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On June 3, at the conclusion of the final community meeting regarding changes to Colorado Boulevard, Councilmember José Huizar announced his support for the boulevard of tomorrow. Below you will find his statement detailing the transformation planned for Colorado Boulevard. First however, I would like to reflect on the journey that has been taken to arrive at this point.

Over two years ago the effort to transform Colorado Boulevard into a street that more equitably serves the community was kicked off by TERA. Community leaders were invited to a hosted luncheon at which TERA’s aspirations for our Main Street were shared. A steering committee comprised of a broad range of community leadership was established. Attendees to a Centennial Celebration Event voted on “Take Back the Boulevard” as the preferred branding for the initiative. TERA provided seed money for the effort, quickly followed by contributions from CD14 and the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council. For two years Take Back the Boulevard Steering Committee hosted over 15 community meetings, involving hundreds of participants (residents, business owners, other stakeholders). In addition surveys were conducted. While it is true that some participants opposed any changes to the Boulevard, a significant majority repeatedly expressed the major goal of making Colorado Boulevard safer. As the goals of TBTB, based on this feedback were further defined, several Eagle Rock community groups, associations and institutions provided statements of support.

• Although bike lanes were often the focus of recent community meetings, it is important to understand that the underlying goal is to make the boulevard safer. That is accomplished by removing a traffic lane in each direction, thereby “calming” traffic. It is a happy coincidence that removing a traffic lane provides the opportunity for the Los Angeles Master Bike Lane Plan to be implemented on Colorado with a safer version of bike lanes, buffered bike lanes. The ability to introduce new cross-walks, a pedestrian signal at one location, and improve the ability to make left turns is only possible because a lane of traffic is being eliminated. Finally, drivers exiting their car will now open the car door into a space shared with bicyclists rather than fast moving traffic. These are all changes that meet the goal of making Colorado Boulevard a safer avenue. Abundant empirical evidence exists suggesting that these changes will reduce accidents, fatalities and injuries. You or I could be the beneficiary of a safer Colorado Boulevard. And if it all doesn’t work, it’s just paint on a street that can be changed.

• There is more to be done. The changes detailed in the Councilmember’s statement represent a first and important step in enhancing how the Boulevard serves the entire community. But there more ways to improve how the Boulevard serves the community, especially in the area of the pedestrian and business patron experience as well as additional safety enhancements. In the near future the Colorado Boulevard Vision Plan will be presented to the community. The remaining enhancements are longer term goals that will require the identification of funding sources and careful planning with near-by businesses.

• “We could not have done this without you” is a highly valued comment and needs to be extended to those who have worked for over two years to bring us to this point. Please join me in expressing your appreciation to the following, without whose support we could not have traveled this far.

√ Steering Committee (Chaired by Bob Gotham): Bob Arranaga** – Eagle Rock Community Preservation & Revitalization Corp., Brian Cawley – E R Neighborhood Council, Allen Compton** - SALT / Landscape Architect, Robert DePietro – Chamber of Commerce, Matt Harrington** - E R Neighborhood Council, Jeff Jacobberger** Civic Enterprise, Mott Smith** - Civic Enterprise, Michael Tharp – TERA, Mark Vallianotos** - Occidental College, Chloé Renée Ziegler** Collaborative Eagle Rock Beautiful

√ Council District 14: José Huizar, Paul Habib, Zenay Loera, Nate Hayward, Kevin Ocubillo

√ Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council – consistently supportive since the initiative inception

Announcements will be made soon regarding the kick-off celebrations and events surrounding the introduction of the new Colorado Boulevard and the Colorado Boulevard Vision Plan. I hope that you will be part of these community milestones.

Statement from Councilmember José Huizar –June 7, 2013

Colorado Boulevard Bike Plan Moving Forward

Councilmember Huizar put his full support behind the Colorado Bike Lane plan after lengthy community discussion at three meetings, including two well-attended meetings sponsored by Council District 14.

After the second meeting at Occidental College in March yielded several community suggestions to improve the plan, Councilmember Huizar worked with the Department of Transportation to incorporate those suggestions and other improvements into the Colorado Bike Plan, which calls for bike lanes along Colorado Boulevard, and reducing six lanes of traffic to four - parking along Colorado Boulevard will remain, with the exception of few select spots.

"I want to first and foremost thank all the community members who came out to our meetings to express their opinions," said Councilmember Huizar, who moderated last week's final meeting on the Colorado Boulevard Plan at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts. "For me, this is about much more than a bike lane. This improvement plan is designed to increase road safety, improve access to our local businesses and support increased pedestrian and bicycle use along Colorado Boulevard. With the added flashing safety lights at our Hermosa Avenue crosswalk, and the possibility of two additional crosswalks, and the widening of our median stripe lines to increase space so autos making a left-hand turn don't block traffic, we have a plan here that will benefit many needs and interests."

Traffic/safety upgrades include speed feedback signs as traffic approaches Dahlia Heights Elementary School, re-striping the medians to provide more room for left turns and the installation of crosswalks at Glen Iris Avenue and El Rio Avenue.

The Colorado Boulevard Bike Lane Plan also has the support of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council, TERA and the Take Back the Boulevard initiative - public comment at all three meetings yielded stronger support in favor of the lanes.

DOT also announced last week that they are completing the bike lanes soon on Eagle Rock Boulevard, which do not affect any additional traffic lanes.

Installation of the Colorado Boulevard Bike Lanes could begin as early as late summer. Councilmember Huizar intends to work with LAPD and DOT on a bicycle/auto safety plan to alert drivers to the rules of the road for bikes and cars.

Based on a comparison between April of 2012 and 2013, the rise in single home selling prices in Eagle Rock exceeded the average for Los Angeles County (25.8%) Selling prices in the zip codes of 90041 and 90065 rose 42.0% and 42.8% respectively. Hopefully, this increase in home values will mitigate the under-water situation for some home owners. For buyers, it appears that the market has bottomed out and “deals” will be harder to find. Prospective buyers also face the competition of investors who offer all cash transactions, with few if any contingencies. The typical seller will find this a very hard offer to refuse. Of course, investors often purchase with the intent of reselling after improvements are made to the property, also known as “flipping”. But now investors are also buying with the intention of long-term ownership, viewing the property as a source of rental income. Expect to see families who may not qualify for a mortgage to rent the home they want but cannot buy. Home owners, with deep, long term roots to the community would always be my first preference. But this is a different economy and we may need to adjust to a different realty. Let’s warmly welcome every new neighbor, be they owner or renter, and encourage them to embrace Eagle Rock just as we who have lived here for decades.

SoCalGas Advanced Meter - Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) is upgrading their metering system by adding a communication device to all residential and business natural gas meters. Your gas usage is still measured the same way it is today, but with the advanced meter, it is automatically and securely transmitted to SoCalGas’ customer service and billing center. With an advanced meter, customers will have access to view hourly, daily and weekly gas usage, as well as up to 13 months of monthly data (depending on how long you’ve been enrolled in My Account). By better understanding how much gas you’re using and when, you can better identify ways to save.

Following is a link to a video that will provide more information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RuWkzAX0v2Y

Project Background- Through 2017, SoCalGas will install approximately six million communication devices, collectively known as advanced meters on existing natural gas meters and 4,000 data collection units used to collect individual advanced meter usage reads to send to SoCalGas. Overall, about 54% of California’s population will be affected by this project. Approximately 5.8 million of the customers are residential households with the remaining 200,000 representing small and medium businesses in SoCalGas service area. This huge enterprise will be rolled out region-by-region in SoCalGas’ strategic geographical sequence plan. From beginning to completion, SoCalGas’ focus will be on ensuring customers that they will continue to receive service they can trust, uninterrupted by advanced meter installations. To keep customers informed and reassure, SoCalGas has focused considerable resources on consumer outreach, preparation, and education in three phases of the advanced meter project: pre-installation, installation, and post installation.

Coming To Your Neighborhood - To see when SoCalGas will be visiting your neighborhood visit: socalgas.com/advanced and click on “Installation Schedule” in the center column.

These materials are made possible with funding from the AMCOE Project in collaboration with the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness, Inc. GLAD is the proud recipient of a community-based organization grant enabling them to assist SoCalGas with informing consumers about their advanced meter in American Sign Language and captions.

http://www.gladinc.org/information-center/amcoe-project

Medians in Eagle Rock and Beyond / John Goldfarb

Welcome to John Goldfarb, a new member of the TERA Board. John has been vigilant in his attempts to ensure that the medians located on Colorado Boulevard get the attention they deserve. Following are some of John’s reflections on the importance of medians and the challenge of ensuring proper maintenance of the medians in Eagle Rock:

Median islands running along major thoroughfares are among the most prominent visual features of any town or neighborhood and can create a powerful first impression. Beautiful and well-tended examples that come to mind in cities adjacent to Los Angeles include the South Lake Avenue shopping district in Pasadena, San Vicente Boulevard in Santa Monica, and Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. Within our city limits, Atwater Village has done an excellent job of creating medians along Glendale Boulevard featuring river rock and drought-tolerant plants, as well as a large, attractive ceramic and concrete sign identifying the neighborhood. Another source of inspiration is the median running along Silver Lake Boulevard just north of the entrance to the Hollywood Freeway, also consisting of rocks and drought-tolerant plants. Each of these Los Angeles examples was created through the efforts of local volunteers.

We must acknowledge that Eagle Rock’s medians suffer somewhat by comparison. While the Collective Eagle Rock Beautiful has placed and maintained pots of succulents on the concrete medians along Eagle Rock Boulevard, not to mention their beautiful monument to Eagle Rock at Wiota Street near the westbound exit of the 134, Colorado Boulevard’s medians feature a seemingly random mixture of grasses, weeds, and trees in various states of neglect. While we await a more comprehensive remedy to this embarrassing community eyesore, which depends on the availability of funding, TERA has kept a close watch on the routine maintenance of existing medians, which cannot be taken for granted. In a recent call to the Department of Street Services, I learned that 60 percent of their Urban Forestry staff, who had been directly responsible for this maintenance, had been furloughed or laid off by the end of July 2011. Street Services took sporadic control of the medians until the job was contracted out to a private landscaping firm, whose contract expired at the end of March 2013. Many of us grew concerned about the condition of the medians as we waited for a new contractor to be assigned, which the Acting Street Tree Superintendant assured me would take place by the beginning of June. Since that time it appears that the grass in the medians has been mowed once, and I have contacted him again asking to be advised of the planned maintenance schedule.

Aesthetics really do matter in a community, especially in the case of something from which it is actually impossible to avert our eyes as we travel down the boulevard, and TERA will keep watching.

• Household - $35

• Individual - $25

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