Residents May Pay for Sound Wall : Toluca Lake Property Owners to Vote on Freeway Project

To determine whether residents want a sound wall enough to pay for it, letter ballots will be mailed next week to the 225 Toluca Lake property owners who would be assessed from $4,000 to $24,000 each for the Ventura Freeway project, Los Angeles city officials said Wednesday.

It would be the first resident-financed sound wall in California, state Department of Transportation officials said.

If residents do not elect to assess themselves, Caltrans eventually will build a sound wall along the north side of the freeway between Clybourn Street and Cahuenga Boulevard, state officials said.

On the other hand, if they vote to go ahead with self-financing, which the property owners would pay over 15 years, Caltrans eventually will reimburse them.

Caltrans has compiled a list of 220 neighborhoods in the state that meet minimum requirements for sound walls.

The neighborhoods are ranked according to the severity of the traffic noise, the cost of building a particular wall, the projected noise decrease and the number of homes affected.

At the present pace of construction, the 3/4-mile-long Toluca Lake wall would be built in 15 to 20 years, said Caltrans engineer William Minter.

Reimbursement Required

State law requires that Caltrans reimburse any city or group of residents that builds a wall once the project reaches the top of the state priority list.

A mail poll last month of the Toluca Lake residents indicated 56% of those responding supported creation of a benefit-assessment district to build the wall.

But only three-fourths of the property owners returned ballots.

Mary Presby, field deputy for City Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the affected neighborhood, said that “because it’s been talked about so much in the last few weeks, we hope to get as high as a 90% response this time.”

She said that before ordering the city Public Works Department to proceed with detailed cost estimates, Ferraro “wants evidence that a majority really wants it.”

She said that while opponents were vocal at a community meeting Tuesday night, there was no way to determine whether sentiment had shifted since the earlier poll.

Gil Farias of the Public Works Department said that once the wall’s design is refined, “the cost will drop at least 20% and maybe even 30%” from the city’s initial estimate of $2.1 million. That estimate, which was used to project individual assessments, was deliberately high to cover a worst-case situation.

Farias said the ballots, which will go out next week, will have a return deadline of Feb. 28.