Lakers or City Council? Lakers or City Council? Lakers or City Council? Oh, what’s a sports fan & city nerd to do? Do they allow you to cheer for the Lakers in the Council Chambers? Anyway, something tells me most of the news today is happening outside of City Hall, namely, across the street.
News
- Signal coverage of LandSource BK: The Signal has some great coverage today of the LandSource/Newhall Land BK and its potential effects on Santa Clarita. Jim Holt dived into the details of the BK case, including some of the businesses in the SCV who are owed money and the relationship of Newhall Land to all the other entities who are not a part of this BK (Lennar, and LNR in particular). Reporter Katie Geyer examined Newhall Land’s obligations to various development projects in the SCV, including the long-awaited Cross Valley Connecter, and says that city officials are “looking at the effects of the company’s restructuring to see if it [the city] needs to make adjustments.” PR Flack Marlee Lauffer says the company is “focused on continuing to move forward” but admits that that there may be some timing issues on some infrastructure improvement projects due to the economy. City PR Flack Ortiz says the City will be watching Newhall Land, “because it’s not just Newhall Land; it’s also their parent company and partners” that are involved in the BK.
- Yeah, regarding the parent company and partners: I’m no Legal Eagle, but I’ve been reviewing the impressive amount of court documents relating to the LandSource BK on the bankruptcy lawyer’s website, and one document shows that the Chapter 11 proceedings may not go smoothly for LandSource, and consequently, Newhall Land. From my reading of the text, there are two “Lien Holders” battling over the terms of the proposed “Debtor in Possession” financing, the deal that would keep LandSource and Newhall Land operating by loaning them $135 million. The first lien holder “provided $1 billion of financing to the Debtors” and the second lien holder “provided $244 million of financing to the debtors” back in February 2007, the time when the Newhall Ranch property changed status. Lawyers for the second lien holder filed a document yesterday objecting to the terms of the Debtor in Possession financing on the grounds that the “First Lien/DIP Lenders have virtually total day-to-day control [of the debtors]. The proposed DIP Facility requires the Debtors to dispose of the assets identified and on the time line set by the First Lien/DIP Lenders and apply 100% of the proceeds to repay the post-petition loans.” In non-legalese, the lawyers for the second mortgage holder allege that the $135 million DIP Facility will allow the first mortgage holder to take control of LandSource, hold a fire sale, and use the proceeds to repay themselves, but not the second mortgage lender. “The proposed DIP facility is solely for the benefit of one creditor,” the lawyers conclude in the document, which you can read for yourself on the site. The document also says that LandSource may be in Chapter 11 for only 120 days.
- 2007 Uniform Crime report out, get ready to manipulate the numbers: Even though the FBI has officially stopped ranking cities when it releases its annual Uniform Crime Report, that hasn’t stopped the media or cities from sorting through the data and declaring which city is the safest. The Daily News has already done that and declared Thousand Oaks the winner in the LA area. We don’t play that game here on SCVTalk, but here’s the numbers from the preliminary UCR for 2007: Santa Clarita had one murder in 2007 compared to three in 2006, 22 forcible rapes in 07 compared with 26 in ‘06, 112 robberies in 07 compared with 130 in 06, 3,444 property crimes in 07 compared with 3,430 crimes in 06, and 416 motor vehicle thefts in 07 compared with 425 in 06. All in all, the trend is downward, but only slightly, and remember, this represents crime that happens only in the city’s boundaries, not in unincorporated areas of Santa Clarita. Last year, for instance, there was the sad murder-suicide of a mom and her daughter by a grandfather on Jake’s Way in Canyon Country, technically not part of the City of Santa Clarita. And there was the infamous stabbing/running-over of 20 year old Josh Pipho at a party in Stevenson Ranch. Anyway, los federales have some nice Excel spreadsheets and press releases here.
- Clever thief steals $9,200 from ATM of Valencia hotel: The unknown suspect used a device to trick an ATM at the Valencia Embassy Suites hotel into “thinking” it was handing out $1 bills when in reality it was handing out $20 bills. He or she (they don’t know the suspect’s gender yet) returned three times over the course of last month, withdrawing more and more each time for a total of $9,200 (the ATM recorded only $440 in withdrawals). Can’t they just find out which bank account the withdrawals were being made from? Parimal Rohit has the fascinating details on what I must admit to is one hell of an admirable if illegal hack. I predict this story hitting the tech blogs today and bringing massive traffic to The Signal’s website.
- Consider yourself nagged again, City Council agenda: KHTS has an outline of what will occur at tonight’s meeting. If it wasn’t for the Lakers’ game tonight, I’d probably go, particularly because I’d like to see if there’s any reaction from the Benz road residents after the city conducted a survey of the traffic situation there that found that most residents don’t want to see any changes.
- Gas station owners not profiting from record prices: The LA Times says gas station owners are getting squeezed just as much as you and I are when it comes to buying gasoline for their stations. In fact, the Times says, many stations are closing or are on the verge of closing as a result of the high prices. Why? “Because credit card fees, the price of tanker-loads of fuel and other costs are rising so rapidly that station owners haven’t been able to keep pace despite the record prices they’re charging,” the Times says. One person interviewed for the story says that just confirms in her mind that the oil companies are taking everyone for a ride. Link Also gas related: The highest priced gas in the SCV was $4.67 at the American Gas Company on Lyons, according to Los Angeles Gas Prices.com. Most prices in the SCV seem to be between $4.35 and $4.55 though.
- Cargo clogs SoCal freeways: Here’s something we’re familiar with in Santa Clarita: The Times says freight trains and cargo semis force SoCal residents to “live with the side effects of the region’s huge and growing role in international trade.” The article is part 3 in the Times’ continuing look into traffic and congestion.
Misc:
- Minutemen to hold rally at County Civic Center: The vigilante Minuteman group, led by local paleo-conservative Roger Gitlin, will hold a “Honor America/Secure our Border” patriot rally at the amphitheater in front of the County Civic Center on Saturday, June 28 at 11am. Ignacio Ramos -the cause celebre of conservative talk radio- will be represented at the rally by his wife and father-in-law, and Chris Simcox, who helped found the vigilante group, will also be there. “America-haters” need not come; the rally is intended for chest-thumping, Lee Greenwood loving, red-blooded Americans only. The announcement is masked as an op/ed in today’s Signal.
- Last Warning on Comments in this blog: Keep things civil, do not resort to name calling, racial intimations, or derogatory names, or I will change the way commenting is done on this blog, capiche? Stop making my life more difficult. Be kind to your fellow commenters and discuss things in the spirit of mutual understanding. If you don’t, I will have to review every comment before it’s posted on here, something that would severely curtail the “Talk” of SCVTalk. Thank you