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# City Hall bolsters Big Blue, passes the buck to Yale Street
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-hall-bolsters-big-blue-passes-the-buck-to-yale-street/
- Published: 2005-03-23T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:21:54.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Residents ante up to save trees*

*By KIM CALVERT Special to the Daily Press*

(Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series that tracks the city’s expenditures which appear on the upcoming Santa Monica City Council consent agenda. Consent agenda items are routinely passed by the City Council with little or no discussion from elected officials or the public. However, many of the items have been part of public discussion in the past.) COUNCIL CHAMBERS — Elected leaders voted Tuesday to spend $785,000 on everything from new bus schedules and maps to neighborhood improvements on Santa Monica’s eastside.

The city will provide Big Blue Bus with $465,000 in support of the transportation company’s need for new literature to guide users on how to use their system. City Hall will allocate the money over the next three years for materials that are the primary means of communication to bus customers, according to city staff. Distributed at a wide range of locations, they inform bus riders of stop locations, routes, timetables, transfer points, special holiday schedules and fare information.

City Hall requested bids on the printing project and received proposals from 29 vendors. Since no single vendor was the lowest bidder on the project, City Hall will divvy up the work between the two lowest bidders. Monarch Litho, Inc., will handle the maps and LA Modem will provide bus schedules, according to a staff report.

The amount allocated this year is $109,123, which comes from City Hall’s 2004-05 budget.

With City Hall contributing $320,000 for upgrades to Yale Street, in addition to the property owners’ plans to spend $908,000, the total project cost should exceed $1.2 million.

Residents were displeased with City Hall’s original plan to remove existing trees to complete sidewalk and pavement repairs, so they suggested widening the parkway — the green space between the sidewalk and the street — by two feet on each side. It’s a move that will save the mature trees from damage during sidewalk and street repairs, while not impacting parking or travel lanes, according to Dave Britton, one of City Hall’s principal civil engineers.

City Hall was agreeable to the more extensive plan, but only if the additional costs of widening the parkway were passed on to property owners, according to a city staff report.

Owners had an opportunity to vote on the issue and the majority of them agreed to pay an assessment of $9,750 per parcel with a frontage of 50 feet. The amount can be paid in full or spread over a 10-year payment bond, according to Britton.

“The property owners wanted to save the existing tree canopy,” Britton said. “The only way to pave the streets and fix the sidewalks without threatening those trees was to give them more space for root development.”

Britton said the work was expected to start in the next nine months and would take three to four months to complete.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 23, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/032305.pdf?ref=smdp.com)