Crowd at Pasadena City Council meeting on Monday, Sept. 17, 2018 (Photo – Garrett Rowlan).
The Pasadena City Council returned from a two-week layoff to deal, or re-deal, with previous matters.
By Garrett Rowlan
First among them was the “road diet” on Orange Grove, where in open session eight speakers, and more audience members, all agitated for the Council to take up again the issue, claiming misinterpreted or distorted data in relation to how the reduced lane would slow traffic. Earlier estimates, they claim, were far too optimistic, and traffic—and surrounding neighborhoods—would be seriously impacted.
Steve Mermell, Pasadena City Manager, pointed out that some drainage issues will have to be addressed before any sort of drastic change can be made in the Orange Grove and Sierra Madre area, thus giving the issue a lighter sense of urgency.
This was not the case with the next item, though the seventeenth on the agenda, was the next taken up. At this point, 7:45 in the evening, the Orange-Grove people (a considerable contingent) had left, but the Desiderio Park people were out in numbers to support Steve Madison’s desire to reagendize the design of the park.
In public commentary, people urged the council to “do the right thing” in a variety of ways, mostly to make the park a “passive park” again. That is, eliminate the proposed bathroom and possibly the play area.
To halt the project, however, to “button-up” (that is, finish the necessary grading of the area) the project and possibly to cancel it altogether, is a Draconian solution that would open its own Pandora’s box. The contractor could sue for breach of contract and loss of potential revenue, a cost figure that could run from 200K to over a million dollars damages. There would also be the loss of Proposition A funds.
Acting out of pent-up frustration?
Listening to the public outcry from within the audience, one couldn’t help but think that the epidemic of suicides, the people who have jumped from the bridge in the past year, has created a traumatic mood in the residents of that area, and that the anger and shouting heard in the council walls was a kind of acting out of pent-up frustration. And why not? The numbers are daunting. In 2017, there were nine suicides from the bridge, and in this year there has been four. Thirteen suicides in eighteen months, thirteen bodies hitting the ground, is bound to have psychological consequences.
Each Council member weighed in on the issue, but it was Mayor Tornek who rightly pointed out the conflation of the suicides with the construction of the park. “We are committed to the issue,” Tornek said, and promised a solution would be found to the suicide issue. How to stop the suicides, however, will be another thorny issue. Netting and fencing were mentioned, and even a radical public suggestion to close the bridge altogether.
In the end, Madison didn’t receive the five votes necessary to put the issue back on the agenda, and after the vote another exodus happened as the council moved on to other, less volatile issues.
> Click to watch the Pasadena City Council meeting on Monday, Sept. 17, 2018 in its entirety.
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