Neighborhood Community Meeting Report:

Three words: it. was. glorious.

The neighborhood community meeting was everything that I had hoped for and more.

I arrived at approximately 6:55 and was immediately greeted by a polite woman named Donna who works for the traffic department in the city of Santa Monica. Donna gave me a copy of the evening’s agenda, a nametag, and a magnet.

I then proceeded into the meeting room where my eyes came to rest on a platter featuring an assortment of cookies, a vegetable tray with dip, and bottles of water (complete with City of Santa Monica labels).

After helping myself to some of the aforementioned goodies, I took a seat at one of the tables and struck up a conversation with two men (prob. late 40s-early 50s) named Daniel and Jim. Daniel was attending mostly for curiousity to see what sort of problems were affecting his neighbors, whereas Jim had a legitimate bone to pick. Jim lives on 32nd St, and apparently there is a car mechanic shop on the corner of 31st and Ocean Park that uses 31st and 32nd St as their own private drag strip to test drive the cars that come into the shop. This bothered Jim, and he felt that it was a safety concern that had to be addressed (in fact Jim was not the only person at the meeting who had this concern, an elderly fellow named Joe also did not like these car shop people — he was a lot more ornery than Jim and occassionally spit when he talked/yelled).

All in all I would guess that there were upwards of 50 - 70 people in attendence at the meeting (including police and traffic management employees). Here are some of the things that I learned:

1. The block of streets that were under discussion last night (again see previous post for recap) have a relatively low volume of traffic. They were monitored at 1500 cars per day. Usually residents don’t complain until there are 3000 (I suppose this means the people in my area of Santa Monica are particularly short-tempered when it comes to traffic concerns).

2. Trader Joe’s is basically the main source of traffic problems for the majority of the people at the meeting (I would guess no fewer than 70% of those in attendence had a concern either about or related to traffic problems created by Trader Joe’s, their parking lot, their loading and unloading zones, and the flow of traffic into and out of their lot.

3. Signs posted on private property are not enforceable (this again stems back to Trader Joe’s — as there is a no right turn sign at one exit of their lot that apparently people ignore, and residents were wondering why nobody is ever ticketed there. The reason is police have no legal jurisdiction over these areas, and the signs are not legally enforceable. So feel free to start ignoring these and other similarly posted signs).

Remember yesterday when I said that I was hopeful that a few crazy people might show up and start spouting crazy talk…well, god bless them, there was in fact two separate (and both highly entertaining) instances of crazy speak. Thankfully, I was prepared and as promised brought my voice recorder…

The first incident involved a man named Julius who came late and left immediately after asking his questions. Now, perhaps the transcript of Julius’s remarks won’t do justice to the spectacle that was Julius, so allow me to paint a picture. Julius was a charismatic African-American who when he spoke basically reminded me of Marc Morial (former mayor of New Orleans whose term in office was plagued with allegations of corruption, patronage, and cronyism. He is now president of the National Urban League). For those of you not familiar with Marc Morial, picture Al Sharpton, but not as charming or funny. So with that in mind (especially the sermonesque style of speaking) here is the exchange that occurred between Julius and Sgt. Marty Fine of the Santa Monica Police Department.

Julius:
My question is what can we do as residents to impact your efforts to stop the cars from doing that. For instance, now we have video cameras. If someone had a video camera and they were able to video the same car, every day doing the same thing. Can that video tape be used by law enforcement to get a hold of that person and stop them from doing that? That’s my question.

Sgt. Fine:
Not really, but if you have that information we can set up in that area and monitor the situation.

Julius:
Okay, well my follow up to that is, on the news yesterday they had a picture of Britney Spears with her baby on her lap. And somebody took just a still picture, not a video, and I don’t know if this was broadcast erroneously or not, but what they said was that if they can prove the car was moving they can give her a ticket. So I think we should look into that.

Sgt. Fine:
Right, well that was not a speeding violation, it was a car seat infraction. There’s really no way to estimate how fast a car is traveling by watching a video. You can’t do it. With the baby seat, it’s an obvious violation, and of course you would need some witness testimony to state whether the car was moving.

Julius:
Right, well the only thing I’m trying to say is we need to begin to thinking outside the box in order for all of us here to help you do what we want you to. Thank you very much.

At that point Julius looked around the room (almost as if he wanted us to think long and hard about what he had said) and then he turned and walked out of the meeting. Sgt. Fine waited a few seconds and then got back to talking about the numbers that the Police Dept. had gathered.

If nothing else had happened, this alone would have made my decision to attend more than worthwhile, but about 15 minutes later I got the icing on the cake.

Towards the end of the meeting we broke up into smaller groups (basically, each table was a group - about 15 people or so), and a member of the traffic management department came to sit with each group and listen to our individual concerns, as well as to facilitate a discussion on possible solutions.

Seated next to me at this time was a woman (40s) whose name I didn’t catch (but I think it was Danielle - her nametag was hard to see from my vantage point, but for the purposes of this account, this is how I shall refer to her). Now, the great thing about Danielle was that unlike Julius I had no idea that when she opened her mouth crazy talk was going to spew out (Julius was pretty easy to spot - from the moment he walked in, he just looked as if he was itching for a platform to speak, my guess is that he shows up to city council meetings too, apparently, there they have microphones and occassionally television cameras — don’t worry i’m already a step ahead of you and am looking into when the next one is being held).

Anyways, as we were going around the table discussing our individual concerns (this was when I found out just how passionately Joe felt about the whole mechanic shop issue), Danielle waited patiently until it was her turn to speak. Finally, she was asked to share her complaints about the traffic in the area, and this is what she said:

Danielle:
There’s a problem at night on Pico Blvd. Um. You know. We have Pico, you know – the whole Pico development thing has…you know…is pretty set in and rooted now…um, but the um, I don’t know, but the uh, I don’t know, parking lot is a problem at night, um, there’s some bars there now and they have shootings you know…a couple weeks ago, um…

Woman From Traffic Management:
What’s your complaint?

Danielle:
There’s people shooting guns!! They’re parking in the bank parking lot and um, they’re drinking…and gangs are starting to formulate. The Latinos. People who go to those bars…like on Wednesday…on some nights they have these specials, and it, um, it really brings in a rough crowd. They’re shooting.

Woman From Traffic Management:
Okay, well that’s not really a traffic problem.

Danielle:
It’s a safety problem!

Woman From Traffic Management:
Okay, well maybe you should speak with one of the officers and share your concerns with them.

Danielle:
Fine.

So there you have it…my report from the neighborhood community meeting on traffic in all its splendor. I will be keeping my eyes peeled for more meetings to attend in the future…and I invite all of you to attend a community meeting (whether it be for traffic or other concerns) in your neighborhood in the near future.

Because remember, conversations like those posted above are only funny if someone is around to hear it.