Mar
8
LAUSD District Choral Festival 3/8-3/9/10
Filed Under Community News, Education & Schools, Inspiration, Local events | 1 Comment
[Ed Note: JM still, Dave will be back posting tomorrow]
On Monday and Tuesday night at 7PM all the choirs from all the programs at the LAUSD will be joining together for the yearly festival at the LAHS Gym. Doors open at 6:30PM, and this always sells out for both nights (a very packed house).
Feb
25
Baseball – Los Al Style
Filed Under Education & Schools, sports | Leave a Comment
[Ed Note: JM here for Dave again... Dave LOVES America's sport So here is some local news about the LAHS Team]
Los Alamitos High School baseball head coach Aaron Moore has announced the appointment of Jeff Kline as the program’s new Soph-Frosh team coach and Bryce Hadley as the school’s new Freshman team baseball coach.
Aug
16
Council to consider mandating advance payment by youth sports groups tonight
Filed Under 2009 Issues, City Council, Education & Schools, Los Alamitos Priorities | 3 Comments
Youth sports: a big part of our community
(8/17/2009, Los Alamitos) In an interesting consent calendar item for their Monday, August 17, Regular Meeting the Los Alamitos City Council is being asked to require payment in advance from the many youth sports groups which use city or school district facilities.
This seems like a logical move from an economic viewpoint. The question is, have the affected volunteer groups, all committed to serving our kids, had adequate input in the development of this policy.
Under current policy, according to a Youth Permits Summary submitted to the Council, all of the local groups have been delinquent to one extent or another in making at least some payments over the past three years, including (in alphabetical order):
- Friday Night Lights
- Los Alamitos Girls Softball League
- Los Alamitos Youth Baseball
- NJB Basketball
- Pop Warner Football
- AYSO Soccer
- St. Hedwig Baseball
All but two of those groups are now current: AYSO still owes the city about Read more
Jun
18
Chuck Wackerman & McAulliffe’s amazing Jazz Band featured on this week’s “Backstory”
Filed Under Community News, Education & Schools, LosAl TV | 1 Comment
Mr. Wackerman leading practice. Photo by Jennifer Kolkin, from SealBeachDaily.com
(5/18/09, Los Alamitos, by Dave Emerson) If you want to catch a glimpse of two of Los Alamitos’ civic treasures, set your DVR to record John Underwood’s Backstory on Los Al TV 3 this week.
This week’s show features one of the more amazing people you’ll ever meet: A 78 year old musician who’s still teaching in a middle school! (To give some perspective, Read more
May
31
OC Register ranks Los Alamitos USD # 2 in OC & Los Al High # 5
Filed Under Education & Schools | 2 Comments
(5/31/09, by Dave Emerson) This morning’s Register brings good news to our local school district and high school. In a detailed review of all 64 Orange County, CA, public high schools our home school cracked the top ten for the first time, trailing only Anaheim USD’s selective Oxford, Fullerton’s Troy, and Northwood and Uni in Irvine.
I’m pretty sure that makes Los Al #1 in the County for high schools with less than 50% of their students of Asian-American ancestry, whatever that means.
The Register survey based the results on a combination of almost three dozen performance quality measures utilized by the state for the 2008 school year. While 50% of the ranking was based on Read more
Dec
12
Lessons for the Holidays from a car wreck
Filed Under Education & Schools, Inspiration, Los Alamitos Priorities, News you can use, Traffic | 1 Comment
Summer Thompson and her mother Sherri in 2007. Summer nearly died in a car wreck in 2006.
(by Dave Emerson) As the dad of a 17-year-old high school senior, I’ve got a story from the state of Washington I’d like to share with you. It’s not a local story, but it’s relevant to our family oriented small town that’s home to Los Alamitos High School.
This started out as a post about one comment from the discussion that took place here in the comments following my December 6th preview of this week’s Planning Commission meeting.
As I searched Google Images for a “bad car wreck” photo to illustrate a post about Steve’s December 10th comment, the above photo stood out from all the photos of mangled cars on the first page of “about 467,000″ images Google located for you and me. I clicked on the photo to find out more, and ended up reading a compelling two year old story from the Seattle Post-Intelligence.
If you’ve got a kid, or a grandkid, especially one who drives, you may find this story by the P-I’s Jim Moore as compelling as I did. Read more
Nov
21
Coming soon to a Joint Forces Base near you?
Filed Under City Council Meetings, Community News, Education & Schools, George Briggeman, Traffic | 31 Comments
Ready for a commercial recycling plant at the Base?
This & the prior post have generated a very interesting discussion in the comments. So far those two posts have generated over 50 comments here at LetsFixLosAl.com! That’s about how many “Letters to the Editor” the News Enterprise prints in five non-election months! Be sure you check them out, maybe even add your own thoughts.
This is the second installment of LetsFixLosAl.com’s coverage of the Monday, 11/17 Los Alamitos City Council meeting, which included a revealing discussion of possible long term leases of Joint Forces Training Base land, including relocating City Hall and building a major recycling center. We’ll also touch briefly on two significant budget updates and the scheduling of the next meeting. For the first installment, including how Troy Edgar and Chuck Sylvia could cost Los Alamitos over $50,000 in legal fees, see “Monday night’s Council Meeting: Brutal!“
(by Dave Emerson) Besides the shocking disclosures of the legal fees run up by Troy Edgar and Chuck Sylvia, last Monday’s Council meeting also brought talk of two different recycling plans at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base.
This is somewhat confusing, and wasn’t clarified that well at the Council meeting. Near the end of Sean Belk’s excellent article in The Sun on Thursday, Sean lumped them together, but there were actually two different recycling programs at the Base being discussed.
The Base’s plan for recycling to create fertilizer for use on the base
From what I understand, the base is in the process of testing a mulching program to recycle a combination of greenwaste and treated sewage for use by the strawberry farmers on both the Joint Forces Base and the Naval Weapons Depot. This apparently does not involve George Briggeman, and appears to be something initiated by the Base. Supposedly the additional traffic and odor will be minimal. This program is about to be implemented, as I understand it.
Mr. Briggeman’s Desire for a Commercial Recycling Plant in Los Alamitos
The second program is in the discussion stage only, and involves our “former” trash contractor George Briggeman’s open desire to build a large recycling center in our town.
Mr. Briggeman has reportedly discussed with several Council Members his desire to move his tenant, Gemini Forest Products, from their current location on Briggeman Way to a property he hoped to acquire on Sausalito north of the Royal Oak Mobile Home Park. That property, however is owned by “Sausalito Partners,” who have been trying for four years to build a public storage facility there. Their representative appeared before the Planning Commission at their last meeting (see item 7 on the 11/10 Planning Commission agenda) and indicated he has been working on this for four years now. He also expressed a willingness to pay the city a $18,000 use fee to offset loss of sales tax revenues, since there’s no sales tax involved in storage rentals.
Digression: I sure wish the hospital and all those medical offices would offer a sales tax mitigation fee! Cypress gets the Costco, Seal Beach gets the Target, Kohl’s, Home Goods & restaurants, and we get very minimal sales tax revenue from a hospital & doctors offices. Oh yeah, and a pool on the base that cost the City $134,540 last year, according to the 4th Quarter FY report given to the Council on Monday. (Maybe that’s why some of us weren’t that thrilled with Sylvia & Poe’s accomplishments on the Council.) Marilyn, I remember you stating at the Parkewood Candidates’ forum that the Pool was no longer costing the city anything, and that you had set it up that way. Wish you’d been right on that one. Sigh. I guess we’ll see if your team can do better for our city this time. A really good first step would be to make like our President elect & try to recruit the best possible people to work with you, even if they were your opponents in the last election. Because it’s going to take all of us working together to get Los Al where it needs to be!
But I digress.
Back to Briggeman’s Recycling Plan A: I’m not sure what’s been holding up Sausalito Partners’ storage place for 4 years, although I have a suspicion. I’d love to see Gemini relocate there, since they’re a major sales tax generator for the city, but I’m not real enthusiastic about the extra heavy truck traffic and related problems of a recycling center going in on Briggeman Way. I’d like to see that land used for retail sales, which ideally should be viewed as the revenue generator which could drive our city forward. (I’ve got a few more ideas about that in a few paragraphs.)
Regardless, the residents of the adjoining Royal Oak Mobile Home Park apparently prefer the storage usage, and showed up in force at the last Planning Commission meeting to say so. That may well have been at the urging of Sausalito Partners’, but their attendance did make an impact on the planning commission.
In any case, Mr. Briggeman’s been looking around for a “Plan B,” for his recycling plant, and leasing land from the base appears to be one of the options.
The recycling at the Bae came up at Monday’s Council meeting when Mayor Parker asked about “Expand recycling programs,” one of the “Departmental Goals” listed for the City Manager on page 11 of the 1st Quarter FY 2008-09 Financial Report received by the Council.
According to City Administrator Rudat, the money the base was getting from the farmers who lease land there is now going to the E.P.A., so the Base is looking for new sources of funds through long-term, non agricultural leases. I believe he referred to it at “advanced use leasing.”
Move City Hall onto the Base?
One of the options which I know at least some of the continuing Council Members are interested in would be moving the City Hall and City operations onto leased land at the Base in order to free up the current location along Katella for possible retail development. Some traffic studies would be needed, and other locations on the Base might be more viable, but the concept’s well worth exploring.
I believe that it is imperative that the City of Los Alamitos focus on ways to bring additional major sources of sales tax revenue into our town. The City’s land along Katella, combined with that of the Chamber of Commerce and the office buildings to the west of City Hall are an great location for retail.
Ideally, I’d combine that with the current site of Oak Middle School, and relocate Oak to a location further South, possibly off Lampson on Base land or off Seal Beach Blvd. either on Boeing land or Naval Weapons Depot land. This would be a win-win that would actually reduce traffic caused by parents from Rossmoor, College Park East, and all of Seal Beach driving their kids to and from Oak every day. It simply makes no sense for all three of the Los Alamitos Unified School District’s three secondary schools to be located at the far north of the school district.
What’s needed is for the new Council to invest some of the remaining surplus into a study by the very best consultants out there on both short and long term strategies to maximize Los Alamitos’ sales tax income. With our location on the 605 freeway, with Katella running through the heart of our town, with major upscale residential neighborhoods surrounding us, and with lots of underdeveloped and even undeveloped land, we’ve got an economic engine just parked on the tracks! Again, I digress. Why talk about sales tax when the man who paid for our incoming City Council would rather talk about trash trucks. . . .
Mr. Briggeman’s On-Base Recycling Inquiries
Gerri Mejia indicated that George Briggeman had spoken to her about building a solid waste recycling plant at the base, and indicated that he was “very interested.”
Dave Rudat indicated that such “enhanced use leases” would be negotiated by the Army Corps of Engineers, and appeared to confirm that Mr. Briggeman does have an interest in such a project. He indicated that a variety of environmental studies would be required, and stated that “While I’m here, I’m watching closely.” Of course, the problem is that Mr. Rudat will most likely have to move on within a few months, and General Combs will probably be moving on fairly soon as well. And we all remember how the Base tried to sneak in a fleet of Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Helicopters without even notifying the city of Los Alamitos.
At this point, Mayor Parker indicated that Mr. Briggeman had also discussed a recycling center at the base, possibly at a location just east of Rossmoor Highlands, with the trash trucks entering on Orangewood (just north of St. Hedwig’s Catholic Church. Parker indicated he told Briggeman that the community would not be interested in the increased traffic and potential pollution.
Then Mr. Briggeman suggested routing the traffic in off of Lampson, but Parker again indicated he wouldn’t support that. I’m guessing this may have had something to do with Mr. Briggeman apparently spending so much money to defeat Mayor Parker and Cat Driscoll (and me) ( (see “The $20,000 tip of the Briggeman/Poe/Stephens iceberg“).
Parker wanted to approve the 1st Quarter Financial Report with some sort of statement by the Council opposing major recycling at the Base. The City attorney indicated “multi-level reviews” would be required before such a center could move forward, and that seemed to end the discussion. For what it’s worth, Dean Grose paid close attention during this discussion, while Troy Edgar sorted through papers most of the time. (I thought paying attention was the more appropriate behavior, in case you’re wondering.)
Next Meeting. . . 12/1?
The next scheduled Council meeting comes immediately after the 4 day Thanksgiving weekend this year, which is actually 5 days since Friday 11/28 would normally be a “dark Friday” for city workers anyway. (The city workers work 9 hour days most days and get every other Friday off.) That means the City Clerk would have to prepare and mail out the agendas next on Tuesday, 11/25. It also means that the Orange County Registrar of Voters might not have the election certified by that time. (For details from the City Manager, see “Special Meeting 12/8 for the Installation of new Council Members”.)
Normally, the first meeting in December after an election is opened by the old council, then the new Council is sworn in and, after a reception, elects the new Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem. Most years there’s also only one Council meeting in December. Staff suggested meeting on Monday the 8th instead of the 1st, but several Council Members indicated they couldn’t make it then. Mayor Parker and Interim City Manager Dave Rudat disagreed on an earlier conversation, when Parker either indicated he could or couldn’t make that date, and I guess they finally “agreed to disagree.” Marilyn Poe had told Rudat that she would be out of town on 12/15, the second regularly scheduled meeting. Apparently staff had not checked with Cat Driscoll, who also couldn’t make the 8th, or with Gerri Mejia, who thought she might be out of town then for her Uncle’s funeral.
I’m actually available on the 15th & would be happy to fill in for anybody, but I’m not sure Marilyn would go for that. Hey, if we couldn’t schedule a forum, I guess it’s no surprise that they can’t schedule a Council Meeting either?
Things were left with the current schedule, but with the provision that staff would continue to seek a mutually acceptable date. I’ll let you know if I hear, & you let us all know via a comment if you find something out.
With that we moved on to Council Member remarks & the meeting gracefully was over by 10 p.m.
Like I said, brutal. We’ll see what the future holds. . .
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