20210412 Late CorrespondenceTO:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
CrTYOF RANCHO PALOS VERDES
HONORABLE MAYOR & CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS
CITY CLERK
APRIL 12, 2021
ADDITIONS/REVISIONS AND AMENDMENTS TO AGENDA
Attached are revisions/additions and/or amendments to the agenda material presented
for tonight's meeting.
Item No. Description of Material
1 Emails from Sunshine
L:ILATE CORRESPONDENCE\202112021 Coversheets\20210412 additions revisions to agenda.docx
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
SUNSHINE <sunshinerpv@aol.com>
Sunday, April11, 2021 1:13PM
CC; CityCierk
RPV. April12, 2021 CIP Budget Workshop.
CAUTION: This email ori inated from outside of the Cit of Rancho Palos Verdes.
Dear Mr. Mayor, Council Members and interested parties,
It is official. Unpaved roadsides, fire roads, off road emergency routes and recreational trails are not
"infrastructure". And, Staff no longer has access to a "responsive document" which says they should
be treated as such.
The draft Capital Improvements Program Budget proposal does not appear to include the
funding "soft costs" needed to have holistic designs done for each of the listed projects .
Many of them overlap. Mostly there are gaps in between them . All of them are rather "fuzzy" with
little opportunity for the public to make them more clear sometime in the future.
Unlike the Ladera Linda CUP Appeal, I am not seeing a reasonably simple and effective Motion. One
Agenda Item in three parts, does not produce a global directive for Staff to improve on the current
process.
For instance, the California Coastal Trail, the Palos Verdes Loop Trail and at least two more major
trails cross Altamira Canyon (8708) and the Portuguese Bend Landslide Project Area (8308). The
criteria for preserving and enhancing these trails has not been established in a way that Public Works
can estimate a cost to maintain them. The Project descriptions do not include coordinating more
desirable routes with the most effective water flow and erosion control engineering.
I wrote the following five years after the Natural Communities Conservation Plan (NCCP) concept
was introduced to our four cities. All but RPV declined. The objectives and restrictions contained in
the NCCP/HCP and their grant related Conservation Easements have not been "interpreted" in
relation to how they impact our infrastructure wants, needs and other higher government unfunded
mandates.
1 /.
In case you had not noticed, the Council's draft Goals for Fiscal Year 2021-22 direct Staff to draft
even more "Plans". The only way to recommend "holistic solutions" is for all of the Plans and
Programs to be treated as "resource documents" and/or "resource records". My Public Records
Request has not turned up a list of all the "Plans" and "Official Maps" which Staff (no matter in which
Department) should be consulting while they make their day-to-day discretionary decisions.
I still think that the solution to this problem is to have citizen volunteers more involved, early on, in the
composing of the Scope of Work for every project. Council has asked Staff to suggest ways to
facilitate more "citizen review" but, by the time Staff has produced "schematics", it is too late to
introduce even minor additions/redirections. Such suggestions, even mine, have not appeared on the
Council's Agenda for consideration.
I support the I MAC's recommendations and have one very urgent project to add. Design the PV
Nature Preserve as though it were a private Application for a CUP. This exercise will produce
something of a "back door" into proposing Amendments to the General Plan, the Coastal Specific
Plan, the Parks Master Plan and the Trails Network Plan. It would also clarify what has not yet been
updated on the Official Land Use Map and the Official Zoning Map . I see this as all "soft costs" which
can best be accomplished by Citizen Volunteers. Staff is both too expensive and too slow. As both a
Civil Engineer and the Director of the Community Development Department, Ken Rukavina should be
able to explain to Public Works, Rec.& Parks and a Citizen Task Force exactly what the Planning
Department requires. Obviously, the Planning Commission was not happy with what Rec.& Parks
presented for the Ladera Linda Project.
Once again, you are faced with a "workshop" which is really just a Public Hearing with no opportunity
for the public to contribute to the Council's negation/composition of an actionable motion. If Council
does not initiate a change, "Receive and File" means that our infrastructure will continue to be
reactive Band-Aids instead of a proactive effort to "tread lightly" on our little piece of this
earth.
Have a lovely Monday evening,
SUNSHINE
RPV
310-377-8761
sunshinerpv@aol.com
2
October 29, 2015
Yes you can do something about preserving and improving The Peninsula's trails network
Defining the RPV primary documents problem
To whom it may concern,
I urge everyone who is interested in preserving and improving the Peninsula's trails to
encourage everyone you know, who can vote in RPV, to vote for Duhovic and Dyda.
What is "OUR PARADISE"? The coast? The views? Public access to open spaces? Protection
from outsiders? Passive recreation opportunities? Active recreation facilities? Quality schools?
Shared private assets? All these amenities require an actively involved citizenry or we will lose these
amenities a little at a time to unforeseen consequences.
Elections matter. As our communities' demographics change, it is the "Plans" and CC&R"S which
hold our elected representatives to the agreed upon standards which we have invested in. I am
proud to say that I am a "planker". That is someone who agreed with the existing rules upon arrival
and I could be called a NIMBY as in I will object if someone proposes to change the rules which
impact my back yard. That is what noticed public hearings are for.
Prior to the creation of the RPV Natural Communities Conservation Plan (NCCP) and the PV Nature
Preserve, the RPV City Council was naively confident that Staff had the best interests of the residents
in mind. OK, it would have been very expensive to produce a new, large scale, color map every time
the Council approved an amendment to the City's Land Use Map. Now that computer graphics are
really cheap and pretty much everyone has access to word processing, the City's primary documents
are still not "transparent" on the City's web site. To a certain degree, the same can be said about
PVE, RHE and the Rolling Hills Community Association.
3
In particular, the RPV Trails Network Plan (TNP) has never been treated as a "living document". The
Conceptual Trails Plan was adopted in 1990 as "phase 1 of the TNP update". Staff has
recommended and Council has approved various Coast Vision Plans, a Nature Preserve Public Use
Master Plan (PUMP) and various Nature Preserve Trails Plans. None of these "Plans" have been
integrated into the Trails Network Plan. So, new employees, new Council Members and the public no
longer have access to a city-wide understanding of what our Founding Fathers had in mind.
The current RPV City Council approved the TRAILS DEVELOPMENT I MAINTENANCE CRITERIA
OF July 4, 2012 and the Open Space Planning and Rec. & Parks Task Force's list of policy and
format recommendations for completing the TNP update. This word-processing chore has not been
done. There is still no approved City-wide, let alone Peninsula-wide, trails signage and Place Names
reference document.
All of our cities (except RHE) have new City Managers. They need our help in order to make the little
decisions in a way that supports the amenities which make our Peninsula special. Catch up because
it is starting to slip away .... S 310-377-8761
4
From:
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Attachments:
Late carr
Teresa Takaoka
Monday, April 12, 2021 3:21 PM
Nathan Zweizig; Enyssa Momoli
FW: For tonight's workshop meeting
Encroachment Permit Map.pdf
From: SUNSHINE <sunshinerpv@aol.com>
Sent: Monday, April12, 2021 3:17PM
To: Teresa Takaoka <TeriT@rpvca.gov>
Subject: For tonight's workshop meeting
A UTI ON: This email originated from outside of the Cit of Rancho Palos Verdes.
Hi Teri,
Please share the attached map with each of the Council Members or have it available to share on the
screen. I have finally found all four of the Cities other versions but have not managed to paste them
onto one page. This one will do for what I have to say. TNX ... S
1 /.
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