Press Corps

Former Long Beach Mayor Beverly O'Neill has endorsed candidate Pauline Gonzalez Stenberg for the 3rd District school board seat in the Long Beach Unified School District, Gonzalez Stenberg's campaign announced Friday.

The coveted endorsement by one of Long Beach's most popular politicians makes Gonzalez Stenberg a strong contender in the field of five candidates seeking to replace former board member Michael Shane Ellis, who resigned in September. The special school board election is scheduled for Dec. 29.

Gonzalez Stenberg has also been endorsed by three of the district's four current school board members -- Mary Stanton, Jon Meyer and Felton Williams. Other endorsements include 6th District City Councilman Dee Andrews and former 7th District Councilman Mike Donelon. Gonzalez Stenberg's greatest opponent may be Richard Lewis, who has been endorsed by several council members and the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.

Gonzalez Stenberg, 66, recently retired from her family's sheet metal fabrication business. She is a 42-year Long Beach resident and a past PTA president of Newcomb Academy and Millikan High School.

Customs officials report capturing a cache of glass bongs estimated at $2.6 million and disguised as Christmas ornaments on a ship from China.

Agents said it's illegal to import, build or sell such paraphenalia, frequently used to smoke marijuana and widely available at tobacco shops throughout the Southland.

Read the full story here...http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_13825210?nclick_check=1.

The Airport Advisory Commission meeting will get an update today on the progress of construction at the Los Alamitos air base, which has forced the military to use Long Beach Airport for many air operations. The extra military aircraft have contributed the noise from the airport, which hasn't made neighbors too happy.

The commission meets at 4 p.m. at the Holiday Inn, 2640 N. Lakewood Blvd., in the Redondo Board Room on the 12th floor, not in the commission's normal meeting place at Skylinks Municipal Golf Course.

Congresswoman Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach) has announced that the Museum of Latin American Art of Long Beach will receive a grant for $141,120 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to produce solar electricity at the museum.

This grant, which is being awarded through the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is intended to support the generation of electric, mechanical or thermal energy from renewable resources and create and preserve jobs in the construction and operational stages of the project.

Proposed "no-fishing zones" off the local coast have been posted online at http://resources.ca.gov/mlpa_scrsg/. A blue-ribbon panel adopted the restrictions Nov. 10 following months of public hearings.

The proposals now needs approval from the California Department of Fish and Game Commission. The restrictions are designed to protect underwater marine life as part of the 1999 state law known as the Marine Life Protection Act, or MLPA.

Information is also available at http://www.marinemap.org/marinemap/.

To read the full story, visit http://www.presstelegram.com/search/ci_13621894. The adopted proposal is a mix of the three maps depicted in the story, with expanded restrictions around Catalina, Laguna Beach and less restrictions (as depicted in Map 2) at Rocky Point off Palos Verdes Peninsula - a popular spot for local commercial and recreational anglers.

City Council members Tonia Reyes Uranga and Patrick O'Donnell are endorsing Third District Long Beach Unified School Richard Lewis, his campaign announced today.

Lewis seems to be the chosen one for this seat to replace Michael Shane Ellis, who resigned. Council members Robert Garcia, Suja Lowenthal and Val Lerch, and the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce have also endorsed Lewis in the Dec. 29 special election.

Lewis, a financial controller, is a member of the Downtown Long Beach Associates' executive board and president of the East Village Association.

 

In another example of just how much things have changed for local port authorities since President Obama's inauguration, the chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission dropped by L.A. on Tuesday to check out first-hand the progress being made in ridding the nation's largest seaport of some 16,000 polluting big rigs - an effort previous FMC executives under the Bush administration had denounced as anti-competitive and illegal.

The visit by FMC Chairman Richard Lidinsky, appointed by Obama in May, comes just months after the agency, which oversees the nation's shipping laws, dropped a lawsuit and investigative probe into the ports' Clean Truck Plan, which under Bush had claimed could lead to serious disruptions in service and price increase in the movement of goods through Long Beach-Los Angeles. Together, the ports handle about $1 billion in cargo daily.

As it turned out, those fears were unfounded, as the FMC noted in dropping its probes and lawsuits in June and August, respectively.

Noting the previously acrimonious relationship between the parties, Lidinsky said that instead of lawsuits and investigations, the agency now hopes to act as a partner to help America's other major seaports emulate the Los Angeles truck turnover plan.

"I am pleased to see firsthand the promising results of the Clean Truck Program and am encouraged to hear that all parties in our maritime transportation chain are moving ahead and putting past adversarial relationships behind them since all of us want the same goals of public and economic health for these and other ports," Lidinsky said."We want to be a positive force for them as they recover from the worst maritime economic crisis since the Great Depression by restoring and creating new jobs, and we will stand side by side with ports as they use their expertise to fashion responses to the 21^st Century's environmental and public health challenges."

The only remaining legal challenge against the Clean Truck Plan is a lawsuit filed by the American Trucking Associations against Los Angeles, which wants trucking firms doing business on port and state property to own and maintain the fleets of new, cleaner rigs that will be dispatched to the waterfront in years to come. The case is expected to begin in February.

Long Beach was dropped from the lawsuit when it sided with the trucking industry in October by agreeing to ditch the requirement that companies own rigs - leaving the burden of new truck purchase, maintenanace, fuel costs, insurance and upkeep on contract drivers, which now comprise 95 percent of the harbor truck driver workforce.

 

 

Meet the Downey City Councilman and aspiring 50th District State Assemblyman on Nov. 19 at Frisco's Carhop Bar & Grill in Long Beach. Marquez will attempt to replace Hector De La Torre, who is being termed out of office.

Primary elections are in June.

The event will be from 6 to 9 p.m. at 4750 Los Coyotes Diagonal.

Call Diane J. Martinez at 562-743-3555 for more info.

Marquez_flyer2-2.pdf

As the council prepared to go into a closed session, which now isn't going to happen, about the Los Cerritos Wetlands deal, Mayor Bob Foster announced that he plans to move up a scheduled presentation by the Environmental Protection Agency to early in the meeting. Foster said the presentation, which will address contaminants that have been found in the soil on the property that the city hopes to acquire and restore as wetlands, will happen after the public hearings at the beginning of the meeting. The item was listed on the agenda as No. 29, which would have happened late in the meeting, probably after 8 p.m. If moved up, the coucil will probably hear the EPA report by 6 p.m.

Watch the meeting online at www.longbeach.gov.

More than two years ago, 2nd District City Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, impressed by the streetcars she saw during a trip to Portland, asked the council to have city staff conduct a study on implementing a street car system in Long Beach. Today, that report is coming back to the council for a special study session to hear about streetcar options and discuss where to go from here. The study session begins at 3:30 p.m. in City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Blvd.