Arcadia City Council Roundup

The last city council meeting of the year celebrates city-wide success and promises new beginnings for 2018. – Courtesy photo

By Monica Sanchez

On Dec. 19, Arcadia City Council held its last city council meeting for the year. Here’s a roundup of the last items addressed in 2017:

In preparation for the holidays, the city council kept the public hearing short, but no citizens chose to speak about the given agenda item, which involved approving “the Grant of an Easement to Southern California Edison Company for public utilities on City-owned property at 33 West Huntington Drive for the Morlan Place Underground Utility District,” according to the city agenda.

As it falls in line with the holiday season, citizens were more interested in showing their appreciation to the Arcadia City Council. Citizen Martin Grandel was particularly grateful and thanked the city council for aiding in the success of the recent Holiday Market. Michael De Grazia, Vice Principal at First Avenue Middle School, which was the first school founded in Arcadia, also thanked the city council for supporting them on their 110 year anniversary “in collaboration with the Downtown Holiday Market.” De Grazia was especially appreciative of the city council making Dec. 9 officially First Avenue Middle School Day.

City Council Member April Verlato said that “we look forward to hosting another Holiday Market in Arcadia” next year.

Another citizen wanted to address the city council about issues with the Metro that affect her business. Stephanie Akin, owner of Move Your Mountain Fitness on First and Santa Clara Street had a few requests for the city council, one of which “asked for removal of 8-10 of those delineators [around the metro] to free up the left turn access to the patrons of my business.” Akin claims that the delineators add to the stress of patrons and is not “conducive to a stress-free environment.”

With a new gym in the works, Akin is also concerned about oversaturation and increased competition between multiple gyms within less than a mile of each other in the Downtown area. However, City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said “we allow competition to sort itself out,” but the city council assured that city engineer would be able to take a look at the Metro delineators.

Other topics the city council addressed included future projects, crime, and parking. In the coming new year for Arcadia, April said soon “we’ll start seeing some recommendations for projects to our parks that had been approved in our master plan and now it’s just a matter of picking which one” the city council would like to go through with building.

With the concern for crime in Arcadia lately, Mayor Pro Tem Sho Tay wanted to bring attention to where the City of Arcadia stands in terms of safe cities in California.

“A lot of people complain about the crime rate…so they think Arcadia is not safe…Even though the crime rate is bad, safehome.org named Arcadia the 34th safest city in California…That’s the top 7% of all the cities in California. That’s not easy.”

The city council meeting ended with Tom Beck reminding everyone that friends and family can park on the street for the holidays without worrying about a ticket from Dec. 17 – Jan. 7. More importantly, Arcadia City Council wished everyone Happy Holidays, and they look forward to starting fresh with new projects in the coming year.