Disclosure: The appeals in this story were filed by Joe Linton outside of his capacity as an editor of Streetsblog Los Angeles. You can read Linton's full preview, review, and social media of the meeting at his personal website and Bluesky. You can also listen to the hearing here.
Last Friday, December 5, the City of Los Angeles Board of Public Works heard, and mostly rejected, five appeals that claimed the City was not following the instruction of voters to make streets safer through the 2024 Ballot Measure HLA that voters passed overwhelmingly. The law requires the city to implement its own mobility plan, passed in 2015, as it makes improvements to city streets.
What is restriping?
In late November, the Board mostly-rejected the first batch of appeals made by Joe Linton. In those appeals, Linton argued that as the city was changing street parking allocations, removing peak hour lanes, or making other changes to the streets - so these projects should trigger HLA. City staff argued that these changes are exempt from HLA as they are just “restriping.”
The Board of Public Works, all of whom are appointed by the Mayor with the approval of the City Council, agreed with the city staff recommendation and fully denied all the appeals, except one (Whitsett) they mostly denied.
At the start of the December 5 meeting, Josh Vredevoogd with Streets for All, the non-profit that authored the HLA ballot measure and was the primary force behind its passage, spoke about their understanding of the measure and the law. He testified that the intent of the measure as authored and passed by voters would require that any projects that include changing road uses would trigger the HLA mandate.
“Our interpretation and our intention with writing the law is clear,” Vredevoogd testified. “Restriping is only an exemption from HLA when it is not paired with other improvements. As defined improvements mean any repaving project or other modification of at least 1/8 of a mile in length.”
The board voted unanimously several times to continue with the original interpretation made by city staff, that changing street usages (mainly adding parking) does not trigger HLA law unless there is repaving involved.
Board Acts After Legal Authorization Expired
In two cases, the Board considered and denied appeals nearly a week after the legal deadline to hear and decide them.
Linton broke down the Byzantine appeal timeline for the board. Stakeholders have thirty calendar days to file an appeal of a project on the city’s mobility plan dashboard. After that, the Board of Public Works has 60 calendar days to rule on the appeal and can continue the matter for another fifteen days for a total of 75 days.
In the case of two projects that Linton was appealing, the Roscoe Avenue Bus Lanes and Whitsett Avenue Resurfacing, the last day that appeals could be filed for those projects was September 17. Sixty days after that was November 16. Had the Board voted to continue these projects (which they had done for part of Roscoe but not for Whitsett) the deadline would have still passed on December 1, the Monday before the December 5 hearing took place.
Rather than admitting their error and moving forward with other pieces of business, the Board moved forward with the hearings after an impressive feat of Orwellian gaslighting from Assistant City Attorney Ted Jordan. Jordan stated that the Board was doing Linton a favor by illegally hearing his appeal of the Whitsett Avenue Resurfacing. The board later quickly heard and rejected the appeal of the Roscoe Boulevard Bus Lanes noting that it had already empowered itself to disregard the city’s ordinance on the HLA appeals process.
The following is a transcript of Jordan’s testimony that can also be heard beginning at the broadcast of the meeting at the 2:04:39 on YouTube.
“Mr. Linton indicates the measure HLA Implementation ordinance, does have a timeline for the board to decide the appeals. Because there was a glitch with when the mailed notice was sent to Mr. Linton...that's why we're having the hearing today, because we wanted to provide Mr. Linton the full amount of notice that the ordinance calls for, which has been done.
The going beyond the deadline of the ordinance doesn't deprive the board the ability to consider Mr. Linton's appeal, deny the appeal, grant the appeal. In this case, it's being granted, in part. The ordinance does not have any... the implementation ordinance for Measure HLA doesn't contain any provision that has the appeal being deemed approved or deemed denied if it goes beyond the date, so the board is not deprived of its jurisdiction.
The purpose of the appeal, the administrative appeal here, is to give any member of the public who feels the city has got it wrong on a project to come and bring that to the board in a rapid, informal process, without having to go to court, which could take years. And that's why we're here today. Every effort is made to bring these matters to the board and to provide the appellants the, I think it's ten days, notice. In this case, we're a few days beyond that; but the board is not deprived of its ability to have that review and consider the item on its merits.”
The “glitch” that Jordan references is that the Board attempted to hear Linton’s appeal of the Roscoe Boulevard Bus Lanes at the November 24 hearing. But after it was demonstrated they failed to properly notice the hearing they postponed the hearing until December 5. At the time Jordan was making his statement, the Board was debating whether or not to hear the appeal of the Whitsett Avenue Resurfacing project, which had neither been continued nor was there any confusion around a "glitch."
The partial approval that Jordan mentions is that, for Whitsett, where the city acknowledges resurfacing triggered HLA, the city will study opportunities to fix a traffic signal pedestrian crossing button, known by detractors as the ped/beg button, and report back sometime in the next sixty days. Linton was asking for the city to install two crosswalks in his appeal.
The actual projects appealed
Here are the projects appealed at the December 5 hearing.
(1) Roscoe Boulevard bus lanes, appeal rejected – Previous Streetsblog coverage, staff report
(2) Oro Vista Avenue Local Flow Management Project, appeal rejected - Staff report
(3) Whitsett Avenue resurfacing, appeal partially upheld, see above – Previous Streetsblog coverage, staff report
(4) Melrose Avenue peak hour lane removal, appeal rejected – Previous Streetsblog coverage, staff report
(5) Pico Boulevard peak hour lane removal, appeal rejected – Previous Streetsblog coverage, staff report
