September 2007 Archives

It's not an insincere reporter's claim to say the speed limit uprising* genuinely left me unsure which "side" was more "correct."

State law is state law, and obviously not being able to write speed limit tickets is a problem**, but given the hot-tar-sticky position this would put the council in, I imagine we'll hear about alternatives if city staff find any truly overlooked.

Whittier didn't think so, according to Staff Writer Mike Sprague's story this week:

WHITTIER - Seven months after raising speed limits on 17 stretches of streets, the City Council is poised to do the same thing for 11 other streets in the city at its meeting today. City officials said in order to use radar, a study of speeds must be performed. "It's helping the community," said Chris Magdosku, senior civil engineer for the Whittier Public Works Department. "We're getting the law violators." Under state law, a city must conduct a speed survey every five years and use the information to set speed limits. The survey measures how fast 85 percent of the drivers are going. The figures are then used to set a speed limit. John Yearian, a commissioner on the Parking and Transportation Commission, which recommended the changes at its Sept. 6 meeting, said the city's hands are tied. "You either have to do it or they can't enforce it," Yearian said. "It's kind of a Catch-22 situation." If the speed limits aren't raised, any tickets can be challenged and overturned in court, police say. The 85th percentile was set because studies have shown that those numbers of people drive at a safe speed, according to police.

* Don't tell my corporate masters (Hi there, corporate paymasters <3 ) but I'll heretofore endeavor to include the stories hotlinked on the blog in Read Moreville, given their tendency to blink out of existence after a couple of weeks from the Star-News website.

** For everyone but the speeders.

Perhaps inspired by news the Euro could supplant the Dollar as global currency of choice, one blog reader suggests we start using a standardized currency as a frame of reference for city spending.

The suggestion? The Peppermint, in reference to the former Peppermint Garden strip club, secretly purchased by the city in what appeared to be an act of legal desperation.

One Peppermint thus equates to $5 million. (John and Jane Public only paid $4.7 million for the pizza parlor-turned-cabaret, but it's locked into legend as a cool five-stack.)

Using my recent story re: the potential loss of $10 million in utility user taxes, it's easier to think of as two Peppermints.

Or the recently appraised value of the city-owned land that will one day be Heritage Square:

Read the full entry to see City Hall's seismic retrofit in Peppermints ...

There's something medieval about a dunk tank. There will be a little humiliation served cold along with the appreciation at next Wednesday's City Employee Appreciation Picnic (And Karaoke).

Public Affairs estimates 1,600 employees will be at the event, which could provide for a lot of dunks for Jack Becker and Arlington Rodgers of Public Works, PWP's Eric Klinkner, Safety Officer Tom Lopez and Public Health Director Takashi Wada.

They'd generate much more interest if they'd gotten some electeds up there. Or the pols might have come if they'd brought out the Aaron Proctor Spanking Machine.

But Dr. Takashi? He's just too cute to want to heap abuse upon. And I don't know much of anything about Jack Becker, but perhaps he's the scourge of many a Public Works crew. Hmmmm ... I might be able to channel my latent rage over gross overbilling by PWP ~five years ago to gun for some Klinkner.

Who else should be on this list?

L.A. Mayor wants to do it for the airports.

Mayor Backs Plan To Extend Light Rail To Ontario Airport
Expansion Plan Needs Approval From MTA

LOS ANGELES -- As part of a plan to reduce congestion at LAX while increasing regional air-traffic capacity, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced his support Tuesday for extending a proposed light rail line to city-operated Ontario International Airport.
Ontario Mayor Paul Leon and San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt met with the mayor to discuss the possibility of extending the Metro Gold Line east to Ontario, even though the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has yet to approve any extension of the downtown-to-Pasadena line.
The MTA is considering a proposal to extend the light rail line 22.4 miles from Pasadena to Montclair. Last year, Ontario officials announced their support for making the Ontario airport the end of the line.

I will not share my nicknames for elected officials with their spoke.
I will not share my nicknames for elected officials with their spoke.
I will not share my nicknames for elected officials with their spoke.
I will not share my nicknames for elected officials with their spoke.

UPDATED: Mostly being melodramatic as Anthony "Big Tony" Portantino claimed to enjoy the nickname. I have far worse, but I'll keep'em locked in the secret box. (Hint: Look for the tequila-shaped key.)

New episode of City Beat taped today up at Hens Teeth Square and will be broadcast on KPAS 55 and streamed over the Internet at 1:30 p.m. today and at varying times each day throughout the week.

City spokeswoman Ann Erdman did her best to keep Mayor Bill Bogaard and myself in-line and on-topic for the 30 minute discussion of the City Council's new anti-violence committee, John Muir High School, frustrations in the African-American community, and even brought up the idea of discussing the Non-Discussables. (Hint: They're not easy to discuss.)

I usually permit the mayor one Pasadena bragging point, but I don't think we got to staff writer Robert Hong's story today re: just how awesome Old Pas is.

So I'm sitting here at my desk trying to write about last night's meeting, but entirely distracted by reporter Cortney Fielding, who has been on the phone having a protracted conversation with someone angry at her for Muir's Mustang spirit 'lost.'

PASADENA -- John Muir High School is mired in a "collective culture of low expectations and apathy," according to a consultant's report detailing test scores and extensive interviews with students, parents and teachers.

Consultant Richard Owen, a former associate superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District, spent two months interviewing students, parents, teachers and administrators at Muir. He ticked off a litany of dysfunction - from low test scores to poor student attendance to a general distrust of district administrators.

There's nothing new to being blamed for the reality we report. If the city was burning to the ground and we posted a web update, some would ask why we lit the match.

Instead of debating the role of journalism here and the need to report what's going on fearlessly in the face of those who would prefer not to know, but I'll post an excerpt from the report released Tuesday night by Consultant Richard Owen, a former associate superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District:

Page 3:

School Culture: The Non-Discussables

1. Non-discussables are subjects that are rarely talked about openly.


2. It is the elephant in the room.


3. The health of a school or a District is proportional to the number of non-discussables


4. Intentionally not talking openly about issues creates a culture of neglect


5. To change we must name, acknowledge, and address the non-discussables - especially those that impede learning.


6. This could mean race, it could mean underperformint teachers, it could mean apathetic parents, students and teachers, and it could mean a dysfunctional district or failed leadership.


7. We must have courageous conversations.

Strip out the specifics and what else could this be applied to?

No lynching flier this time, but Town Meeting II went down tonight at the Jackie Robinson center with Mayor Bill Bogaard, council member Chris Holden, Jacque Robinson and City Manager Cynthia Kurtz present. Victor Gordo stopped by briefly.

I threw an update up here, story will be in Friday's paper. Posted below as well ...

As per the business page the other day, Earthlink's contraction means it's back to the drawing board for bringing for-profit wireless to Pasadena's light poles.

From my Aug. 2, 2006 story:

PASADENA - Saturating the entirety of Pasadena with an invisible stream of data came closer to reality Monday with the selection of a native-born company to build a municipal wireless network.

By this time next year - and at no cost to the city - EarthLink Inc. plans to install wireless transmission points in hundreds of street lights to offer paid access to the Internet for business, residents and city government.
...

Given the volatile metabolism of wireless technology, where the life-span of products and industry standards can be counted in months, Pratt said EarthLink was important to the longevity of the network.

EarthLink has promised to fold 12 percent of its future revenues from the network into maintaining and improving it, he added.

And according to Gordo, the city wanted to pick a viable company that would likely remain in business to operate the network.

The company's 12 years of operation make it practically an elder among the flare and fade of Internet technology companies.

Opting to leverage my soul-crushing insomnia into journalistic opportunity, I wandered out from Casa del Todd and walked three blocks north to Vroman's to scope out the scene of tomorrow's PlayStation 3 iPhone Halo 3 Bill Clinton.

By 3:30 a.m., 26 souls awaited His Presence on the Boulevard sidewalk. Some were collectors, others just wanted to bask in His Mojo and the only person I met actually from Pasadena admitted to being paid $40 by a friend to get a book signed.

From El to Arr: Bob and Janice of Santa Clarita wait with Joe Freedman of Cypress and Ernie Soto of Ontario. They arrived around 9 p.m.

As Confucius was fond of saying: Chicken eggs may be unpredictable, but always count your votes before 6:30 p.m.

This morning's paper will hit the stands and driveways of our beloved, cherished, print subscribers (you know, the one actually willing to invest in their democracy) with a shorter version Monday's council meeting story, which Trib City Editor Frank Girardot was able to post online in its entirety.

I also posted it here in full -- click the link to read the full post for more.

Councilwoman Jacque Robinson should get some advice from colleague Steve Madison on the whole telecommuting thing, as being sub-audible and static-charged doesn't translate into effective persuasion.

It's probably not a bold assertion to think Jacque was phoning in from the Washington Hilton in Washington D.C. Monday night for a daylong parade of top-tier Democratic presidential candidates at her employer's political action conference:

SEIU MEMBERS TO HOLD POLITICAL ACTION CONFERENCE IN WASHINGTON Six leading candidates for president will address close to 2,000 of SEIU’s most politically active members at the Member Political Action Conference (MPAC) on Monday, September 17, 2007. Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger will present SEIU’s plan for electing a pro-worker president in 2008. On Tuesday, September 18, SEIU members will flood the Capitol and meet with their members of Congress on a range of issues, including nurse staffing, SCHIP funding, and the war in Iraq. Press access for the conference is as follows:

Monday, September 17 (please note this is a DRAFT schedule)
What: Presidential Candidates Address SEIU Political Action Conference
Where: Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Avenue NW

9:40 a.m. – 10:20 a.m., Senator Joe Biden
10:50 a.m. – 11:30 a.m., Senator Chris Dodd
1:10 p.m. – 1:40 p.m., Anna Burger, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer
1:40 p.m. – 2:20 p.m., Senator Barack Obama
2:40 p.m. – 3:20 p.m., Governor Bill Richardson
4:10 p.m. – 4:50 p.m., Senator Hillary Clinton
4:50 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., Senator John Edwards

And now for the news ...

By Kenneth Todd Ruiz
Staff Writer
PASADENA — Framing the issue of youth violence as a "city-wide"
issue allowed the City Council to side-step discord over who should
preside over its action plan Monday night.

Aaron Proctor is incensed after one of several Pasadena council members returned-to-sender a button Aaron sent out as a "peace offering."

Aaron's subsequently issued his own brand of fatwa on District 6 Councilman Steve Madison, threatening to never discuss Madison or District 6 again on his blog unless Madison apologizes.

Am I the only one for whom that threat seems sort of ... counterproductive? <.<

I had been wondering why we need a YAC (yet another committee) to develop some strategery for countering gang/youth/interracial violence, when the city already has a Public Safety Committee.

Then I saw the agenda for today's meeting of that committee:

4. NEW BUSINESS
A. Bridge Inspection After an Emergency
B. Annual Commission Report – July 2006 Through June 2007 and Work Plan for 2007 - 2008:
(1) Pasadena Public Library Commission*
(2) Recreation & Parks Commission*

5. OLD BUSINESS
A. Update on Dog Breeding Issues
B. Update on Humane Society

6. INFORMATIONAL ITEM
A. Review and Discussion of Future Committee Calendar*

"Further evidence the Onion is hiring ex-reporters," writes Mason Stockstill, a former colleague at the Daily Bulletin of this piece from the Onion:

Town Hall Meeting Gives Townspeople Chance To Say Stupid Things In Public
September 8, 2007

NEW BEDFORD, MA—In a true display of democracy, a town hall meeting held at the New Bedford High School auditorium Monday gave the crowd of approximately 550 residents the opportunity to publicly voice every last one of the inane thoughts and concerns they would normally only have the chance to utter to themselves.

It's just shy of 1:30 p.m. and not a Pasadena Weekly to be seen on this end of the Boulevard.

I checked their web site to see if it had been sold yet again, perhaps to the Mt. Wilson Observer, but discovered what appeared to be a new issue online.
This week's cover image, a commercial graphic of Teh Hunter, piqued my curiosity ... only to find it pimps a feature that has absolutely nothing to do with Thompson, but instead exalts ... museum gift shops.

Wow. Way to blow the lid off that one, guys.

UPDATE: Just struck up a conversation with a route carrier for another weekly publication. He had been interested in picking up another route and delivering the PW, but related (now third-hand) horror stories and wasn't surprised they weren't out on the street today.

OK, one more stop ... the E-Bar, where many of us were found being pretentious and discussing Bukowski on the nights Marilyn's wasn't open.

I found this interesting post suggesting some desire earlier this year by the original E-Bar to make a return to Old Pas.

Interesting that Councilman Victor Gordo referenced Marilyn's Backstreet during last night's anti-violence talk-a-thon. I had been thinking of Marilyn's after being copied on a recent exchange between Philip Koebel, Steve Lamb, Michele Zack and others taking place on Rene Amy's PUSDGreatschools group in regards to the Pasadena Underground, the illegally operating club outside of which Ebony Huel was shot last month.

In 1992, I cut and saved the Star-News articles about the closing of the club many of my friends and I enjoyed weekly. Some of my best friends to this day I met there.

It was a cool, well-attended club. Friday, Saturday and Sunday served a different musical genre.

While we could get away with underage smoking in there, there was no alcohol permitted and a lot of security -- they'd kick anyone out for getting out of line.

When Marilyn's closed, that ended hanging out in Pasadena for most of us and we dedicated ourselves more fully to slumming downtown or in Hollywood at clubs we shouldn't have been allowed into, where open drug use was de rigeur.

There is a void in this area for teens to get their party on in a semi-responsible environment, but few are going to have any interest in cracking it up in the church basement or at a city-operated "teen center."

Let's be pragmatic. Teens want a place they can go and feel just a little adult. Independent. A taste of the good life. Have we forgotten how that felt? But as NIMBY, prude and reactive our community has become, I don't think anyone's going to allow a youth-oriented night club to operate that sits on that threshold between both worlds of childhood and adult.

As much lip service gets paid to the needs of children, there is a tremendous amount of youth-phobia driving people's conception of what a teen should and shouldn't be doing. Here's some news: They're going to do it anyway, if they want to.

"Read more" for a scan of the Star-News article (Having just moved it's miraculous I hadn't tossed it yet) and the e-mail exchange regarding a teen outlet.

The usual suspects will say Sunday's story on liquor stores is about deflecting responsibility, but it's an attempt to understand how a particular dynamic plays out, with some attempt at nuance.

We're a society that loves to drink, and in some contexts, alcohol can have a positive, lubricating role in civilization. The European Peace Pipe.

But poor areas are saturated in liquor stores, for whichever of a variety of reasons, and in Northwest Pasadena and Altadena, they serve as nexii for criminal activity. Maybe anyplace would that people congregate, but 40 ounces of Cobra doesn't bring out the best in a restive community.

Anyhoo, I pulled my scripting skills out of retirement for this interactive map showing the locations of liquor stores. The final product would also serve as a handy tool for local alcoholics.

So my number's come up in the weekend rotation to work tomorrow, anyone know of something interesting going on in our coverage area?

So today's story about the Pasadena Enterprise Center is one of those that really should have been reported three months ago when the situation was playing out. I didn't know about it until some of the tenants -- in the dark and anxious about their livelihood -- contacted me with their concerns.

Although the story by Wednesday was ostensibly about the small business owners affected, the backstory is about how the innumerable nonprofits in Pasadena interoperate and compete for resources. The PEC was more or less an offshoot of the PDC, created as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to manage the center's operations and finances. The PDC rented space, and by all appearances, engineered a hostile takeover of PEC, which took the unusual step of dissolving its legal status.

Since being elected 10 months ago, Anthony Portantino has been doing as freshman legislators do, getting busy with the pen on a whole bunch of bills.

Now September officially will be blood disease month, according to his office, in relation to AB34, which seeks to create an umbilical-cord blood collection system.

Resolution Declaring September as Leukemia, Lymphoma & Myeloma Awareness Month Clears State Assembly

Official state designation to bring greater awareness of blood related cancers and encourage participation in education and research programs

Sacramento – By an overwhelming margin, the State Assembly today voted to designate September as Leukemia, Lymphoma, and Myeloma Month. ACR 71 (Portantino) received strong bipartisan support before the Assembly Floor.

“Remarkable progress has been made in treating patients with blood related cancers,” said Portantino. “ACR 71 celebrates the work of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in shedding light on these diseases, making the public aware of cures and therapies as well as providing education and support programs to help patients and their families with the best possible outcomes.”

Still life with Church's chicken in margarita glass

Unfortunately my host's imperative precluded me from hearing the best political gossip, and I only caught some of the deep-dishing corners.

I had some cool schtuff to put up here over the weekend but the companion piece in print has yet to run.

UPDATED: I found my own personal Top-10 list as prepared by The Noticeable One:

TOP TEN ALTERNATE NAMES FOR TODD'S NEW PAD

10. Stalig 13
9. The Shaggin' Shack
8. Fort Awesome
7. Future Material for a Larry Wilson Article
6. Home of the Whopper
5. Heritage Square
4. Not Quite Xanadu
3. Gamble House 2: Electric Boogaloo
2. Pasadena Council District 6.5
1. 95% of his Paycheck