In honor of all those who fought and who perished on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
News
- No water rationing in SCV needed, but residents should use water wisely: CLWA and other SCV water retailers told The Signal Thursday that rationing water supplies to SCV residents wasn’t necessary even though Governor Schwarzenegger had proclaimed a state-wide drought and described the water supply situation as a crisis. Dan Masnada, CLWA chief, told Jim Holt that the agency has banked enough water that it may not even have to touch its reserves in 2008. But another water official, Steve Cole of NCWD, told The Signal that “We live in a desert. The lush lawns, the lush landscaping that we all have -that’s not reality. We’re going to have to use water a whole lot more wisely.” Good article in today’s Signal.
- Cue Twilight Zone theme song: In the very same paper on the very same day comes news that the county has approved a 500 home development named Park Place in the unattractively named “Tick Canyon” in Canyon Country (at the end of Shadow Pines). Local environmentalists had stalled the project last year after claiming there wasn’t enough water for the development, but the CLWA successfully fended off that charge, and water retailer NCWD has promised there will be enough. The approval made one realtor/booster happy; Gail Kopp spoke at length to The Signal saying the Park Place development would “beautify Canyon Country.” She also had some word for local environmentalists, who she says file “frivolous lawsuits.” No quotes from the opposing camp in the article, unfortunately. Link
- Red Light cameras like an ATM for City of Santa Clarita: The Times reports today that Santa Clarita has issued some 4,035 tickets and made some $541,303 in revenue from those red light cameras installed at eight of the bigger intersections around town. That put Santa Clarita at #10 in a list of cities and organizations in LA County. The number isn’t as simple as it appears though; the Times reports that once a ticket is generated by the system, the payment “flows through a labyrinth of court and county agencies.” The amount of funds earned by Santa Clarita and other cities is over and “above camera operating costs.” Yet another reason to ride my bike. I’ll wave to the camera next time I run a red light. Link
- What happens when reporters don’t talk to both parties in a story: You get one news source claiming a settlement has been reached between the Hart District and a student who claimed a teacher sexually assaulted her and another news source where that settlement is completely denied. Don’t ask me to sort it out.
- XPresstoon Maps guy will now make cartoon maps of prison: Norman Keating was arrested in November after a number of businesses complained that he didn’t render services that they paid for, namely putting a cartoon-ish type icon representing their business on a map Keating created of the SCV. He was found guilty of multiple felony charges on Thursday and is facing up to 104 months in state prison. The maps, which I’ve seen floating around town at Chamber type events (and are quite likely now collectibles for SCV nerds) were pretty useless. Link
- Honduran/Vietnamese Criminal Syndicate had ties to SCV: Wow, you just can’t make this stuff up. Earlier this week, the Signal reported on three Honduran individuals who had been arrested for pharmacy thefts in the SCV and elsewhere. Well, yesterday the SCV Sheriff’s Department released more information on the matter, and Carol Rock has the write up at KHTS. Apparently the Hondurans would steal drugs and hygiene from stores around the state and in the SCV, sell them to Vietnamese gangsters who would repackage the goods and sell them at swap meets. SCV Detectives were a big part of the investigation and even made arrests in Glendale. Link
- City Kicks off $25 million sports complex expansion: KHTS has the coverage here.
City Council Agenda: Some items from Tuesday’s meeting
- Redevelopment Agency wants to invest public funds in “interest-bearing accounts”: When the City’s Redevelopment Agency -tasked with managing redevelopment projects like Newhall- receives funding to pay for improvements, construction and acquisition costs, it would “like to invest these funds in an interest-bearing account” until the money is needed. What follows in the agenda item is a long description of the type of account the funds might be invested in, something called the Local Agency Investment Fund, worth $23.32 billion as of Feb 2008. Yields from that fund are described as “very attractive” and the fund is flexible enough that it allows up to $10 million to be withdrawn each day. Link
- City IT Department wants $328k storage server: Noting that the amount of data the City’s IT staffers have to store has “grown tremendously” in the last 5 years and that city data is currently “dispersed across several independent servers that are limited in their ability to share data efficiently,” Technology Services is asking for a $361,000 storage area network system. If you don’t know what a SAN is, it’s really pretty incredible technology. Picture a refrigerator-sized box full of hard drives with potentially hundreds of terabytes of storage. At once, you can dedicate 300 gigabytes to one application, department, personal, or whatever. It’s a highly flexible storage system designed for a big enterprise environment, and boy does it cost a pretty penny. The city talked with four vendors, and predictably, EMC came in way higher than everyone else (they own this industry), so the city’s going with Datalink Networks, the second vendor. That’s a whole lot of City Data
- Resolution to support Buck’s Cemex bill: Victorville has already done it, now Santa Clarita wants to go on record as officially supporting HR 5887, Buck McKeon’s complicated land-swap deal that might save the east side of the SCV from a massive aggregate mine. Link Also, the City would like to support McKeon’s eastern Sierra bill
- Benz Road survey complete; residents like the road the way it is: So before the MRF, before the Avenue, and even before the Mayo Expansion plan, there was Benz road, a strange little road in Saugus that residents have complained about for years. The issues? Speeding, excessive traffic etc. Well the city’s completed a survey of the neighborhood that found that a “majority of the neighborhood residents do not support any additional measures that would further restrict traffic circulation in the area.” Link
- City wants to stop using Veolia as contractor for Transit: The Contract with Veolia -the city’s transit operator- is up in August, and after sending an RFP around, the City would like to contract with a different company, MV Transportation, for a total of $48.8 million over the next three years. This is pretty big; the city has always contracted with companies to train bus drivers, pay them, and do the day to day operations type stuff. This comes at the same time that Transit announced it would build-out a new GPS system for all city buses. Link
Misc:
- LA Times blog on November Initiatives: Boy, the November ballot is really getting crowded with some strange initiatives. A Times blogger thinks its designed to drive both Democrats and Republicans to the polls in order to swing CA blue or red, respectively. Link
- Justice is swift in the SCV if you cross the business community: Watch out white collar criminals in Santa Clarita; if you manage to tick off the business segment of the SCV, you’re in for some swift, brutal justice, as the case of Norman Keating proves today. Keating may serve up to 9 years for swindling business out of their hard-earned cash, and our court system, cops, and prosecutors ought to be thanked for keeping our businesses safe. Now if we could only find justice for the parents of young Bryan Miranda, who was murdered last year in a Drive-by, or Eddie Politelli, who was killed outside a pizza parlor in Stevenson Ranch in 2006, I’d be even more proud of the SCV’s anti-crime cred.
- Signal LTE quotes Leviticus: I always get a kick out of these LTEs that quote the bible, as if that’s somehow supposed to guide public policy. Anyway, gay marriage is really lighting up the Opinion pages lately, and a reader here on SCVTalk said yesterday that he knew of at least three gay couples in town that were planning to marry soon. I hope to cover one of the weddings; someone invite me. Link