Traffic Watch

SAN PEDRO – The Los Angeles Department of Transportation recently began trench work to install traffic signal conduits throughout the San Pedro community.

Through these improvements, the city plans to eventually monitor most of city traffic signals at City Hall.

Transportation engineer Moises Delgado said the conduits are also being installed on Terminal Island. Completion of the work is expected by November.

“All the traffic will be connected to centers within City Hall … additionally updating traffic signals for traffic efficiency and to reduce congestion,” Delgado said.

NOAA Unveils Air Quality Study

SAN PEDRO – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conducted a brief dockside presentation and media tour, May 28, on a study its conducting with university and state partners for land, sea and sky climate and air quality this summer.

The research vessel, Atlantis, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is conducting the sea portion of the study. The ship will stop briefly at the Port of Los Angeles to take on personnel and new equipment.

The $20 million project’s goal is to understand the origin of pollutants and greenhouse gases.

LULAC Resolution Invokes Guadalupe Hidalgo Enforcement

ORANGE, Calif. – The California League of United Latin American Citizens, during their May 23 state convention, passed a resolution that called for President Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon to invoke the provisions of Article XXI of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which would set up a bilateral commission to deal with immigration and civil rights issues between the United States and Mexico in light of Arizona’s passage of SB 1070 ― the controversial anti-immigrant law that enabled police departments to arrest undocumented immigrants.

In the event that a bilateral commission is unable to resolve any issues before it, the resolution proposes that another Article XXI mechanism be used, i.e., neutral arbitration by a third nation.

Jan Tucker, chairwoman of the California LULAC Civil Rights Commission who also serves as a National LULAC Civil Rights Commissioner, authored the resolution. Tucker, in a press release critically noted that “the passage of Arizona HB 2281, banning ethnic studies courses in Arizona education, takes the veneer of respectability off of the Arizona legislature; they might as well take off their suits and put on Ku Klux Klan white sheets and hoods at this point.”

Planning Commission votes on Baseline Hillside Ordinance

LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Planning Commission voted to recommend the adoption the proposed Baseline Hillside Ordinance provisions May 27 to the Los Angeles City Council that they adopt the hillside regulations.

The ordinance proposal would establish new regulations in the Los Angeles Municipal Code for single-family zoned properties that are designated as Hillside Area.

The amendments would result in a reduction to the existing ratio of the total floor area of buildings, change existing definition of “single-family residential floor area” and the calculation of height limits, create new grading regulations and Hillside Standards Overlay District that would allow individual neighborhoods to adjust the baseline limits to better fit their community’s character and scale, and establish or revise existing discretionary review processes for projects that deviate from the proposed floor area ratio, height, and grading regulations.

City Planners expect to have a Commission Determination Letter prepared for transmittal to the City Clerk by June 4.

The next step will be to take the proposed Baseline Hillside Ordinance provisions to the Planning and Land Use Management Committee, a subcommittee of the City Council that reviews all planning related matters.

Details: (818) 374-5034; http://planning.lacity.org/MeetingsNHearings/dsp_Results_CPC.cfm?subtype=Agendas

$1.8 million expected Angels Gate Lighthouse repairs

SAN PEDRO – This month, the Los Angeles Harbor Commission is expected to give the Cabrillo Beach Booster Club $1.8 million for the restoration of the 73-foot-tall Angels Gate Lighthouse at the entrance to the Los Angeles Harbor.

The lighthouse was, at one time, a symbol to returning World War II servicemen that they had finally reached home.

The money for the repairs stems from the China Shipping lawsuit settlement, which requires the shipping terminal operator to spend mitigation funds on community projects.

At first, the San Pedro Subcommittee of the Port Community Advisory Committee voted against giving funds for the lighthouse, but later, the booster group received support of the Wilmington Community Advisory Committee.

Work on the aging lighthouse is scheduled to start in the spring of 2011. The Boosters may have to raise additional funds to establish an endowment for maintenance of the lighthouse.

The restoration will include a barge to tow equipment and a U.S. Water Taxi to ferry the workers to the lighthouse to avoid polluting the Harbor.