Usually by Friday, the Daily Brief is out of gas, sputtering along, hoping to make it to Saturday. Not today though; it’s literally bursting at the seams and makes me wonder if I need an Evening Brief too?
News
- City expects $2m in lost revenue: And now the financial hammer falls on the city: A slumping housing market and a struggling state economy will impact city sales tax and development revenue to the tune of $2 million, City Manager Ken Pulskamp told The Signal Friday. Development revenues are expected to drop some 11% while sales tax may hold steady at $33 million as new businesses come online this year. There’s no talk of cuts yet; Pulskamp says the City has spent conservatively, saving for rainy days like this. Katie Geyer has the numbers.
- County Planners to Signal: We’ll check our paperwork in the future, k thx : And one wonders why people in Santa Clarita are suspicious of Los Angeles County. Check out these quotes Signal writer Jim Holt got from a county planning administrator on the Las Lomas land-ownership mess: “This is something we need to correct. We probably were not as diligent as we should have been. I’ll probably tell my staff that they should start checking these more thoroughly,” the planning boss told Holt about paperwork submitted to the County on Las Lomas. Recall that that paperwork indicated that the Las Lomas firm owned all the land in its proposed project area. But last month The Signal reported that some land was owned by an elderly Van Nuys man. The County says it has squared things away and that “everything now appears to be in order,” so I’m not clear on whether the project will proceed at this point, but there are, or were, at least two investigations called for by Assemblyman Cameron Smyth and LA Councilman Greig Smith. Holt has the story
- More on Hart Cuts: We learned yesterday what might be slashed from the Hart District’s budget if the state has its way with 10% across-the-board cuts, but Sharon Cotal at the Signal has more on what happened before the District arrived at a $10.4 million cut figure. At first, the Board thought they’d have to send a “qualified” budget to the state- qualified budgets are those in the red, but after four hours in front of a packed audience, they were able to settle on a number. Notable quote comes from Board Member Paul Strickland: “The problem really begins with the state … and we have to come up with ideas to save their necks? I would just say, ‘Here’s the qualified report - deal with it’.” That, plus a detailed list of cuts, here.
- KHTS on McClintock, McKeon and 4th District race: Reporter and KHTS news director Jon Dell’s interest was piqued when he learned former State Senator Tom McClintock was heading north to run for Congress in CA-4. So he called McClintock’s primary challenger, Republican Doug Ose, to get a quote. Dell has that quote plus more on McClintock’s move here.
- Simi valley Foster kid wants to be Marine, Smyth introduces bill to support him: A 17 year old foster teen named Shawn Sage went before a judge recently and asked -begged- to be allowed to enter the US Marine Corps before his 18th birthday. The judge apparently denied his request saying that she didn’t support the Iraq war and didn’t trust recruiters or the military. That’s when our Assemblyman jumped into action, authoring AB2238 that would “allow foster children 17 or older to sign up with the consent of a foster parent or social worker,” according to the Daily News. “I find that to be a horrific abuse of her power,” Smyth said in regards to the judge. Link
- State home school ruling sends “shockwaves” through state, SCV too? A February 28 ruling by a state appeals court says “parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” a ruling that a homeschooling advocate group calls an effective ban on the “fundamental right” to homeschool children. The ruling says that if a parent intends to homeschool their children, they must be credentialed by the state. Home school groups are said to have been blindsided by the decision which arose out of a child welfare case involving a mother who home schooled her eight children. Locally, it appears that many in the SCV homeschool their children; there’s a Yahoo Group called HomeschoolinginSCV who’s 366 odd members post hundreds of messages a month.
- Two from the Features Desk: Be sure to check out Signal reporter Parimal Rohit’s piece on the St. Francis dam collapse; Rohit spoke to a 97 year old woman who lived in Newhall at the time of the dam collapse on March 12, 1928. “Moments later, she heard yells of the local newsboys who claimed that there was a flood in Saugus. ‘I thought, how can that be?” the woman told Rohit. And writer Karen Elowitt today has a long article on postpartum depression.
- And how could I miss this? Jim Walker, the Signal’s features editor, reported recently on the Silver Spur Award, which was given SCV concrete king Wayne Crawford this year at a ceremony in Hollywood. During the gala event, like all gala events in the SCV, an auction was held and the big item on the list was the rights to name College of the Canyon’s Canyon Country amphitheater. The winning bidder, developer Larry Rasmussen, will pay $25k for the rights to name the facility for his father, Carl Rasmussen. Link
City Council Agenda caught hook, line and sinker, still flopping about
Quite the diverse council meeting ahead for City Hall
- Combating City Hall Leaks: No, not of the media kind (I wish they’d leak more), but rather of the water kind. A consent calendar item notes that the City Hall building is over 20 years old and is experiencing “water intrusion through the brick and concrete facade and masonry joints.” They actually started fixing the problem in January and were finished by February. Whatever happened to the plan for a new city council building, one with Greco-Roman columns and a grand facade, something we could really be proud of?
- EIR for North Newhall Plan, Cadsden implications: So, someday, the city wants to connect Lyons Avenue to Dockweiler in Newhall, and if/when they do that, they’ll also eliminate/relocate the dangerous and terrible 13th Street/Railroad Avenue railroad crossing into Placerita Canyon. So staff is recommending that the city council enter into an agreement with a firm to prepare an EIR for that project; the cost: up to $195,293. Also mentioned in the item is the fact that a state commission has kibboshed plans for a housing development on vacant land adjacent to 13th Street/Railroad Avenue, the so called Cadsden Project, until that terrible railroad crossing is addressed. The EIR is the first step in that, though the item says the city would pursue the extension of Lyons independently of that development. It should be interesting to see how Councilmember Laurene Weste votes; she owns land a stones throw from Lyons/Railroad Avenue in Placerita Canyon. Item with aerial photo.
- Other items: A review of architectural design guidelines, a recommendation against closing a street in Canyon Country where neighbors have complained of excessive speeding, landscape maintenance district proceedings, and more. Link
Rumor, Innuendo, Speculation and Miscellaneous:
- Newhall Hardware closes forever on Saturday: The 60 year old revered hardware store on Main Street will shut its doors forever on Saturday after weeks of liquidation sales, according to an ad in today’s Signal. Discounts up to 85% off says the ad. During our interview, I asked council candidate Diane Trautman about Old Town Newhall redevelopment and Newhall Hardware specifically; her answer was interesting, so you should listen to the podcast (shameless plug).
- You’ll lose an hour of sleep this weekend: Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead this weekend. Yeah, I know, so early in the year? KHTS has that and a nag list from the city on what you should do during the DST switch.
- So how much did Kellar fail to report on his Form 700? The Signal report yesterday said Mayor Bob Kellar earned more than $10,000 in 2005 on a land sale he coordinated as a realtor for the College of the Canyons Canyon Country project. The Mayor confirmed that he earned a commission larger than that, according to The Signal, and the rub lies in whether Kellar disclosed that on mandatory state disclosure forms. But the question of exactly how much the Mayor earned lead to some speculation by readers on SCVTalk’s own forum: “ReaderMama” pulled up a 2005 Newsmakers Interview of then COC board Member Ron Gillis and Board Member Joan MacGregor and calculated a 3% commission for Kellar based on the figures in that interview. One of the parcels sold to COC during that transaction was sold for $6.452 million and “assuming Kellar split the commission with his partner, that amounts to $96,780 in income to Kellar for that one parcel,” she says. The sentiment in the SCVTalkers forum seems to be that The Signal ought to keep digging, though the fact that it is election season seems to be lost on them. What do you think?
- Fresh real estate numbers from SCV real estate bloggers: First up, Linda Slocum, who reports -exuberantly I might add- that foreclosure numbers for Los Angeles County were down some 34.6% in February, and Santa Clarita continued to have “low foreclosure numbers compared to the rest of LA County.” And I hesitate to post this link because her blog makes my eyes bleed, but realtor Paris Macivor has the foreclosure numbers in the SCV for March by community: 2,114 homes are for sale now, 533 of which are “short pays” which I think is the same as a short sale and/or a home nearing foreclosure. Link
- Do rumors generally have specific names attached to them? From an anonymous source on the Lennar/LNR/Newhall Land/UAE Takeover rumor: “Here’s some food for thought on your Newhall Land and Lennar story,briefs and reader comments. Newhall Land was bought by Lennar and LNR in 2004. LNR was later sold to Cerberus Capital Management. In 2004,Lennar and LNR formed a new company, Landsource, which took control of Newhall Land. A few years later they sold most of Landsource to MW Housing Partners. Now MW and its partners are trying to sell their stake in Landsource to a sovereign fund controlled by the royal family of Dubai. The fund is known as Istithmar.” Google searches for Istithmar show the firm has its hands on a lot of things, including real estate, and the reference to MW is accurate: recall the news last year Lennar sold its stake in Newhall Ranch to MW Housing Partners and a consortium group, including CalPERS. Reina Slutske, then business writer for the Signal, had an article on that. So according to the anonymous tip, it’s MW Parnters, not Lennar, that’s trying to sell to a Dubai-based fund. Does this story have legs? We don’t have an official denial on record.
- On the City, NIMBYism, and power: Long LTE in The Signal today, outlining a reader’s distrust of the city government and reflecting on NIMBYism. Bill Reynolds, of Valencia writes: “Why do we “suburban bedroom community dwellers” have to suffer City Manager Ken Pulskamp’s stated and continuously implemented goal of converting the SCV into an urban center?” My opinion: Now more than ever I’m convinced there’s a generational divide in the SCV between those who moved (escaped really) here and those of us who were born or spent most of our youth here. I like quality growth, growth that puts Santa Clarita on the map, growth that means I don’t have to go to LA, growth that is environmentally sensitive and transit friendly etc…. But others seem to really want us to be the small town sticks we were in the 1970s.
- City Survey on Public Television: “The City wants to know what residents are interested in with regard to their local television station and are asking for opinions to about 10 questions regarding what residents want to watch on local public access television, channel 20,” the press release says. You can take the survey here.