July 2009 Archives

A series of stories about Whittier Boulevard and the four-year-old Specific Plan that seeks its renovation will begin Sunday, well assuming that no major event such as an earthquake forces it be to be held. Like the five-part series that focused on the Uptown Specific Plan, the stories will run on an occasional basis, depending on this reporter's schedule. Sunday's story tries to answer the question of why a four-year-old plan apparently already is obsolete.

Whittier Boulevard is important because much of Whittier's sales tax revenue comes from businesses on this street. It's also a major thoroughfare for traffic.

Other possible stories will look at what happened to the auto dealerships and what should go in their place, successes (renovation of Whittwood Mall?) and failures (all the vacant lots?) Whittier Boulevard, and plans for new homes. The plan is to run these stories over the next few months and provide useful information on this important topic to our readers. At the same time, the city will be hiring a consultant to revise the Specific Plan, an effort that is expected to take nine to 12 months.

It appears the city of Santa Fe Springs is doing everything it can to help the environment, including messages on its e-mails employes sends out.
Here's the message at the end of an e-mail sent to the Whittier Daily News.

The City of Santa Fe Springs encourages you to be environmentally friendly. Save paper and print this email only if necessary.

Notice that it's in green. BTW, I didn't print out the e-mail. I cut and pasted the information I needed.

In this business, we have sayings about news. Dog bites man isn't news. Man bites dog is. So where do you put the news that La Mirada officials might be considering asking voters to raise taxes? Probably in the latter category.

La Mirada is a city where its politicians and officials brag about having no utility users tax and no property tax.But now City Manager Tom Robinson is bringing to the City Council at its 6:30 p.m. meeting tonight an item to hire a pollster to gather the feeling of the community on whether to increase sales tax or impose a utility users tax. The report has a timeline that ends with an election in March 11 for voters to consider a tax.

So just what will the City Council do? It should be one of the more interesting La Mirada meetings in its history. We'll be reporting on what happens.