Golly! Everyone Knew About L’Affaire Laguna Except Laguna

California Department of Transportation officials apologized Wednesday to Laguna Beach officials for failing to tell them that Caltrans had created a task force to improve Laguna Canyon Road, a dangerous major highway to the city.

Kenneth C. Frank, Laguna Beach city manager, said Wednesday that he met with five Caltrans officials Tuesday afternoon to discuss improvements to the canyon road, also known as California 133, but did not learn about the newly created Caltrans task force until later that day from a newspaper reporter. The next day a newspaper story told of the task force.

“For years we have been pestering Caltrans for improvements,” Frank said. “This morning I read the paper, and I feel like a total fool.”

Late Wednesday afternoon, top Caltrans officials in Southern California apologized to Frank for not having told the city that, acting earlier this month on a request from a Laguna Beach political candidate, they had created a task force to make minor improvements, such as adding guardrails, to the road.

“Well, I apologized,” said Robert H. Ramey, Caltrans interim director for Orange County. “All I can presume is that, you know, somehow someone failed to notify the city. We have been talking with the city. . . . We failed to communicate.”

“I said I was sorry,” added Sid Elicks, Caltrans chief of project development for Orange County. Elicks attended Tuesday’s meeting with Frank and several other city officials to discuss long-term improvements to the twisting and narrow highway. He did not mention the new task force at that meeting but said late Wednesday that he wished he had.

“In retrospect, we should have discussed this with the city. They were concerned and upset because of the political implications,” Elicks said. “I guess this is a political thing with the City of Laguna Beach. That’s what the furor appears to be.”

The citizen who requested the task force is Clayton Vernon, a young Laguna Beach financial consultant who ran for the City Council with business backing last fall, has been active in a group called Laguna Beach Taxpayers Assn. and now is a candidate in a highly charged school board race.

Vernon could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon, but Caltrans officials said Vernon sent a letter to Gov. George Deukmejian in May or early June complaining of recent deaths on the road and asking that a task force be created to stop the carnage.

In the last 10 years, more than 30 fatal accidents, many of them head-on collisions, have occurred on the highway, which follows a winding route for eight miles past cow pastures and through steep canyons from I-405 to the sea. The road is a principal route to Laguna Beach, which each year plays host to millions of tourists because of its celebrated arts pageant and sheltered beaches.

For years, Laguna Beach and Caltrans officials have debated how to make the road safer.

But Vernon’s request brought a quick response. “This particular citizen wrote a letter (to Deukmejian) and it was probably just one of those things,” Ramey said. “The letter came through the bureau (Caltrans) and some guy picked it up and said, ‘We ought to have a crisis task force on this.’ ”

The governor’s office had no immediate comment on the task force, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Elicks said that Caltrans “didn’t respond in any different fashion” than it would have to any other citizen’s request. “To my knowledge, it was not, absolutely not, a political response,” Elicks said.

Sometime in June, Vernon’s letter was referred to top Caltrans officials. They created a task force that is expected to recommend some minor road repairs by next month, Caltrans officials said. Possibly in August, Elicks and Ramey said, the task force will authorize no more than $250,000 in expenditures to add guardrails or trim shrubs that may obstruct motorists’ vision.

Initially, the task force was to include a traffic engineer, a design engineer and a maintenance engineer from Caltrans, plus a representative from the California Highway Patrol, but no Laguna Beach representative.

However, after learning that Dan Kenney, Laguna Beach mayor pro tem, was upset Wednesday with that lineup, Elicks said Caltrans would probably invite one or more city officials to join the group.

Kenney, who once was involved in a head-on collision on Laguna Canyon Road, said Wednesday that he had only learned about the task force by reading a newspaper story. He said he was glad safety improvements would be made but that he wanted Laguna traffic experts to be involved so “they don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

Meanwhile, Laguna Beach officials said they plan to continue to meet with Caltrans about long-term improvements to the road. Caltrans and city officials are still debating whether to build a concrete median divider in the roadway to prevent head-on collisions. Those improvements, expected to cost millions of dollars, are not expected until after 1990.