HomeCity NewsFive Projects Picked for Further Study

Five Projects Picked for Further Study

Municipal officials will include in their upcoming budget proposals more detailed plans to make five priority initiatives a reality, at the direction of the San Marino City Council last week.
Of the original nine proposed initiatives, three were shelved altogether by the heads of the affected departments for various reasons. The council unanimously approved further exploration of launching a Mandarin translation and engagement program for city services, bringing back the motorcycle unit to the San Marino Police Department and renovating the San Marino Center to make it a state-of-the-art community and senior center. The panel also agreed, on 4-1 votes, to consider a comprehensive city code restructuring and develop a Huntington Drive beautification initiative.
Council members will still have the final say on moving forward with the initiatives, as they do with any other part of a department’s budget.
The initiative to develop a Green Action Plan was defeated after only Mayor Gretchen Shepherd Romey and Councilman Steven Huang voted in favor; on the 4-1 votes, Shepherd Romey voted against moving forward with the code restructuring right now and Councilman Steve Talt voted to hold off on the Green Action Plan “as drafted.”
The San Marino Center item, perhaps by virtue of being the first one considered, resulted in the most thorough discussion Friday, Feb. 28. City Manager Marcella Marlowe advocated the proposal as a path to complementing two community jewels the city already owns: Lacy Park and Crowell Public Library.
“This would give us the trifecta piece, which would be a community center that would also be a gem,” she said. “We think that that’s a desirable thing to do. It would essentially be on the same campus, if you will, as the library, to have the two facilities right next to each other.”
Renovating the center would also provide an opportunity for the city to address other priority initiatives from years past regarding the Recreation Department and the Stoneman School building that houses the department.
“We suspect that as we work our way through the recreation re-envisioning, we’re going to yield a program that is more focused, higher quality, more nimble, with more focus on community-building programs,” Marlowe explained, “and the reality is that Stoneman is really ill-suited to do that and it’s also really too large for the use that we’re envisioning, and for what we have now, as a matter of fact.
“For several years, that seems to have been the obstacle,” she continued, “that chicken-or-the-egg problem of ‘Can’t do anything with Stoneman until we know what we’re doing with Recreation’ and ‘Can’t do anything with Recreation until we know what we’re doing with Stoneman.’ This would divorce the two, allow us to move forward with the San Marino Center idea and the recreation re-envisioning idea and also, because they’re detached, it frees us to consider all options for Stoneman.”
Depending on the level of renovation, this is projected to cost $2 million-$4 million and take around two years. Questions moving forward include potential parking issues, as the lot would share parking with the library, the San Marino Unified School District main office and Huntington Middle School.
Resident Dennis Kneier, a former city councilman, advocated fixing up the San Marino Center or even demolishing it and starting anew.
“I’d sure like to see you rethink big on that process there,” he said, adding, “I think renovating the thing is probably like putting lipstick on a pig.”
Parks and Public Works Director Michael Throne said building from scratch would probably cost about the same, with timing being the primary difference.
“You’d be adding a solid year to your project,” Throne said.
The City Council also thoroughly discussed the Mandarin translation program, which would carry an estimated $35,000 price tag for the first year. This programming would include translation of foundational documents like new ordinances, contracting with a phone-in interpreter for City Hall visitors, providing live interpretation at public meetings, replacing some directional signage in city buildings (not outdoor signs) and providing translation for emergency services.
“It gets us a good start on some foundational documents,” explained Amanda Fowler, community engagement manager. “We think it is a modest but significant first-year budget [item] to get us started on that and see where that leads us.”
In a survey open to residents, 157 respondents out of 265 — nearly 60% — showed support of a translation program. Tony Chou, president of the Chinese Club of San Marino, pointed out that the city probably received a rush of completed surveys after the club translated the survey into Mandarin. More than half of San Marino’s residents are Chinese or Taiwanese, many of them immigrants.
“I think that’s a great example of how impactful that is,” Chou told the council.
Shepherd Romey also noted how significant such outreach could be.
“Often people come [to meetings] and they cannot express themselves on issues, so I would strongly advocate that that’s a service we do make available for our meetings, even in a six-month trial period, to see how much it’s used and whether it’s worth it on a going-forward basis,” the mayor said. “I do think if we provided regular translation services, we would engage with the community more and we would get more people to come in.”
Added Councilwoman Susan Jakubowski: “I think this is simply the right thing to do.”
The code restructuring would be done through Planning and Building Director Aldo Cervantes’ office and would involve reorganizing existing codes to eliminate redundant or outdated requirements and present the current ones in a more user-friendly manner.
Police Chief John Incontro said some patrol officers would be redeployed from cars to motorcycles, should the city move forward with that item, and those officers would be dedicated to traffic enforcement and traffic safety education.
Cervantes and Throne would combine their departments’ efforts on beautifying Huntington Drive’s medians and amenities, which would function in conjunction with the ongoing economic development initiative.
The public can next expect to hear about these proposals when the city begins diving into the next fiscal year budget presentations.

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