November 8, 2010 – Daily Brief

Re City’s idiotic decision to not lease the parking space across from the CTG: Hey City of SC, what’s your problem? Do you not realize how many of your citizens, including seniors and families with children, swarm downtown Newhall when CTG and REP shows are running? Do you know that it is a FAR walk from the Metro station when citizens actually do the right thing and use the crosswalk? Do you realize that you are compelling people to illegally Jaywalk across a dangerous street by chaining up the parking lot that’s just sitting there? If you have a compelling reason, I’d love to hear it. Until then, I think you’re just being kind of jerky!

Once upon a time, I was a substitute teacher in the Newhall Elementary School District. I had a particularly long run in one Kindergarten class, as the regular teacher was out on maternity leave. I began the school year with these Kindergarteners — the big transition to school, and all. The class was nearly equally divided between English-only and Spanish-only speakers. Since I am fluent in Spanish, I just taught in both languages, thinking, of course, how else would I incorporate these brand new 5-year olds into an all-English environment. I would give instructions in English, then in Spanish. We did not fall behind, I kept up with the prescribed curriculum, and would even have time for extras, like typical Kindergarten fare, Itsy Bitsy Spider, both in Spanish and English. I was really amazed and pleased at how quickly the English speakers picked up on the Spanish! *I* thought it was a great bonus for the English speakers. But, no. By the end of the first week, the English-speaking parents were complaining — not because their children were falling behind — not because their children weren’t learning — not because the children were being mistreated or unhappy — no, quite a few of these parents complained because they did not want their kids in a bilingual class. I was flabbergasted. Who would not want their child to learn another language? It is like there is knee-jerk reaction to anything that is not white Anglo-Saxon American English. It was really sad.

Interesting, 2,000 more people showed up for food trucks than the marathon. Next year, all food truck attendees should be required to enter the marathon to burn off all those excess cupcake calories.

Parking – since when is it the duty of the city to provide parking? Why should everyone else have to pay for the parking for customers of these businesses? Business owners, why don’t you lease the lot for your customers? I’ve read that one person is claiming that 30,000 customers a year visit his business, surely you could get them to pay $1 for parking and you will have paid for the lot and made $6,000 to boot.

The City should be providing and worrying about parking in Downtown Newhall. The City wants to develop a Village in downtown Newhall and create a destination people will want to come to. They won’t come without parking. Crossing from the Metrolink Station to the CTG is just plain dangerous. Folks come down Railroad at some pretty good speeds and there is no crosswalk at that corner. Doing that crossing in the dark is even worse. The City is trying to tout how pedestrian friendly it is and will become. A crosswalk across Railroad would help as would leasing the parking lot on Main Street. Take some of that redevelopment money and build a garage. It will certainly be needed in the long term. Glendale has parking structures to help promote it’s downtown businesses like the Alex Theater.

I was surprised to discover the Staples store at Soledad Cyn and Whites Cyn went out of business on Saturday 11/6. Canyon Country retail is devastated by the recession, Soledad Cyn has numerous large stores vacant including the former Powerhouse Gym. Many small retail stores including a handful of coffee shops have gone under.

Was there ever more news about the runner who suffered a heart attack during the half-marathon? I came upon him as other runners were trying CPR and everything they could for him. One was calling emergency services, and other runners were nurses who also stopped to help. The KHTS story said one of them went with the man to the hospital.