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October 5, 2011· scvtalk.com · WordPress (SCVTalk 3.0) · Wayback capture

October 5, 2011 – Daily Brief

By Jeff — Jeff Wilson

  • Landmark Village, the first phase of Newhall Ranch consisting of 583 condos, 451 apartments, and 15 commercial buildings- gets the green light from three out of five County Supervisors. Marlee Lauffer said this is the culmination of 15 years of battle while Jonas Peterson of the Economic Development corp says the project will bring “3,700 much-needed jobs” to the SCV. He also says Newhall Ranch, at build out, will provide 60,000 jobs. More on this later. SCVNEWS, CONTRA COSTA TIMES, SIGNAL
  • Sheriff Detectives exonerated a suspect in 33 year old murder case after using DNA. The murder case of Sheila Long, a Chevron employee and mother of three who was raped and murdered near Acton in 1978, has gone “even colder” says SCVNEWS
  • Supervisor Antonovich says we should be prepared for an increase in crime as the state offloads non-violent and non-sexual offenders from prisons to County jails, like the one in Castaic. “This realignment will have a devastating fiscal impact and cause a spike in crime.” But they’ll still be locked up right? Governor Brown says the alternative is to let these individuals out of jail SIGNAL (not online)
  • Man found dead inside old Porsche at the Old Orchard condos on Lyons in Valencia. Police suspect suicide SIGNAL
  • Three men wanted in connection with cigarette robbery of a convenience store in Canyon Country. Two men entered the store and “stole an estimated 9000 packs of cigarettes” according to Deputies SIGNAL
  • California lead the nation in anti-Semitic hate crime incidents for the second year in a row according the LA Jewish Journal. The report mentions one incident in Santa Clarita where a woman was “denigrated for being Jewish. When her husband intervened, he was assaulted.” JEWISH JOURNAL
  • Remember Tony Zinnanti, the SCV lawyer who pops up from time to time on various issues around town? Well he got a quote in a Business Week article about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protests against corporate greed, power and malfeasance that have gone nationwide in recent days. Zinnanti attended the LA rally over the weekend. BUSINESS WEEK
  • Incumbents and the sole unelected candidate for the Hart Board held a discussion/debate last night at a local charter school. Unsurprisingly, Gloria Mercado-Fortine, whose day job is as an executive a charter school company, spoke glowingly about charter schools, telling the 30 odd parents that they are “here to stay.” The sole challenger Heather Davis also works at a charter school and said they are flexible in ways traditional public schools are not SIGNAL
  • Speaking of schools, Trinity Classical Academy, the Christian K-12 school, is starting a “House” system for students at the school. Immediately I thought of Griffendor and all those Harry Potter houses but that won’t fly at a Christian school. The houses will be used to instill a sense of competition among students. SIGNAL
  • Apparently the dispute over Manny Santana’s Old town Newhall Jailhouse and the city isn’t over. What’s more, there’s a lot of bad blood between the two, with the City demanding Santana clean graffiti from his building but also issuing “no trespass” directives that Santana says prevent him from cleaning the graffiti. Santana is now facing misdemeanor counts of violating City code SCVNEWS
  • Break out the Storm Tracker Mega Doppler 2000 Super HD Plus Graphics! Big Pacific storm rolling into the SCV today, soaking us throughout the afternoon and into tomorrow. But it should clear by Friday. LA TIMES
  • Bob Haueter -McKeon deputy chief of staff, on the campaign for Patricia McKeon, and high mucky-muck of the 38th Republican committee- emails supporters saying no Republican candidate “is perfect, no nominee will be all things to all people.” He ends his email telling disgruntled fellow SCV GOPers that they should remember Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “Speak no evil of a fellow Republican.”
  • I guess Congressman Frank Wolf isn’t on Haueter’s email list. The Virginia Republican rages against Grover “Drown Government in a Bathtub” Norquist and his famous no-tax-increases pledge, which all but 6 Republicans have signed in the House. YOU TUBE.
  • And Joe Messina picks up on the SCVTalk exclusive story about Pat McKeon holding a fundraiser in DC and has some advice for our would-be Assemblywoman: “Mrs. McKeon, you want to change my mind and many others? Get out in front of this. Forget the canned response from your consultant. Go to the paper or the radio station and allow them to interview you, properly, no pre-questions.” Messina is right. Scott Wilk and Paul Strickland are very acessible, as are most other SCV elected officials. Mrs. McKeon should be too. RIGHT ON SCV
  • While we’re at it on local Republicans, be sure to check out John Boston’s “The Boston Report” this week on the day Vice President Gerald Ford was scheduled to give a speech to 10,000 awed SCVers back in 1974. It was August and something happened that prevented Ford from coming. WRB
  • Neat Gary Horton column on a self-sufficient (energy-wise) house he toured in New York. SIGNAL
  • Like beer? Do you have lederhosen in your closet? Do you ever practice your German accent while alone in the car or in the shower? Do you like pretty German girls with braided pony tails? Then you’ll like BIG PICTURE’S spread of Oktoberfest pics BIG PICTURE
  • The forum is open again. SCVTALKERS

Comments (14)

  1. Need for Involved CitizenryOctober 5, 2011 at 9:06 am
    Hey – not interfacing with the public and press worked for Cathy Colley when she ran for the Newhall Water Board. Why shouldn’t it work for Mrs. Buck? We seem to have some of the most disengaged, march off the cliff voters around.
  2. Timothy Myers SROctober 5, 2011 at 10:05 am
    NFIC: This is not unique to Santa Clarita. The “casual” voter takes substantial voting cues from incumbency and name recognition. The real trick is to DEPRESS voter turnout to wring out the casual voter.
  3. ToddOctober 5, 2011 at 9:45 am
    Forum back open!?!?!? SAY IT ISN’T SO!!!!
  4. Coastal SageOctober 5, 2011 at 10:20 am
    RE: Today’s Signal story on Landmark Village, one could certainly tell that Jim Holt was not at the hearing, and wrote from a canned script provided by his down the street neighbor Marlee Lauffer. http://www.the-signal.com/section/36/article/52192/ (Marlee got poor Jim his job at The Signal, after the LA Times withdrew its job offer to him, during the course of LAT’s budget cutbacks, when Jim was having trouble getting his snowback Green Card. Marlee problem got Jim’s job back for him, after The Signal laid him off.) Here are the interesting parts of what actually happened at the Supervisors meeting. The Supes voted 3-0 for the 1,444 housing unit and massive commercial/industrial Landmark Village project on a “first reading”. Supervisors Yaroslavsky and Ridley-Thomas walked out and wouldn’t listen to Newhall Land’s presentation, or vote. Supervisor Antonovich walked out of the hearing when one of his regular opponents from the San Gabriel Valley got up to criticize the project, so for a while the Supervisors didn’t even have a quorum for their hearing. Big Mike came back in for the vote. The ever porcine Supervisor Gloria Molina, pro-Cemex, talked on her cel phone for the entire hearing (New issue for litigation, imagine a judge doing that!) and then voted for the project. Supervisor Molina and Newhall Land’s new VP and hearing spokesman Jim Bizzelle (formerly of Pardee Homes) held an unofficial “Who is as porky as Gov. Chris Christie” contest. Newhall Land aka Five Points Communities Management, Inc. had its capo de capi tutti Emile Haddad at the hearing, which was a first in the history of Newhall Land projects. Haddad was scowling at all his incompetent minions. Haddad is a screamer. He loves to scream at and humiliate employees, even when things are not their fault, and even when people from outside the company are on a conference call. So it’s likely that Haddad is not a happy camper today, because he knows that no matter what the Board of Supervisors do, there will be at least 2 lawsuits to overturn the Supervisors decision and Army Corps of Engineers permits. Haddad is the one who has to answer to whoever owns the company at the top of the Newhall Land pyramid these days. Back in 2009 Haddad said in a press release to The Signal that it was 5 hedge funds (85%) and Lennar and him (15%). http://www.the-signal.com/archives/16357/ According to the LandSource/Newhall Land Chapter 11 Bankruptcy exit plan, Newhall Land was recapitalized by the hedge funds and Lennar, but was scheduled to run out of cash in the Summer of 2011, unless it generated very significant cash from land sales between 8/09 and 8/11. No wonder Haddad was looking unhappy at the hearing, with the “investors” breathing down his neck, not wanting to contribute more of their own cash to Newhall Land’s parent company to keep this turkey of a project, with massive infrastructure construction requirements, alive. I guess Newhall Land’s cash flow from sales of primo lots in Valencia to KB Homes, which presumably will construct tacky, cheap little houses in the tony community, has not been enough to keep Haddad happily ensconced in his office in Orange County letting his insignificant minions in Santa Clarita handle the details. In a 2009 interview, Haddad told Big Builder magazine that the 22 people he really needed to run his empire were with him at his new office, which is not in Santa Clarita. http://www.bigbuilderonline.com/industry-news.asp?sectionID=363&articleID=1083712&artnum=5 No wonder the Newhall Land employees in Santa Clarita keep reducing in number, and no wonder there are such stressed faces in the company’s empty hallways and at the Supervisors meeting. They’re clearly not part of Haddad’s Team 22. (Great photo of Emile at http://lansner.ocregister.com/tag/emile-haddad/ ) The “funny” part of the Supervisors hearing was that the Clerk of the Board swore in all of the witnesses/speakers, that they were testifying under penalty of perjury. Dan Masnada (CLWA) and Keith Abercrombie (Valencia Water Co.) then testified that contaminated drinking water wells are not a problem for Santa Clarita. Lots of audience laughter on those statements. Later, before he walked out, Supervisor Antonovich admitted to Lynne Plambeck that he had not read any of the California Dept. of Health and California Dept. of Toxic Substances Control documentation concerning the drinking water well contamination in SCV. I guess he doesn’t read The Signal either! (One can assume the two other “yes” votes hadn’t read the CDH or CDTSC reports either.) There were two other entertaining speakers: Rudy Ortego, Jr. who claimed to be the tribal business manager at the Fernande o Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, who spoke in favor of the project. Of course, he’s from the wrong tribal group for that part of the Newhall Ranch territory, and his “band” was paid $50,000 to support the project. (Hey, for 50K cash I can get the West Tonawanda band of Seneca Indians to support this project too. I think I’ll call the business “Rent an Indian”.) The other entertaining and perhaps outrageous speaker was the employee from LA County, whose paycheck is funded by fees paid by Newhall Land. He said there would be no harm to the residents of Santa Clarita if, instead of Newhall Land building its own sewer plant as required by the Newhall Ranch Specific Plan EIR, the sewage effluent from the 270 single-family homes, 744 condominiums and 430 apartments, along with 16 commercial/industrial lots went through Santa Clarita’s already over-taxed sewer plants…yes those sewer plants for which you, the taxpayer, are supposed to get stuck paying fines from the Regional Water Quality Control Board for “too much salt in the sewer water”. Bottom line, the part of the hearing I liked best was Supervisors Yaroslavsky and Ridley-Thomas walking out in disgust, and not participating.
  5. Need for Involved CitizenryOctober 5, 2011 at 10:37 am
    Thanks for the coverage. The Signal shouldn’t have even bothered…
  6. Coastal SageOctober 5, 2011 at 11:47 am
    I forgot to mention that Newhall Land’s “Rent an Indian” band is not even recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. See: http://www.bia.gov/WhoWeAre/BIA/OIS/TribalGovernmentServices/TribalDirectory/index.htm Maybe Five Points can buy this Rent an Indian band BIA recognition with the help of one of Nancy Pelosi’s nephews as lobbyists, and then sell the “band” a piece of Landmark Village to build a tribal casino. Such a casino land sale, along the 5 Freeway, would certainly help boost Newhall Land’s cash flow.
  7. Leon WordenOctober 5, 2011 at 11:34 pm
    Hate to disagree with you Jennifer (Jennifer?) but the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians has been fighting for federal recognition for a long time. Regardless of what you might think of their politics vis-a-vis Newhall Ranch (they’ll be heavily involved in a Native American Cultural Center in a later phase), they’re really good people, and (here I go) it is wrong for the United States government to marginalize them by failing to grant them the same status the government has granted others. Whatever you may think about federal recognition in general, if anyone deserves it, our Fernandeño-Tataviam friends deserve it no less than any other tribe. Now you may ask, did the United States government take their land the same way it took land from Indians in the East and Midwest? No, not the same way. A different way. The Spanish and Mexican governments in pre-1848 California took their land. The United States decided not to give it back.
  8. Coastal SageOctober 6, 2011 at 3:29 pm
    There is massive anthopological and archaeological evidence that the Chumash inhabited Newhall Ranch well before the Tataviam aka Alliklik. The Chumash arrived 2,500 years ago. The Tataviam claim to have arrived 450 years ago. The last person who could speak the Tataviam’s language died approximately 60 years ago. The proof in the administrative record is that the archaeological sites in question are Chumash, not Tataviam. The difference is that local Chumash bands, Federally recognized or not, do not sell endorsements of developers. I’ve been dealing with these Native American archaeological/burial site issues since 1971, and I know who is legit and who is a “Rent an Indian”.
  9. Leon WordenOctober 6, 2011 at 3:39 pm
    Whether the Tataviam predecessors were Chumash is questionable. There were people here 3,500 years before present, but nobody knows who they were or what language they spoke. Assumptions have been made over the years that they may have been Chumash, but that’s all they are. Assumptions.
  10. RemStarOctober 5, 2011 at 12:07 pm
    Interesting report. Do you know that six years ago the court of appeal ordered the LA city council to hold a new public hearing because they were visibily not paying attention during the initial public hearing? http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/08/local/me-porn8
  11. VenturanOctober 5, 2011 at 12:15 pm
    The “walk out in disgust” doesn’t do anyone any favors. They should have gone on record, voiced their concerns at every moment of the proceedings as appropriate. Walking out isn’t honorable, it’s cowardly.
  12. BertaOctober 5, 2011 at 12:19 pm
    I agree!
  13. Mr PerezOctober 5, 2011 at 11:00 pm
    It is totally disgusting that such an open and welcoming state like California can lead the way with anti-Semitic crimes and hate.
  14. Mr PerezOctober 6, 2011 at 10:41 am
    Apparently the anti-Semite felt it necessary to give my comment a thumbs down >:(

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