Santa Ana Reopens Street-Barrier Issue

Three months after Santa Ana removed traffic barriers separating two mostly working-class communities from the more stately French Park neighborhood, the city is moving to reinstall them.

The barriers were intended to discourage motorists from traveling on side streets as a shortcut to reach the Santa Ana Freeway, effectively reducing traffic in French Park as well.

The barriers had been approved in a neighborhood election, but U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney ruled in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that the city erred in not counting the votes of many apartment tenants. He ordered the barriers removed in October.

The city has since fielded requests from French Park residents to reinstall the barriers and, in a 201-page report, concluded that the barriers had no significant negative impacts.

After losing its court fight, the city has created a new set of procedures for reinstalling the barriers, said City Atty. Joseph W. Fletcher.

Most notable among them is the decision not to hold an election, but to possibly conduct a nonbinding advisory poll of residents in French Park and, on the other side of the proposed barriers, French Court and Logan.

Fletcher said the City Council will conduct a public hearing before deciding whether to restore the barriers. The date has not yet been set.

Residents of French Court and Logan generally have complained that the barriers interfere when they travel downtown. Some complain too that the barriers represent a social and ethnic divide between them and the tidy French Park neighborhood down the street.

“Those barriers put up a line between the haves and have-nots in Santa Ana,” said Logan resident Sam Romero.

ACLU attorney Peter Eliasberg said the city has ignored its own procedures in discussing the barriers, including not conducting community meetings.

“It’s chutzpah for a city to say ‘We have a 13-step process’ ” but to then ignore the process, Eliasberg said.

The barriers were proposed in 2000 at the request of French Park residents and installed at four locations: Washington Avenue near Poinsettia Street, Spurgeon Street north of Washington Avenue, French Street north of Washington plus a diverter to prevent traffic on Poinsettia from entering Wellington Avenue. Access into French Court and Logan was still possible through other streets not adjoining French Park.

School and police said at the time that the barriers increased the time it would take for emergency vehicles to reach French Court addresses, including Wallace R. Davis Elementary School.

In 2003, the city set up an election that allowed each household in the affected areas to cast one vote to determine if the barriers should be permanent -- but residents of apartment buildings of four units or more could cast only one vote per building.

The ACLU protested in court that the voting method violated the U.S. Constitution by denying apartment residents an equally weighted voice. City officials had argued the election was a nonbinding poll that did not violate election rights.

Carney agreed with the ACLU. In a written decision he said, “Under our Constitution, the vote of a resident in a spartan apartment means as much as the vote of a resident of a majestic single-family home.”

With the barriers gone, French Park residents again complained about the traffic, Fletcher said.

“The city is trying to address a neighborhood traffic issue. These barriers cut traffic substantially,” he said.

Although the new plan proposes the same locations for the barriers, new polling of neighbors could change that, said City Councilman Jose Solorio.

In French Park and French Court, “people are saying that they miss the barriers now that they are not there,” he said.

Residents of the three affected neighborhoods have been meeting monthly for nearly a year, with the help of a county mediator, to discuss alternatives to the barriers, to no avail.