LAGUNA WOODS
The City Council will try to find a way to make going to church safer for residents at its meeting this afternoon.
St. Nicholas Catholic Church and Lutheran Church of the Cross, which are directly opposite each other on busy El Toro Road, have requested a traffic signal.
Church officials say a signal will make it much safer for people to exit the two churches’ parking lots onto El Toro Road.
Father Paul Levesque, St. Nicholas’ parochial vicar, said there are frequent accidents on El Toro Road near the churches, especially on Sundays.
The county granted St. Nicholas and Lutheran permission for a traffic signal when Laguna Woods had just become a city, even though it may not have had the authority to OK the actual installation.
“That’s one of the reasons we became a city,” said Jim Thorpe, a council member who was mayor at the time. “Things get lost in the county’s bureaucracy.”
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
