Friday Daily Brief, come and get it!
News
- Hart to lay off 44 workers: The Hart District Board decided Wednesday night to “authorize the layoffs of 44 classified personnel, including 30 instructional assistants” as part of an effort to trim some $10 million in advance of a new, slimmer state budget. The instructional assistants at Hart help teach students, but they aren’t technically teachers, and in her article Sharon Cotal focused on how students would be impacted by the cuts. “My whole life has been with students. I’ve built close bonds with them, and I’m more than just an instructional assistant to them,” one assistant told The Signal.
- Rim of Valley Corridor study a go: The National Park service will study whether some 490,000 acres of land west of Santa Clarita should be included in a massively expanded Santa Monica Mountains National recreation area after President Bush signed a bill on Wednesday. Once completed, the study will go back to Congress, which would then enact the law and “prohibit development” in the areas. Land owner rights groups say their rights are jeopardized by the study. Daily News has a good article and a large map of the area.
- Code of Ethics & Conduct to be discussed at next City Council meeting: The City has released the agenda for Tuesday’s Council Meeting, and under the “New Business” heading are details on a Code of Ethics document City staff will present to the City Council. The staff reports that they have “researched existing ethics codes for a number of cities” and “reviewed examples of ethical codes that were provided by members of the community.” So what did they find? Generally, government agencies write codes that either express and promote certain ethical values (honesty etc) or they create “rules based codes” which specifically prohibit certain behaviors (bribery etc). After reviewing how other places do it, city staff has developed a proposed code of ethics which “seeks to capture, in one document, the City’s existing ethics standards and philosophies, which exist in a variety of locations and documents throughout the organization.” You can read the proposed Ethics Code here. Early reaction from activist Bruce McFarland, who has spoken before the city council on this matter several times: “There is no complaint process and no independent review process” in the code. More on this in the days ahead I’m sure.
- Smyth on state budget, “raiding” of local agencies: The first-term Assemblyman representing the SCV and Simi Valley talked at length with the Simi Valley Acorn about fiscal challenges at the state. The Acorn seemed particularly interested in whether California might dip “into the treasuries of financially healthy cities in order to balance state expenditures.” That’s not likely to happen, Smyth says. Smyth also talked a bit about the difficulty of deciding who gets cut in this budget-crunch climate: Every state program and departments “says the same thing: ‘We know there needs to be cuts, but here’s why you shouldn’t cut us.’ It’s very hard to place value judgments on all these legitimate and worthy organizations.” As the summer approaches, The former Santa Clarita City Councilman says the Democrats and Republicans will fight over a “very small pot of money” but that there might be some bipartisan cooperation. Link
- Businesses discuss affordable housing: The Signal says the Valley Industrial Association brought together some “40 builders, developers, political leaders, nonprofit sector representatives and city officials” to discuss ways to build “affordable housing” for workers in the Santa Clarita Valley. The imbalance between employee salaries and the cost of housing in Santa Clarita is so bad that employers are having difficulty attracting a “skilled workforce,” the CEO of VIA said. There’s no plans on the table now to build workforce housing; the meeting was more of a brainstorming session, but a “task force” might be forthcoming. Tammy Marashlian reports in today’s Signal.
- Mortgage bill passed by House, McKeon doesn’t like it: The $300 billion bill would underwrite new loans to “keep an estimated 500,000 homeowners out of foreclosure,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The bill, which passed the house 266-154 and is under threat of veto by President Bush, would also remove a “key obstacle that has prevented many homeowners from refinancing.” The Signal got in on the reporting of the bill and talked with Congressman Buck McKeon about it. McKeon told the paper that he has “real concerns” about the bill, noting that it “puts up $300 billion to help the 10 percent of people who are behind on mortgage payments versus the 90 percent of people that are making their payments on time.” The Times notes that the Republican party itself is divided over how to respond to the mortgage/foreclosure crisis. Link
Misc:
- Explore the universe this weekend from right here in the SCV:Tomorrow is Astronomy Day, and the competent, helpful and super-smart guys with the Local Group astronomy club will host several activities at the Valencia Library tomorrow. From 1pm to 5pm, you’ll be able to safely look at the Sun through a telescope. You can also take your kids on a tour of a scale-model solar system. Later in the evening, telescopes will be set up in the library’s parking lot to view the heavens. If you haven’t been to an event hosted by the Local Group, I highly recommend you go. It’s not only free, but it’s highly entertaining and educational. You should hear the gasps and “Ohmigosh” sentiments expressed when people see the moon or Jupiter or Saturn for the first time through a telescope. It’s a transcendent experience for many. Link
- Tejon Ranch plan “onerous back-room deal”: So says a columnist in the San Bernardino Sun, who claims that the media isn’t reporting what it should about the plan that would build some 26,000 houses north of Santa Clarita but also preserver hundreds of thousands of acres of land in the historic Tejon Ranch. “Oh, we’ll all be told it’s the right thing to do and all of the slick magazines these environmental groups send out will have big stories with lots of beautiful pictures of the Tejon and its wildlife and how it’s been preserved for future generations.I’m here to tell you that’s rubbish. They’ve been bought off and we’ve been sold out.” Link
- Fillmore fish hatchery: I found this Ventura county realtor blog post kind-of interesting. It’s about the Fillmore fish hatchery, located on Highway 126 just outside the SCV.
- Get notified of city emergencies on your iPhone, VOIP system: The City has had an emergency alert system for land-line telephones for awhile, but now it’s got an opt-in website that allows you to input your name and cell phone number so that you can receive city emergency and disaster notices. I think this could be really useful in the event of a large emergency (think the October 2007 fires) but in a quake, your land-line phone is likely to work while your VOIP or cell phone will probably be offline. Anyway, the city has a helpful disclaimer for those who might be indecisive in a disaster scenario: “YOU SHOULD NOT WAIT FOR OR RELY EXCUSIVELY ON A MASS NOTIFICATION SYSTEM CALL FOR EVACUATION DIRECTIVES IF YOU THINK YOU ARE IN DANGER. IF YOU THINK YOU ARE IN DANGER, YOU SHOULD EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.” OMG THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH LOLZ
- Last weekend to get your bike ready for Bike-to-work-week:Biking to work is fun, healthy, enjoyable, cheap, and relatively easy. Consider yourself nagged. Next week is Bike to work week (and Thursdayis officially bike to work day) so you have one weekend to get your old ten-speed ready for the challenge. I’ve been evangelizing the bike commuter gospel here on SCVTalk and in real life for awhile now, and so far, I’ve convinced a few people to give it a shot. So should you!