I know, I know. I’m way late with the Daily Brief. Now I’m the one who deserves a tardy and/or detention.
News-ish
- FAAP Open Space District: The makeup of the open space Financial Accountability and Audit Panel will be decided on at tomorrow night’s Council meeting. Katie Geyer has a good primer on how the selection process will go down and what the duties of the panel are specifically. One candidate, Jim Farley, has already questioned why some applicants weren’t dismissed from consideration. The Valencia man said in an email to media this weekend that at least two applications were either submitted after the December 28 deadline or were incomplete. Impacting tomorrow in the Council Chambers. Katie Geyer
- Homeless Shelter runs out of funds: The organization that runs Santa Clarita’s winter homeless shelter says that it is seeing a “significant increase in the number of families with children in need of shelter services” compared with last year. It needs $8,400 to continue providing vouchers to families with children. Stephen Peeples at the Signal has more.
- Stimulus is such a great word:Our Congressman, Buck McKeon, officially voted “Yes” on the federal government’s stimulus package along with much of the rest of the House. Jon Dell at KHTS gets all economic in his post about the package. Checks should arrive in May, a run on flat-screen TVs at Best Buy should follow shortly thereafter.
- City to Crack down on illegal street vendors: Who would have thought savvy flower shop owners would compelt city muscle to help their business? Well, according to Mayor Bob Kellar, that’s exactly what the city will do when it fields “five Code Enforcement officers and three Deputy Sheriffs on Valentines Day and the days prior to warn [and cite] street vendors” who are selling flowers. It’s all part of a plan to protect local florists and the city’s tax base. I predict the flower vendors will all head over to Stevenson Ranch. Link
- Pyramid Lake shut down for reacreational uses: The sister lake of Castaic in the mountains north of Santa Clarita will be shut down for almost two months so that the Department of Water Resources can drain the lake some 23 feet and clear sediment from a boat ramp and make other repairs. All that water will get pumped into Castaic, if I’m not mistaken. Link
- Chinese Language display at Valencia Library: A famous Chinese calligrapher “has brought his personal collection of ancient Chinese writing form to the Valencia Library,” reports Parimal Rohit at the Signal. You should check it out.
- Blog says Lennar in trouble: One of those “real estate implosion” blogs that’s fun to read but is of dubious credibility, says Newhall Land parent Lennar is in a “frenzied attempt to raise cash.” The “Home Builder Implode-o-meter” says Lennar’s stock in 2005 was a sky-high $60 per share but now hovers around $12 and the homebuilder is doing everything it can to liquidate its stock of homes. It lists Lennar as #1 on its list of “Ailing Homebuilders.” Link
- Newhall Comic store hosts singles night for geeks: Karen Elowitt gets all the geek buzzwords right in her article about geeky wallflowers hitting it off at a local comic book store.
Sunday Signal all about Old Town Newhall
I don’t have time to summarize everything, but the stink over Newhall Hardware’s closure dominated Sunday’s Signal. All five City Council members worked together on a column about Old Town Newhall under the headline “the Best is Yet to Come” and said that there will be a “period of adjustment.” To calls that the City ought to help the 60 year old Hardware store, the City Council says, “It is not strictly possible to give direct financial assistance to individual businesses,” but that “additional improvements now under way are intended to make Main Street, Santa Clarita, an attractive destination for businesses and visitors throughout the valley and beyond.”
And then in the Old Town Newhall Gazette, editor/publisher Leon Worden penned a long editorial outlining the history of the area and what the City and Newhall redevelopment committee have done to improve the area. Of Newhall Hardware, Worden says “Newhall Hardware was crippled when its customer base moved away and newer, larger -albeit perhaps colder- competitors opened up where the people and money were.”
There’s much more in the supplement -including details on the proposed library and a column from Darryl Manzer- you can read the whole thing here. (PDF)