Townsend to hold Town Hall meeting today
Lombardi traffic issue again expected to come up
Residents of Porterville and the surrounding area are invited to participate in a Town Hall meeting to be hosted by Tulare County Supervisor Dennis Townsend tonight.
The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. today at the Porterville Veterans Memorial Building. The meeting will focus on public safety as representatives from the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and Tulare County Fire Department will also be in attendance.
But residents in the Summit Charter Lombardi campus neighborhood are also expected to attend tonight’s meeting to continue to express their concerns about the traffic situation at the school and how it’s a public safety issue. Lombardi is the only access road in and out of the school.
Residents have pointed out the Westfield/ Lombardi intersection that’s the entrance to the school received an F rating designating as an unsafe high risk. Residents in the area are also concerned about the planned Brookside subdivision adjacent and just to the south of the school in which more than 200 homes could be built.
Residents also say Summit has inadequate parking and pedestrian access to the school for adults and children is unsafe. Traffic can build up for blocks up to two hours during drop off and pick up times each day at the school.
Residents are also concerned about safety and public services for themselves being impacted by the traffic. They also say vehicles can be idling at the school for up to 2 hours, which can’t be good for the environment.
The issue is the Lombardi School and road are on the county-city of Porterville line and county jurisdiction also has to be dealt with. The Brookside subdivision must first be annexed into the city, which needs to be approved by Tulare County LAFCO.
At its meeting in April in which it set priorities, the council directed city staff to look into including the extension of Castle Avenue in this year’s budget, which would deal with the dead end on the north side of the school at Lombardi. But residents say that won’t fix the entire traffic issue, including bottlenecks that happen at Lombardi and Westfield.