Last-Minute Cancellation of Meetings Just a Coincidence, City Says

For the second night in a row, a scheduled city meeting was cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice.

Both Monday night’s monthly meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) and Tuesday night’s Design Steering Committee meeting for the were canceled the day of the meeting.

Some residents are crying foul. Stephanie commented on Weho Patch's automated parking garage poll: "How 'bout 'the dog ate my quorum?' "

According to a notice the city sent out, the HPC meeting was scrapped because the city failed to put up a notice about the meeting at the . The sheriff’s station, along with and , are the three places where the city posts notices for public meetings.

Since the announcement about the HPC meeting was not put up at the sheriff’s station, the meeting had not legally been noticed properly. Therefore, it had to be canceled.

The HPC meeting has been rescheduled for Dec. 14 at 7 p.m. in Plummer Park.

Parking structure meeting

The automated parking structure’s Design Steering Committee was cancelled several weeks ago, according to Oscar Delgado, director of public works. However, his department failed to inform the city’s Public Information Office about the cancellation until Tuesday morning.

“It was our mistake,” Delgado told Weho Patch. “We notified the committee members, but didn’t let PIO know about it, so the meeting was still listed as ‘Go’ on the city’s website until Tuesday morning.”

Delgado says the meeting was canceled due to concerns about it being held between Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah.

“This is a time when people have a lot of conflicts in their schedules,” Delgado said. “We really want a lot of public input. We want people to participate in the planning of this automated parking garage, so we felt the best thing to do was postpone the meeting until after the holidays.”

The meeting will likely be held during the third week of January, although an exact date has not yet been scheduled.

“We’re really excited about this parking structure,” Delgado reported. “We want the residents to be excited too, so we want them to come to the meeting with their ideas.”

Rescheduling the meeting allows the city more time to modify the designs following a recent meeting with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, which must sign off on the project before it can begin.

“Fire had some concerns about sprinkler placement,” Delgado said, "so we’ve lowered the height of the building by 4 1/2 feet.”

Groundbreaking to be delayed

Since the Design Steering Committee meeting has been pushed back to mid-January, that also pushes the planned start date back by two months as well. If everything else goes according to schedule, Delgado expects groundbreaking to happen in September or October. Construction is expected to take about a year.

The City Council voted unanimously at its to buy the state-of-the-art technology for the new automated parking garage. It will offer a valet-like experience, in which people leave their cars and the computerized system stores the vehicles in parking berths using motorized lifts, conveyers and shuttles. 

When completed, the structure will have space for 200 cars, up from the 66 spaces currently available in the City Hall lot. It will also provide much needed nighttime parking for the crowded mid-city area.

Delgado says the final cost of the project is projected to be $13.3 million. That includes $2.6 million for the purchase of the technology from Unitronics, as well as construction of the building and creation of a 27-foot wide courtyard area between the City Hall building and the parking structure.

The only other automated parking structure west of the Mississippi River is currently under construction at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. That parking structure should be operational in early 2012.

The public review period ended earlier this month, but you can still weigh in on the project by participating in our . So far, 76 percent of poll participants have voted that the automated parking garage is a complete waste of money.

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