BILL ANALYSIS
ACR 15
Page 1
Date of Hearing: March 23, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION
Mike Eng, Chair
ACR 15 (Furutani) - As Amended: March 27, 2009
SUBJECT : State Route 605
SUMMARY : Designates a segment of State Route (SR) 605 as the
John Sanford Todd Memorial Highway. Specifically, this bill :
1)Recounts the life and career of John Sanford Todd, the former
city attorney of Lakewood.
2)Designates the portion of SR 605 between Carson Street and Del
Amo Boulevard as the John Sanford Todd Memorial Highway.
3)Requests the Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to
determine the cost of appropriate signs, consistent with the
signing requirements for the state highway system, showing
this special designation and, upon receiving donations from
nonstate sources sufficient to cover that cost, to erect those
signs.
EXISTING LAW : Assigns Caltrans the responsibility of operating
and maintaining state highways. This responsibility includes
the installation and maintenance of highway signs.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : John Sanford Todd, long recognized for his
development of the "Lakewood Plan" that ultimately became a
statewide model for municipal establishment, joined the battle
to keep Lakewood independent when the City of Long Beach began a
series of annexation elections in 1953. With other community
members, he mounted a spirited and successful campaign to
prevent "piecemeal annexation."
Mr. Todd then worked with other leaders to circulate
incorporation petitions based on the radical idea that Lakewood
had the resources to be a city. The heart of the argument for
cityhood was his Lakewood Plan, which held that unincorporated
communities did not have to choose between annexation by a big
city or building a costly civic infrastructure from scratch.
Instead, he believed that city councils could turn to the county
ACR 15
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to deliver municipal services through a system of contracts.
Convinced that the plan would work, Lakewood voters made their
community a city in 1954 and the first in the nation to supply
all of its services by contract. Today, the contracting plan
that John Sanford Todd created shapes the future of one-quarter
of California cities.
When the first Lakewood City Council met on April 16, 1954, it
appointed John Sanford Todd as Lakewood's City Attorney. He
held that office until 2004, a period of 50 years, and was one
of the longest serving city attorneys in California history. As
the city's legal counsel over that period of 50 years, Mr. Todd
drafted hundreds of ordinances, policies, regulations, and
resolutions. The quality of everyday life in Lakewood can be
directly attributed to the body of law of which John Sanford
Todd was the principal author.
Almost as soon as Lakewood was formed, some cities sought to
undermine the basis of the contract plan with the county. The
new contract cities were threatened by a series of political and
legal maneuvers that would have made the Lakewood plan
impossible. With John Sanford Todd's guidance, contract cities
fought back. In 1957, they formed what would become the
California Contract Cities Association. With Mr. Todd as lead
counsel, those cities took their cause to the Los Angeles County
Grand Jury, the California Legislature, and the courts. The
Lakewood plan was finally vindicated in a landmark ruling by the
State Court of Appeals in 1977.
John Sanford Todd died August 30, 2008, at the age of 89.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
City of Lakewood
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME)
Opposition
None received
Analysis Prepared by : Howard Posner / TRANS. / (916) 319-2093