Save Newport Real News in Newport Beach
At her last Townhall meeting, Councilwoman Diane Dixon had a townhall meeting which addressed various topics, one of them being the extremely popular “Blinking Crosswalks” initiative by SaveNewporter Jennifer Park. This initiative is extremely popular with locals on the Balboa Peninsula due to the high accident rate in the area and the oft-extreme congestion.
Dixon asked for a city staffer to give the presentation, who then said that the staff didn’t even consider flashing crosswalks at intersections with signal lights like by 30th Street, which recently had a fatality inside the crosswalk.
After Dixon voted to:
– Pay more than 3x the appraised value for the Blockbuster building, paying $10.5m to lose two parking spots,
– Voted to sell Balboa Theater for $1.1m when they had standing offers for $1.6 and $1.7m
– Voted to buy the old McDonalds for over $4m when it sold last year for less than $2m
– Voted to put a $160k road sign on Balboa Peninsula which nobody wanted
Her staff now claims that safety issues like blinking crosswalks are “too expensive“. These crosswalks cost about $5k-10k to install if doing multiple installs, and $20k to install for a single install– far, far below the many millions that Dixon voted to feed to just her cronies in just her district in just her first election cycle alone.
Therefore, the presenter continues, the proposals are to:
– make “sharks teeth” painted on the crosswalks (sharp arrows designed to capture drivers attention)
– add a flashing “crossing” sign (not a flashing crosswalk) at 13th Street, 14th St, and 38th Street (by the stop sign)
– SB Newport @ 26th & 28th (and Balboa & 28th), to eliminate parking spots and put a “bulb out” to improve visibility without lit crosswalks
This is a far stretch from what the community wanted, which would have been just a fraction of what the McDonalds building owners pocketed in profit just last month from Dixon’s giveaway of millions of taxpayer dollars.
The only way to get lit crosswalks is to show up at the council meeting and demand them, because otherwise council will simply ignore all 750+ of the people who signed the petition to get them.
The meeting is tentatively scheduled for October the 10th. Sign the petition (http://savenewport.com/crosswalks/) and I will email you the final dates so you can follow this process, participate, and hopefully we can see something good happen on the peninsula, for a change!
