By Jorge Casuso

December 21 -- Traffic. Crime. Jet pollution. Those were the three issues residents hammered home as Sunset Park’s biggest problems during a meeting with City officials this week.

The town hall meeting with City Manager Lamont Ewell on Tuesday drew the biggest crowd of the five sessions held across Santa Monica to gauge residents’ needs and priorities as the City begins preparing the 2006-07 budget.

The 45 residents who gathered at Marine Park, worried about a string of burglaries that stretches back more than a year and complained about the pollution left behind by jets that dump their excess fuel on the neighborhood, which is adjacent to the airport.

But foremost on residents’ minds was the traffic that congests Sunset Park streets at rush hour, as workers who live outside he city stream in and out of Santa Monica.

“The thing most residents dislike most is traffic,” said Zina Josephs, president of Friends of Sunset Park, the neighborhood group for the area.

A survey conducted by FOSP last year found that 286 of the 317 residents who responded, or 90 percent, listed traffic as the thing they most "disliked" about Sunset Park.

A petition calling for the City to implement a traffic plan crafted 10 years ago and add additional traffic enforcement officers, crossing guards and signage was signed by more than 400 residents in the first four days it was circulated on the internet, Josephs said.

Residents as the meeting reiterated their frustration.

“We’re flat getting to the point where gridlock is becoming a common phenomenon,” said Russell Sidney, of the Stable Transport Club, who advocated adding bicycle routes.

But others cautioned that alternative transportation would do little to curb the traffic generated by thousands of workers who clog the main streets and cut through residential neighborhoods.

“It’s going to get worse and worse and worse as Playa Vista grows, and many of these (residents) are going to work in Santa Monica,” said Thomas Elias, referring to the massive residential development south of the city.

“You need to think a little more broadly than Santa Monica,” said Elias, who has lived in the neighborhood for 31 years. “We’re not an island. To solve the traffic problem, what we really need is coordination with the City of LA.”

After traffic, crime seemed to be on many residents’ minds. The large residential neighborhood of single and multi-family homes has been victimized by a string of crimes, mostly burglaries, that residents have been keeping track of through their email lists.

One of the most recent was the robbery of an 80-year-old woman, who had her purse stolen as she sat in the car in the driveway of her house, one resident said.

“Sunset park has had a lot of crime lately that we didn’t have before,” said Siobhan Schenz, a neighborhood crime watch captain. “There’s a lot of fear and anxiety.”

Those emotions were clearly expressed by a man who only identified himself as “Andrew.” The man, who was born and raised in Santa Monica, had his home burglarized, a crime witnessed by his mother, who lives next door.

“I’d like a more increased police presence, I’d like my neighbors to know what happened,” Andrew said, trying to hold back tears.

In addition to the burglars, the homeless are a constant problem on his street, Andrew said.

“I can’t take my trash out, my mother can’t take her trash out without transients out there,” the man said. The alleys, he said, have become “bathrooms, they are places to come and congregate and drink.

“They recycle at all hours of the day,” Andrew said. “We need some help.”

While traffic, crime and the homeless were issues echoed by residents across Santa Monica, the airport was an issue unique to residents of Sunset Park.

One resident complained of the jet fumes, another said the neighborhood’s preschools were “deluged” by unspent fuel from the record number of jets and take off and land at the airport.

City officials -- who have long noted that they can do little about a problem that is under the direct jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Administration -- vowed to take the complaints back to staff and explore ways to address the issue.

City officials also fielded complaints about leaf-blowers, which seem to be prevalent despite being banned in the city, and won kudos for the graffiti eradication program residents said was swift and effective.

Residents greeted the presence of City officials -- who included the heads of the Police, Planning, Community and Cultural Affairs and Environmental and Public Works -- as ushering in an era of greater communication.

”This is not highly unusual, it’s unprecedented,” Schenz said. “I think that what we’re seeing is a shift. We’ve seen a huge change.”