More details on new county fees, Six Flags lowers ticket prices, the Avenue resurrected, the Signal’s contest-mania, plus the out-of-this-world talent that resides in the SCV. All ahead in today’s Daily Brief.
News
- County fees on development may help build Sheriff stations in SCV: We’re learning more about that brief item in the LA Times yesterday regarding new County fees on developments in unincorporated areas of the SCV that may go towards building a new Sheriff station. The new fees would be levied “against developers in five different zones of unincorporated Los Angeles County,” including two in the SCV, one called the Newhall Zone and the other named the Santa Clarita zone. The former includes “Castaic, Val Verde, and the Newhall Ranch development,” while the latter includes the “current station, [and] will serve the Tesoro del Valle area, San Francisquito Canyon and the east side corridor,” according to KHTS. A spokesperson for Supervisor Antonovich told the radio station that the fees are already being collected in the City of Santa Clarita and that this move is intended to bring “smaller developers into line with their obligations” to support Sheriff’s facilities. A county-lead study proposes a fee of $467 per single family unit to help pay for the improvements. Now if you head over to The Signal’s story on this, you’ll get a different take. There, reporter Jim Holt says the fees don’t necessarily mean new stations will be built and doesn’t mention Newhall Ranch at all, and neither report mentions how this ties into the County Civic Center remodel which has been in the news lately. One gets the impression that there’s more to this story. The proposed fees will be open to public discussion on June 24.
- Avenue Project Version 2.0 expected in 60-90 days, just in time for City Council recess?: Hold the champagne Wiley Canyon…Developer Monteverde Companies is “totally re-evaluating the project” that would have built twin 12 story office towers, 770,000 sq. ft. of office space and some 800 residences on the old mule farm in Newhall’s Wiley Canyon/Calgrove neighborhood. Project booster Jeff Lambert, himself a former City planning manager, told the Signal’s Katie Geyer that he hopes the suspension of that project will help “rebuild some level of relationship with our surrounding community members so that we [can] start talking about what kind of project would work on this site.” Geyer says the revisions may include “reducing the height of the planned 12 story buildings.” Will a scaled-down Avenue project fly with neighbors who showed up in force at council meetings to protest the project? There appears to be a wide gulf; the residents of the area want to see a park on the old mule ranch farm while the for-profit developer has said that that idea is “not likely to get much attention from us.” Geyer has the report.
- SCVTV covers Mars Landing: As a proud geek, I’m ashamed I didn’t post this earlier. SCVTV’s Leon Worden has interviewed several people who worked on the Mars Phoenix lander, a space probe launched by NASA/JPL in August ‘07 which landed in the polar region of Mars this week. He’s got plenty of footage from the JPL facility in Pasadena plus Newsmaker-style interviews of some of the talented SCV engineers who worked on the lander. Maneuver your mouse here and click in 3-2-1
- Bridgeport PTA gets Ender elected, leads auto-dealer contest, what’s next for SCV’s super school? There’s been an update from the SCV Auto Dealers Association on the participation of various SCV schools in the “Be Cool to your School” contest. Recall that the contest is designed to get parents to test drive and/or purchase vehicles from dealers in town; the elementary/junior/high school with the most participation will win $1000. So far, the contest has generated 73 test drives and 13 sales according to an ad in The Signal and KHTS and Bridgeport Elementary is in the lead (parents there appear to have bought three cars under the contest). And over at West Ranch Beacon, there’s an interesting press release outlines what some of the schools might spend the money on.
- Six Flags cuts ticket prices, Magic Mountain tickets reasonable again: The nationwide theme-park operator hasn’t exactly advertised that it’s cutting ticket prices as consumers pay more at the pump and in the grocery store, but at its 21 parks across the country, ticket prices have been slashed in the last week. At Magic Mountain, ticket prices are now $29.99 if you buy online and $59.99 if you buy at the gate. I recall last year the cost to get into Magic Mountain was north of $50 or $60. Forbes says the move is designed to attract locals rather than out-of-area tourists to the company’s park at a time in which “consumers are tightening their discretionary spending and seeking out lower-cost sources for entertainment.”
- City accepting applications for Planning, Parks, and Open space seats: Want a thankless, insider-type job that doesn’t pay anything but has loads of responsibility and repercussions in your community? If you answered yes, then the City wants you to apply for some open seats on the Planning Commission, the Parks Commission and the Open Space financial accountability panel. Go on, apply, get on the panels, and I’ll add an honorary “Commish” title in front of your name. Details here.
- LA County jails offer deplorable conditions for disabled inmates: The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is violating the Americans with Disability Act by discriminating against inmates who are disabled, according to the ACLU. The civil rights group studied conditions in LA jails and found some nasty stories, like the paraplegic inmate who was “forced to sit in his own feces for more than six hours” because there was no bathroom around that he could access. Other inmates say Deputies aren’t trained to deal with disabled prisoners; some say they’ve had their wheelchairs confiscated and have been forced “to use crutches or crawl around in their cells.” What’s the solution? Sheriff Lee Baca says expanding other jails in the county -including our own here in Castaic- will help. Times
- COC Graduate details: Some interesting statistics from COC, the only SCV institution that can be reliably counted on to always produce good news. The junior college will graduate some 1,255 AA students on Friday, 60.9 percent of whom are women. Over 457 ethnic groups are represented in that total and they studied in some 42 majors. We’ve also got students from across the world who are getting their degree right here in the SCV; the college says 34 students from as far away as Columbia, Peru, Russia, South Korea, Macedonia and China will receive degrees. Link
Misc:
- Don’t believe Buck McKeon on gas prices: The Congressman showed up at a Valencia Car Wash/Gas Station yesterday to trash Democrats on energy policy while simultaneously boosting his GOP colleague’s plans to install oil derricks throughout Alaska, the Mountain West, and elsewhere. Okay, so that’s an exaggeration, but so was McKeon’s claim that the spike in gas prices is due entirely to Democrats. For the real story on the cost of gas, check out this great Salon.com piece which doesn’t take sides and only seeks to understand the massively complex world of the global economy, politics, environmentalism and oil.
- Bad experience at Central Bark: The SCV’s first and only dog park opened in December, and by all (anecdotal at least) accounts, it’s probably the most popular part of the park. I go regularly and usually find the two fields filled almost to capacity with dogs and their owners. But as with all things public, the park has its risks too, namely bad pet owners with dogs that are too aggressive or uncontrollable. Such was the case when a Yelp.com user visited the park over Memorial Day weekend. “Young S” says he unleashed his Shih-Tzu only to see a pit bull grab his dog on the neck and shake him “like a rag doll.” His dog was okay but, predictably, the owner of the aggressive dog didn’t care to take responsibility for her out-of-control pooch. “I hand over my dog to my GF and went up to the lady… blond curly hair, english proficiency of a sixth grader, an attitude of a wasp, pick-up truck yet to be determined. I ask her why she’s leaving her dog unsupervised and she goes off on me about how it’s my dogs fault for running away and that her dog never bites any other dogs.” No bad dogs, only bad owners
- Contest mania on Creekside: No doubt The Signal has changed since Jay Harn swooped in from rural Northern California and took the reigns on Creekside (msot would say for the better), but who could have anticipated he was such a contest nut? The Signal just finished up on some summer concert contest and is running another one (Pet Idol) and in today’s paper, a full page ad says The Signal will conduct a new SCV “Rock Star” contest. I don’t even bother to read them or participate, but the contests are obviously designed to drive visitors to the Signal’s new site and therefore possibly drive up ad rates. It’s all kind of cheesy if you ask me, but what’s a newspaper to do in an age of blogs and the internet? Best of luck to the contestants, and when do we get the “Play Editor for a Day” contest for us news junkies?