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| Fairplex, Pomona finally reach development deal, but LA County says not so fast – Daily Bulletin | | For the first time in four years, Fairplex officials and residents living near the fairgrounds agree on a potential pact that would expand, not curtail programming.
The two parties, along with the City Council, favor a concept that would allow Fairplex to hold six new music events over three years while providing funds to study noise and traffic. The matter was discussed at Monday’s council meeting.
The controversy, however, continues with dissent now coming from an unlikely voice: Los Angeles County, which owns the 487-acre campus but leases the property to the Los Angeles County Fair Association. [Article] | | by , Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. 2018-11-20 | | | | Senior Center receives $500,000 from county – Santa Clarita Valley Signal | | The new Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center building on Golden Valley Road, slated to be completed in spring 2019, got an unexpected half-million-dollar contribution to its capital campaign on Monday, delivered personally by county Supervisor Kathryn Barger.
Executive Director Kevin MacDonald and Senior Center Board President Peggy Rasmussen welcomed Barger and her justice deputy, Stephanie English, to the new center’s construction site for what MacDonald and Rasmussen initially assumed was a tour.
The group walked through the future location of the two-story, 30,000-square-foot building on Golden Valley Road, as MacDonald and Rasmussen explained the placements and purposes of all the rooms. [Article] | | by , . 2018-11-20 | | | | LIST: Sandbag distribution centers in Los Angeles, Ventura counties | abc7.com | | As Los Angeles and Ventura county residents begin to recover from the devastating Woolsey Fire, they now have to prepare for the possibility of mudslides as a rain system moves in.
In preparation for the storm, which is expected to come sometime Wednesday evening and last until late Thursday morning, agencies have set up free sandbag distribution centers.
Here is a list of the centers: [Article] | | by , . 2018-11-20 | | | | 9 things to know about Los Angeles County’s 4.7% unemployment in October – Daily News | | Los Angeles County’s employment winning streak grew to 89 months as local bosses added 58,000 workers in the 12 months ended in October as unemployment fell in a month to 4.7 percent.
Here are nine Los Angeles County job market trends gleaned by my trusty spreadsheet from the state Employment Development Dept.’s monthly report: October (seasonally unadjusted) data compared to a year ago and the average of the previous five years … [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2018-11-20 | | | | Bird migration: Electric scooters show up in Altadena, East Pasadena — still a no-go in Pasadena – Pasadena Star News | | Bird scooters have arrived in the Pasadena area.
There’s been a high concentration of the rental scooters for months on the Westside. This weekend, they flocked east — the company dropped off some scooters in unincorporated East Pasadena and Altadena. It may be the closest the scooters have come to Pasadena — but residents shouldn’t expect to be able to ride a Bird within the city limits.
“Scooters are still prohibited in the city,” Pasadena spokeswoman Lisa Derderian wrote in an email. “We will impound them if they are left in Pasadena.”
Bird appears to be abiding by the city’s wishes: The company has created a “no-ride” zone around the city’s borders, or geofencing, which means users shouldn’t be able to cross the city line, according to company spokeswoman Mackenzie Long.
Cities in the Los Angeles area and nationwide have grappled with how to deal with the bikes and scooters that are commonly left on sidewalks which unlock and pay for with their smartphones. They can seemingly pop up overnight — as was the case here — and without official permission. They differ from traditional rental bikes, like those offered by Metro, because they do not need to be placed in a dedicated dock when users are finished. [Article] | | by , Pasadena Star News. 2018-11-20 | | | | How Montebello wants to use possible park grant money – Whittier Daily News | | Montebello city officials hope that spending $50,000 can bring in millions of dollars in state and county grants which then could be used to repair many local parks.
The City Council last week voted 4-0 to spend $50,000 and hire a grant writer and architect to draw up proposals and plans to fix the city’s existing 10 parks.
“This is great,” Councilwoman Vivian Romero said. “We’ll take advantage of the opportunity to enhance and beautify our parks.” [Article] | | by , Whittier Daily News. 2018-11-20 | | | | California Air Quality: Levels Top World Health Safety Standards - Bloomberg | | California’s air exceeded world health standards by 60 times last week, and conditions on Monday continued to top safe thresholds with the deadliest blaze ever in the state is about 65 percent contained.
Last week, particulates in the air reached as high as 1,500 micrograms per cubic meter. The threshold set by the World Health Organization is 25. Lower levels on Monday still exceeded the benchmark.
“It is just insane,” said Rebecca Buchholz, a project scientist, who studies pollution from fires at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. “It is quite amazing how high these fine-particulate levels are.” [Article] | | by , . 2018-11-20 | | | | Trying to get a handle on California’s deadly wildfires has lawmakers flummoxed - Los Angeles Times | | This was going to be easy, I thought foolishly. Ask some legislators and experts for their ideas on how to control California’s deadly wildfire epidemic. What should state government do about it?
But they basically didn’t have a clue. And who could fault them? It’s like asking how you stop hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes. It’s all part of nature. You try to prepare.
Fires are a little different, of course. The risk can be reduced. You can hold off flipping a lighted cigarette onto dry grass, or building a campfire in a forest tinderbox. You can try to keep power lines from falling on chaparral.
But that’s all just common sense. You don’t need legislation for that stuff. Well, maybe you do to require utilities to better maintain their power lines. And some good public education ads could help. Bring back Smokey Bear.
Give Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature some credit: They did enact major wildfire legislation in September. But surely there must be more they can do.
Last week, Brown told the truth no one wants to hear. While inspecting the Camp fire devastation in Butte County, a reporter asked Brown, “How do we curb these fires?” [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2018-11-20 | | | | Disaster after disaster, California keeping falling short on evacuating people from harm’s way - Los Angeles Times | | Leigh Bailey, 54, was awakened not by her phone, warning her about an incoming fire that would soon destroy her town, but by a neighbor pounding on her door.
Bailey had no idea how bad the fire was about to become. So she went back inside around 9:15 a.m., had a cup of tea and ate some coffee cake and slowly packed some clothes and her dog and cat before heading out of her home in Magalia, just north of Paradise.
She escaped — but barely, on a narrow dirt road she stumbled on despite driving through thick smoke and the failure of her GPS.
“We had absolutely no evacuation orders,” Bailey said. “No call, no emergency text, nothing — and neither did anyone I know.”
This has been a recurring problem.
More than 140 people have died in California over the last 13 months from various calamities, ranging from the fires in wine country to the mudslides in Montecito.
In many of these disasters, officials have acknowledged flaws in the evacuation plans, including the failure to use the latest technology to broadcast Amber Alert-style warnings on cellphones ahead of deadly disasters. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2018-11-20 | | | | Deadly California fires prompt bold thinking about prevention: Shelters, strict zoning, buyouts - Los Angeles Times | | Over the years, California has told homeowners to clear brush around houses, required builders to use fire-resistant materials and ordered them to provide easy access to new developments.
But that didn’t prevent the deaths of 43 people in last year’s wine country fire siege. It didn’t prevent the destruction of more than 1,400 structures in the Woolsey fire. It didn’t prevent the Camp fire from wiping the town of Paradise off the map in the worst wildfire disaster in state history.
It’s time, some say, for California to move beyond the tried and true.
“We have to really start to think about new measures and new approaches that have to be more drastic,” said Bruce Cain, director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University.
Among them, he said, is “a strategic retreat from communities that are never going to be safe.”
Santa Ana winds send flames galloping across the Santa Monica Mountains to the sea every couple of decades. The Woolsey fire that has claimed three lives is merely the latest to clog Pacific Coast Highway with evacuees and prompt firefighters to say they have never seen anything like it. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2018-11-20 | | | | Part of the Answer to Climate Change May Be America’s Trees and Dirt, Scientists Say - The New York Times | | WASHINGTON — When people think of potential solutions to global warming, they tend to visualize technologies like solar panels or electric cars. A new study published on Wednesday, however, found that better management of forests, grasslands and soils in the United States could offset as much as 21 percent of the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
At the high end of the projections, that would be roughly equivalent to taking every single car and truck in the country off the road.
The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, identified a number of promising strategies, like replanting trees on degraded lands, changing logging practices to better protect existing forests and sequestering more carbon in farmland soils through new agricultural techniques.
“We’re not saying these strategies are a substitute for getting to zero-carbon energy; we still need to do that too,” said Joseph E. Fargione, a scientist at the Nature Conservancy and lead author of the study. “But we think that natural climate solutions generally get overlooked. And we found a lot of opportunities here to help mitigate climate change.” [Article] | | by , . 2018-11-20 | | | | San Diego County slightly improves high school graduation rate but lags behind California - The San Diego Union-Tribune | | San Diego County’s high school graduation rate improved a little from the previous year but lags behind the statewide average, according to new graduation rate data published Monday.
The county had an 81 percent four-year graduation rate for the class of 2018, compared to 83 percent for the state. County schools overall improved their graduation rate by about 1 percent from the year before.
The state calculates the graduation rate by dividing the number of students who earn a regular high school diploma in four years by the number of students who entered ninth grade, adds students who transferred in and subtracts students who transferred out. This is the second batch of graduation data for which the state has used the same formula to calculate the rates.
Here are some highlights of the graduation rate data for San Diego County: [Article] | | by , San Diego Union-Tribune. 2018-11-20 | | | | San Diego County parks participating in Green Friday - 10News.com KGTV-TV San Diego | | SAN DIEGO (KGTV) -- If you’re looking for something to do the Friday after Thanksgiving but don’t want to get caught in the Black Friday crowds, county parks is offering an alternative known as Green Friday
On Friday, November 23, parking fees will be waived at all county parks and preserves, according to County of San Diego Parks and Recreation. Click here for more information on the free parking.
Normally, visitors are charged $3 per vehicle, per day. Check out the list below for more Green Friday offers from the county: [Article] | | by , . 2018-11-20 | | | | Grant to Fund Free Rides for More Than 4,500 People With Mobility Issues - NBC Southern California | | A $1.3 million grant will cover free rides for thousands of Riverside County residents with mobility issues, it was announced Monday.
The grant awarded to the Independent Living Partnership, a non-profit geared toward improving transportation access, will assist more than 4,500 people across the county by providing free rides for transport to medical appointments and other needed services, according to Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert. [Article] | | by , KNBC Los Angeles. 2018-11-20 | | | | Want to help the elderly? Riverside County needs many more volunteers to check on them in nursing homes – Press Enterprise | | Someone who volunteers to be a long-term care ombudsman can play a crucial role in the life of people in residential care facilities.
An ombudsman is the eyes and ears — and, often, the nose — keeping tabs on the proper treatment of those who may have no one else to advocate for them. Most long-term care residents are elderly or frail.
Under state law, an ombudsman has the authority to routinely go unannounced into nursing homes, assisted living centers and smaller six-bed homes. They also respond to complaints called into the local ombudsman’s office.
But in Riverside County, there are only 12 volunteers to help a paid staff of nine monitor about 520 licensed facilities scattered across a geographic area of more than 7,000 square miles.
With about 15,000 residents in long-term care, that’s nowhere near enough volunteers to see to their well being, say those who run the Riverside County Ombudsman Program.
One facility in Blythe is visited by a volunteer who makes a three-hour trip once a month. [Article] | | by , Riverside Press-Enterprise. 2018-11-20 | | | | How to help California wildfire victims this Thanksgiving | | As Thanksgiving approaches, we the staff at The Desert Sun are grateful for our readers. It is an honor and a privilege to serve you both online and in print.
In recent weeks, many of our Desert Sun reporters, photographers and editors have worked long hours covering the severe wildfires that have affected both Southern and Northern California. We have sent our journalists to Ventura County and Malibu to report on the devastation, and we have helped edit stories written by colleagues at our sister papers The Ventura County Star, The Redding Record-Searchlight, and USA Today. We have also assisted the Ventura County Star with reporting on the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks.
For the thousands of Californians who have lost their homes, their jobs, and their loved ones in these fires and the shooting, this Thanksgiving promises to be exceptionally difficult. Some of you have inquired how to help the victims of these tragedies. [Article] | | by , Desert Sun. 2018-11-20 | | | | Pitching in for Paradise | | The community of Wrightwood came together Sunday to raise more than $5,000 for Camp Fire victims from the town of Paradise.
The fundraising event at the Wrightwood Community Building was organized by Gayle Dowling and her daughter, Brittan Egnozzi, who have family who lived in Paradise.
“They drove through flames when they were evacuating,” Dowling said. “The flames were actually touching their car, and cars behind them were catching on fire.”
Authorities say that around 1,000 residents of Paradise remain unaccounted for. The fire swept through the town on Nov. 8 and destroyed 10,500 structures.
Dowling performed with her son, Adam Webster, and Egnozzi in their family band, Gayle and Company. “The way I know how to heal is with music and to bring everyone together,” Egnozzi said.
Another band, the Universal Dudes, also performed. The Village Grind, a Wrightwood cafe, provided food. Lynn Crawford organized a raffle for local businesses with services and products such as ziplining, free haircuts, gift certificates, and art pieces by Paradise artist Barbara Whitten. [Article] | | by , Victorville Daily Press. 2018-11-20 | | | | How San Bernardino County hopes to save animal lives – San Bernardino Sun | | Rescue groups pull thousands of dogs and cats from the county animal shelters in Devore and Big Bear every year. In 2017, some 40 percent of the shelter population was rescued.
Still, there has never been a county employee dedicated to working with these groups.
Now, that’s changing. Last month, seeing a need to improve its work with rescue groups and save more animals, the county hired Fernando Torres and Athena Nava as the shelters’ first animal rescue coordinators.
“This is kind of a new frontier,” said Torres, of San Bernardino. “I think being on the forefront is a really good opportunity.”
The part-time coordinators are part of a year-long pilot program aimed at streamlining rescues’ efforts and improving adoption rates.
Torres and Nava, of Highland, will work directly with groups to pull adoptable pets from shelters, track the number of inquiries made by rescue groups, reach out to new rescue partners and assist with adoption events, among other duties.
“I like the fact that I will be working closely with (the rescue groups),” Nava said. “I think it’s good we work together to get all of the animals out safely and into homes.”
Torres has worked for animal control programs in Riverside County and Moreno Valley, while Nava previously worked as a veterinary technician and assistant in Highland. [Article] | | by , San Bernardino County Sun. 2018-11-20 | | | | Air pollution ends lives early in Merced County, report says | Merced Sun-Star | | People could add years to their lives in California and other smog-plagued parts of the world if authorities could reduce particulate pollution — soot from cars and industry — to levels recommended by the World Health Organization, a new study reported Monday.
No other large U.S. city would benefit more than Fresno, which has soot concentrations at roughly twice the WHO guidelines. Fresno residents would live a year longer if the region could meet the health organization’s recommended levels of exposure, according to Monday’s study by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
The average Merced resident could add about seven months to their life, while Los Angelenos could add eights months. The average Sacramento resident would add nearly three.
Merced’s air quality is often similar to Fresno’s, according to Heather Heinks, communications manager for San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. [Article] | | by , Merced Sun-Star. 2018-11-20 | | | | High speed rail construction now in the heart of strongest criticism | abc30.com | | High-speed rail work is underway this week in the heart of its strongest criticism.
When contractors knock down his neighbor's nut trees to clear the way for high-speed rail, John Tos gets a helpless feeling.
"Eminent domain means the government can do whatever they feel like," he said. "You just have to stand back and watch."
They've already cut down a few of his trees to make way for a huge overpass and they've marked more for demolition. [Article] | | by , KFSN ABC30 - Fresno County. 2018-11-20 | | |
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