Council meeting when I asked an official from one of these companies if in the hundreds of reports they produced, they ever recommended against a residential project, the answer was “No”. So, despite the county-wide problems of traffic and parking, there has never been a new project (bringing new traffic and parking problems to an area) thought to be counterproductive.

The developers, builders, and their allies (including the utility companies) will tell us that the new development is necessary for increased growth, and that has an appealing logic, until you realize that “growth at any cost” is not an acceptable strategy. Who doesn’t like an ice cream cone? But as you go from a cone to a triple scoop to a gallon the costs of growing begin to outweigh the benefits of the sugary high.

This article may be appealing at 651 words, and maybe you’ll still be reading when I get to 1,000, but at some point it’s simply too much.

Not only is the “growth at any cost” a limited and fallacious argument, it ignores the fact that some kinds of growth are better than other kinds of growth. It’s now taken for granted that new residential developments are probably best constructed in mixed use configurations (i.e., in close proximity to retail and office space) and close to existing transportation corridors. From that point of view, as I discussed a few years ago with a senior executive from Tolls Brothers, re-development of some of the areas near the 5 Freeway would be a good way to get growth without the traffic impacts of locating a new development in the center of town.

Our new Traffic and Parking Commission must not only help us solve the existing problems (e.g., more use of permissive left turns, better permit parking policies, changes to street sweeping policies), they need to be a watchdog for future projects. Without worrying about the developer’s profits, or the builders’ payday, or the campaign contributions to the Council members, their focus must be on our quality of life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest where he serves as Mayor. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a town hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be Oct 18 at 7 pm at the Lake 1 Clubhouse (Ridge Route).