Meeting Time: March 15, 2023 at 6:00pm PDT
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Agenda Item

VIII. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION – ORAL AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE PUBLIC: This is the time for members of the public to address the Commission on any items within the Commission’s jurisdiction not on this agenda and items on this agenda as to which additional public comment will not be taken (Announcements, Public Works Director Report, Consent Calendar Items not pulled for separate consideration, and Future Agenda Items).

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    Rick Goff about 1 year ago

    Thank you for noting these comments/questions
    1. CIP- 164. Is there still time to consider the addition of adequate power cables to accommodate future EV charging/meter stations?

    2. Also, although potentially not 164ish, since EVs are the mandated direction for the future that we will be moving towards, I hope you will agree and recommend that it is time to change all of the current free stations into metered locations.

    Soon, the gas tax decrease will challenge our roads - & an extra bite is that EVs are heavier, causing greater tire wear & road stress! Let’s get ahead of this future revenue stream.

    3. Re CIPs 417 & 422
    Are the current plans using the Up-Size replacement vs. the Adjacent Relief Pipe option?

    Thanks!

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    Howard L about 1 year ago

    Re: The Public Works Commission returning to meeting monthly and returning to significance.

    PW Commissioners and PW staff:

    In my view the PW Commission would be best to return to meeting monthly as it originally did when things were actually getting accomplished by the Public Works Department some years ago, i.e. before the last four directors so completely refused to speak up strongly to the City Council that the Council's ad hoc useless projects and ideas were completely mucking up the works of the Public Works Department.

    If anything, just reviewing the CIP report monthly is important to keep a spotlight on what is and is not getting accomplished as a result of these recent City Councils / City Manager operation of the city.

    Your meetings now being held just once every two months, in my view, have become a sham for little more than window dressing purposes, being used by the recent City Councils and their City Manager Suja Lowenthal’s incompetent operation of the city. My views of course.

    Howard L.

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    Howard L about 1 year ago

    Re: General public comments regarding Street Rehabilitation/Paving Deficiency

    Public Works Commissioners:

    I have been trying to get answers as to the street segments to be accomplished in the current CIP-191 “project”, the long, long, long running “annual street improvements” project for each year, which seems to not be occurring but every 3 or 4 years at best, if even that often, and with the current “year’s” project seemingly going no-where.

    PW-staff refuses to provide me even a tentative-list of street segments by indicating they are still being worked up, or by simply not even responding. To me that means they have nothing? It’s all this mickey-mouse Council and Suja driven nonsense throwing monkey wrench after monkey wrench into the works.

    The PW department absolutely should be running such list by you on the PW Commission for the Public to be informed as in past decades for review, comments, and concurrences, and not after same is cast in concrete, ready to go to bid if that ever even comes. It seems they run a lot of stuff by you guys after the fact and then report in Council that such and such was reviewed by the PW Commission. Review, what review, sham review after stuff is cast in concrete. Sham after sham.

    Or are the City’s people to assume that a couple of city engineers, and the PW-Director only, (perhaps also C.M. Suja and Councilman Massey) will determine what streets get repaired for Massey’s next run for council? We all know the Lowenthal/Massey agenda is to say to H-E-L-L with automobiles; to H-E-L-L with spending money on street infrastructure. They most-apparently want buses, trains, bikes, and just walking in town. However I recall no vote by the people giving such direction for a dictatorship headed by Massey and his taxpayer overpaid Suja.

    This communication is to also emphasize to the PW Commission that the North section of Prospect Avenue from Aviation Blvd Northward to the new Hermosa View School is falling apart now exponentially. Btw, I do not live in proximity to that section of Prospect Avenue, however in some 40-years I have seen the city do only one thinner-than-thin slurry-seal on that section of North Prospect Avenue in city. Now from improper city maintenance it absolutely requires a full grind and repave.

    Back in the 1970s, that section was last surface-repaved I believe. It’s only a matter of time before a chunk of N. Prospect’s falling-apart, potholed pavement is shot up from a vehicle’s-wheel to be striking one of the young children walking to school in the head. If you don’t believe such is possible, think again.

    Hermosa Beach, under the incredibly dysfunctional and all-but-useless city councils of the past six or so years, has accomplished next to nothing with regard to street rehabilitation. I happen to walk a lot in the three beach cities, and it is amazing the real street paving and rehabilitation I see taking place in Redondo Beach, year after year, and in Manhattan Beach too.

    But in Hermosa Beach, well especially since the Hermosa Council’s hiring of the worst, most-incompetent, mostly-absentee, 20-year Long-Beach politician, and multiple-years transportation-bureaucrat in Santa Monica, i.e., Suja Lowenthal, next to nothing with regard to street rehabilitation has been getting accomplished. We all know of the incredible four parks bathrooms cl-us-ter-fks under the last 4 PW Directors and of course Suja and the prior Council of (Massey, Armato, Campbell, Detoy, and Jackson).

    I blame the Hermosa Beach City Councils of the last 6-years for the hiring and retaining-on of Lowenthal. Lowenthal of course can’t help it if she’s incompetent as a City Manager. It’s the City Council who retains this incompetence and that’s now seeing to it that she will be compensated over $400,000 in salary and benefits this calendar year of 2023, and this given additionally her costly, bloated city manager office staff Suja-Empire operation to top it off.

    It’s no wonder next to nothing of substance is getting accomplished with respect to the so-called “annual street improvements” project, CIP-191. The money’s excessively going to this top-heavy wheels-grinding-slower-than-slow, ‘Ball of Confusion’, city manager operation, and while Hermosa’s treasury-money for meaningful needed things, just piles up unspent, now close to $60 Million in the Suja/Massey smoke and mirrors HB city funds balances.

    So if you on the PW Commission don’t ask strong questions and demand real, forthright, honest, substantive answers, you may as well not even attend your PW Commission meetings, as you are just apparently being used as stooges to make it look like something is being accomplished legitimately. The PW Commission may as well be renamed the Public-Works-For-Window-Dressing-Commission, i.e. the PWFWD Commission.

    All within are my views as always.

    Howard L.

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    Howard L about 1 year ago

    Replacement for my following comment re: microphones and play of meetings (posted a few minutes ago) which for some reason repeated most of the text twice. If reading this you can disregard the following/earlier comment (if still desiplayed) which is the same however with paragraphs repeated for unknown reasons.
    --------------------------------------------

    Public Works Commissioners:

    Please be sure to speak directly into your microphones and be sure to request that speakers at the podium also speak directly into the podium’s microphone, or have them request a handheld-wireless-microphone if they are unable to reach the podium’s microphone.

    The Public Works Department and Commission should be very concerned that City Manager Lowenthal and Lowenthal’s puppet City-Clerk’s-operation (with the City Council’s implicit concurrence) seems to be doing all possible to eliminate Hermosa Beach civic meetings, including School Board meetings, from playing well (or at all) both LIVE and in Replay on the City’s two PEG (Public-Education-Government) access - cable TV channels, i.e., Spectrum Ch-8 and Frontier/FiOS Ch-31 as they have for decades.

    Frontier/FiOS (unlike in Redondo Beach and in Manhattan Beach) has been showing only color bars for weeks now on Hermosa’s Frontier PEG access Ch-31, and Frontier is evidently giving Hermosa city staff nonsense reasons for this, apparently just bamboozling the Suja Lowenthal weak-as-water city management operation. This is outrageous!

    Both PEG channels have gone to H-E-L-L in a handbasket under Suja’s reign of utter-incompetence, and with the full complicity of the Hermosa Beach City Council past and present, and for that matter the Hermosa Beach Public Works Department in my view.

    And also the Public Works Commission meetings are not being always heard well if at all on cable-TV. So be sure to speak directly into your microphones.

    And yes, some of us well-know there are YouTube and Granicus videos available, however most in the know, also know that’s not where the vast thousands of the residents and business people have easy, immediate, and 24-hour access to seeing what their government is up to on their home and business television sets, and which is where Hermosa Beach has had that capability for decades. Please be sure to speak directly into your microphones and be sure to request that speakers at the podium also speak directly into the podium’s microphone or have them request a handheld-wireless-microphone if unable to reach the podium’s microphone.

    But ask yourself, so why would Lowenthal and the Council want the people to be as informed as possible? Obviously they evidently do not! Their performance proves that. All my views herein, as always of course.

    Howard L.

  • Default_avatar
    Howard L about 1 year ago

    Public Works Commissioners:

    Please be sure to speak directly into your microphones and be sure to request that speakers at the podium also speak directly into the podium’s microphone, or have them request a handheld-wireless-microphone if they are unable to reach the podium’s microphone.

    The Public Works Department and Commission should be very concerned that City Manager Lowenthal and Lowenthal’s puppet City-Clerk’s-operation (with the City Council’s implicit concurrence) seems to be doing all possible to eliminate Hermosa Beach civic meetings, including School Board meetings, from playing well (or at all) both LIVE and in Replay on the City’s two PEG (Public-Education-Government) access - cable TV channels, i.e., Spectrum Ch-8 and Frontier/FiOS Ch-31 as they have for decades.

    Frontier/FiOS (unlike in Redondo Beach and in Manhattan Beach) has been showing only color bars for weeks now on Hermosa’s Frontier PEG access Ch-31, and Frontier is evidently giving Hermosa city staff nonsense reasons for this, apparently just bamboozling the Suja Lowenthal weak-as-water city management operation. This is outrageous!

    Both PEG channels have gone to H-E-L-L in a handbasket under Suja’s reign of utter-incompetence, and with the full complicity of the Hermosa Beach City Council past and present, and for that matter the Hermosa Beach Public Works Department in my view.

    And also the Public Works Commission meetings are not being always heard well if at all on cable-TV. So be sure to speak directly into your microphones.

    And yes, some of us well-know there are YouTube and Granicus videos available, however most in the know, also know that’s not where the vast thousands of the residents and business people have easy, immediate, and 24-hour access to seeing what their government is up to on their home and business television sets, and which is where Hermosa Beach has had that capability for decades. Please be sure to speak directly into your microphones and be sure to request that speakers at the podium also speak directly into the podium’s microphone or have them request a handheld-wireless-microphone if unable to reach the podium’s microphone.

    The Public Works Department and Commission should be very concerned that City Manager Lowenthal and Lowenthal’s puppet City-Clerk’s-operation (with Council’s implicit concurrence) seems to be doing all possible to eliminate Hermosa Beach civic meetings, including School Board meetings, from playing well both LIVE and in replay on the City’s two PEG (Public-Education-Government) access - cable TV channels, i.e., Spectrum Ch-8 and Frontier/FiOS Ch-31.

    Frontier/FiOS (unlike in Redondo Beach and in Manhattan Beach) has been showing only color bars for weeks now on Hermosa’s Frontier Ch-31, and Frontier is evidently giving Hermosa city staff nonsense reasons for this, and apparently just bamboozling the Suja Lowenthal weak-as-water city management. This is outrageous!

    Both PEG channels have gone to H-E-L-L in a handbasket under Suja’s reign of utter-incompetence, and with the full complicity of the Hermosa Beach City Council and for that matter the Hermosa Beach Public Works Department in my view.

    And also the Public Works Commission meetings are not being always heard well if at all. So be sure to speak directly into your microphones.

    And yes, some of us all know there are YouTube and Granicus copies playing, however most in the know, also know that’s not where the vast thousands of the residents and business people have easy, immediate, and 24 hour access to seeing what their government is up to on their home and business television sets, and which Hermosa Beach has had for decades in city.

    But ask yourself, so why would Lowenthal and the Council want the people to be as informed as possible? Obviously they evidently do not! Their performance proves that. All my views herein as alwasy of course.

    Howard L.