Good News in your local media!
December 19, 2012 in Local Media review & reporting, Your reporting and comments By: Dave Emerson
(12/19/2012, Los Alamitos) It may be a whole new world come Saturday according to the weather graphic to the left.
However, here at LetsFixLosAl we started changing the world as you know it yesterday with our effort to focus on all the good things going on in Los Alamitos! (See yesterday’s “Positively Amazing.” )
Fortunately for your recovering negaholic editor, this week’s local news has lots to be positive about!
Let’s start with today’s News Enterprise:
- Excellent coverage of Monday night’s City Council Meeting with both a headline and photo “above the fold” on page 1. Before Publisher Lon Wahlberg and Editor Ted Aodaca came aboard, we would have had to wait another week for anything about a Council Meeting, let alone a photo!
- Page 3 coverage of the capture of the three wild African cats that escaped terrorized Apartment Row on Sunday, and of the ongoing murder and arson trial resulting from the Apartment Row fire back in January, 2009. Plus the front page article on Bullying at Los Al High. Lots of real news in our only local news paper!
- Front page photo of Los Alamitos homeboy & # 1 vote getter Richard Murphy being sworn in to our City Council!
- Front page headline: ”Kusumoto elected Mayor.”
- Repeat # 3. That’s really, really, really good news.
- Repeat # 4. and add one word missing from the headline: Unanimously.
- Say it again, “Warren Kusumoto unanimously elected Mayor of Los Alamitos.” Doesn’t that just make your day? Combine it with Murphy’s election, which made it possible, and the people of Los Alamitos might just have gotten their best Christmas present since the City was incorporated 51 years ago!
- A positive, forward-looking Guest View on page 5, by Warren Kusumoto with a number of good ideas to “position our city for greater achievements,” well worth a read! [ad]
That’s good news in both senses of the word–great news well reported in a timely fashion. And there’s lots more good stuff in today’s N-E I didn’t even mention. Thanks, Lon & Ted! And thank you, Edward Verdugo & company, for bringing Lon & Ted to the News Enterprise.
More good news, from the Patch:
The LosAlamitos-SealBeachPatch also had some excellent coverage of Monday night’s Council meeting, complete a picture of your’s truly from my best side! But here’s a few quotes I really liked from that article:
- “The new council reversed the previous council’s vote on the pay raise, deciding to hold off an salary discussion until January”
- “Minority member Kusumoto received unanimous support from his colleagues and was named mayor.”
- “Incoming councilman, Richard Murphy, who had never held public office before, cried as he thanked all the people who supported him in his campaign. Afterward, he said he was thinking about how proud he would have made his mother, who passed away six years ago.”
- “Murphy was also nominated and unanimously voted in as a mayor pro tem.”
- “Graham-Mejia, a councilwoman approaching the end of her four-year term, said she was disappointed about not being nominated for the mayor or mayor pro tem position.Graham-Mejia, a councilwoman approaching the end of her four-year term, said she was disappointed about not being nominated for the mayor or mayor pro tem position.” The good news here is that the fact that neither Kusumoto nor Murphy were cued in to Mejia’s desires before the meeting indicates no violations of the Brown Act with behind the scenes discussions implied by well choreographed Mayor and pro-tem votes as we’ve seen in the past. BTW, I wouldn’t be surprise to see Mejia’s concerns addressed in the future and, more importantly, a protocol developed for rotating Council leadership for those desiring it.
- “In one of his first votes as councilman, Murphy voted against the members of the former minority – Kusumoto and Mejia – on one issue and then voted with the former minority on another.”
- “Stephens encouraged the incoming councilman and the sitting councilmembers to keep striving for excellence by “moving the bar even higher” for what’s expected of the local government.”
- “Grose asked city staff to bring back a report about possibly returning the city meetings to twice a month, instead of the current once-a-month format.”
- “Murphy said he wanted a staff report on the possibility of getting the agenda out earlier.”
“But wait, there’s more!”
Two more piece of good news I didn’t see mentioned in either article but heard with my own ears on LosAlTV3:
- Our new Mayor Warren Kusumoto’s call for a “forensic audit” of the entire City budget to find additional ways for the city to save money.
- Richard Murphy’s observation that the City’s unfunded pension obligations should be accounted for in computing the City’s much ballyhooed “Reserve.” While the bad news is that would make the Reserve closer to four million dollars than to seven million, the good news is that’s a call to an honest appraisal of our City’s financial status, the first step towards dealing with it!
Now it’s your turn:
This post is for folks who care about Los Alamitos to discuss what’s going on in any media that relates to us.
Anything of interest to Los Alamitos or Rossmoor readers is fair game, whether it’s in this week’s News Enterprise, Sun, Register, Press Telegram, or any online or broadcast media, local, national, or global.
If you found it interesting, put up a link with a brief summary if you want, or just describe it in the “topic.”
We usually put this post up every Wednesday, so this is the place for things you haven’t posted yet or you note over the next 7 days, or until we put it up again.
See if you can follow this week’s “think positive” theme & find things you like & agree with!
Thanks for sharing!
Yes, it’s like a breath of fresh air Dave.
NE Coverage:
#1 – I think Ted and Lon have been doing a great job!
#2 – I saw the cat up close, he was not happy. They netted it on the roof of an Apt. Arsonist – I had, a month earlier, met the grandmother and the two grand kids this guy committed the crime in front of. This guy will be judged!
#3 – Highlight of the issue! Great to see this. Wished I could have been there to congratulate Richard in person.
#4 – YES! And we didn’t have to wait for the following week or find the story in the back of the NE like the previous editors would have done.
#5 – Worth repeating!
#6 – Worth repeating!
#7 – Warren is very methodical and follows council procedure well. He is a great choice for Mayor and will do a great job at it. The unanimous decision will hopefully be a trend that we see when they are galvanized on future city decisions.
#8 – Looking forward to seeing what ideas Warren will bring to the table.
Patch Coverage:
#1 – Sounds like a good and responsible call.
#2 – Same as NE #7
#3 – Best part of the meeting. Like his Mom would have been, many of us are all proud of him too. He worked hard to earn the seat. He fought a very clean and admirable fight to get there. His speech seemed to be a culmination of all that hard work and the realization that he’d made it.
#4 – Leave it to Troy to, yet again, be driving the bus that ran over Gerri when he purposely snubbed her and nominated Richard. I actually think he was trying to make Richard look like the bad guy. Don’t be fooled, Troy knows the history. Gerri had a Mayor Pro-tem position once before and when a new majority took over, they ripped the rug out from under her and made Troy the mayor. Troy has always tried to show himself to be a follower of procedure. It seems that is only true when it suits him.
#5 – I really think there was a huge miscommunication here. Had everyone been aware of Gerri’s seniority on the council and the fact that she’d never been a part of the appointed rotation, I’m sure she would have at least been co-nominated. We’ll see if “Right” plays out on this one.
#6 – Even though he may not have voted the way I would have, we voted for him to do exactly that. To research both sides and make an educated vote…even if it means voting a way I may not have voted. I know Richard will vote in the best interest of our city.
#7 – A real moment of clarity for Stephens and a great gesture of good will towards the new council. The bar wasn’t high to begin with so we have nowhere to go but up. I know 3-4 of the council members will work hard to do exactly that.
#8 – A good call. Transparent and gives community input on both sides of the issue. (The question I have is how does council get paid, per meeting or monthly?) If they get paid monthly, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see the former majority eliminate one meeting yet get paid the same. Hopefully someone will answer this.
#9 – Another good call. You can never be too transparent. The previous majority seemed to enjoy sneaking the agendas out late to avoid packed chambers with angry residents. Hopefully, that tactic will stop.
But wait, there’s more:
#1 – An excellent conservative approach to doing “due diligence”. Great move on Warren’s part.
#2 – That is precisely why I voted for Richard and why he is very qualified to serve on this council. We’ve needed a CPA on this council for some time to get our much needed reality check. It will be great to know the reserve figure is more than just a rumor, it will be a real number.
This council will be a much needed Christmas gift for Los AL. 2013 looks to be a bright year for our citizens.
Great news.Only one more City Council meeting before we get to replace our City Attorney with one who doesn’t have ethics issues (I hope!).
Tonight I had the chance to make a suggestion to a city council member that would do three things.
* Increase transparency of the city to the community
* Increase communication between the elected officials and the community
* Make use of the City Council Chamber and the broadcast facilities to open the city up so more people can see what affects them and participate in open, honest and frank discussion with their elected officials, other community members and maybe even some of the staff that works for US.
I have heard a number of people, both on the City Council and within the community, ask that we get past the past and move on to the future by dealing with the present. I couldn’t agree more. From Council Member Murphy to Mayor Kusumoto to the guy that stopped me in Vons a few weeks ago, I think we are all in agreement that we need to move on.
But we also need to create a historical accurate record of what happened, what we did right, what we could have done better, and where we didn’t do well at all. We have to create an institutional memory that lasts long past when I will have my kids wheel me up to the podium.
I have asked before that now that this is all behind us we get all the players in a public meeting and have a post-mortum on what happened, from every players viewpoint. If you have seen the 1950 film Rashomon you understand that the same series of incidents can be perceived very differently by the participants. We need to capture these differing viewpoints so that we can look back at this troubled time and see what played out from all perspectives. Only by doing that can we learn from the experience and grow. Making a mistake is only a mistake if you don’t take the time to also learn from the events. So, again I will ask that we bring in all the players, voluntarily, who were involved in the Solid Waste Franchise Agreement to explore what happened and why so we can learn from it, make changes to avoid it in the future, and record the whole thing for the institutional memory of the City of Los Alamitos. Then, and only then, will it be appropriate for us to retire the whole incident and never revisit it again.(and yes, I feel the last two paragraphs are positive as I see a City Council that may be willing to do this so we can learn from it and move past it).
Good news, another blog has Los Al information up on it!
http://ocpoliticsblog.com/ex-mayor-troy-edgar-has-two-more-years-of-damage-to-do
Of course how good the news is depends on how you feel about our former Mayor.