Council Dark for Two More Weeks; Lincoln Avenue Plan on Horizon

The Pasadena City Council will be dark for the next two weeks, scheduled to return Sept. 13.

When the council gets back to work it will conduct a public hearing on the Lincoln Avenue Specific Plan. 

The city is updating all eight of its specific plans as part of the 2018 Our Pasadena program, launched as a step toward the implementation of the city’s General Plan, which guides overall future growth and development.

The Lincoln Avenue Specific Plan would change the Lincoln Avenue corridor from an industrial and limited commercial area to a more vibrant neighborhood-oriented district, with new housing options, retail and service businesses, office spaces, and community uses.

Cannabis will also come back to the City Council which has to conduct two successful readings of the amended cannabis ordinance before changes can take effect that would close distance requirements between dispensaries and allow more than one dispensary in each council district. 

The council tabled the ordinance so more work could be done.  

The City Council could also deliberate on gas leaf blowers.

Besides the noise pollution issue, gas-powered leafblowers generate high levels of pollution and greenhouse gases, including carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and hydrocarbons.

Councilmember Felicia Williams requested the item to come before the City Council. 

According to the Napa Valley Register, an Edmunds report found that a gas-powered leaf blower emitted 23 times more carbon monoxide and 300 times more hydrocarbons than a 2011 Ford Raptor.

Earlier this month, the South Pasadena City Council conducted the first reading of an ordinance that bans leaf blowers. 

The city’s Environmental Advisory Commission took up the issue last October to  “create a package of information” for the City Council’s Public Safety Committee to consider at an upcoming meeting, according to a Pasadena Now story last year by Eddie Rivera

The Public Safety Committee was to use that information to make recommendations to the City Council, including banning the machines or considering other alternatives.

However, the issue was never discussed by that committee.