South El Monte will discuss a negotiation between the city and Charles Company for 1127 Santa Anita Ave.
The item will be held in closed session at Tuesday’s community redevelopment meeting at 6 p.m. Both the price and terms of payment are under negotiation.
It’s day 7 and still no official response from El Monte City Hall about my records request asking for the investigative report into Mayor Ernie Gutierrez’s alleged actions at a city event.
City Manager Jim Mussenden confirmed that the city did receive my request, and that the city attorney is working on it.
They still have another three days before they have to respond as required by state law.
Looks like the state is following the trend of some our local San Gabriel Valley cities, such as Glendora, and is looking to hike fees in order to reduce the budget gap.
Flurry of state fees – new or higher – pushed as budget boost
By Jim Sanders
Sacramento Bee
Californians would pay higher traffic ticket, parking, car registration, property insurance and other fees under dozens of proposals flying around the Capitol.
Whether taxes ultimately are raised, state officials are looking to cut a $15.2 billion deficit by increasing other revenue.
Higher fees could bolster the California Highway Patrol, state parks, emergency services, state wildfire response, oil-spill prevention and various public programs.
Fee hikes are not touted as a way to solve the massive deficit, but they could soften the blow as legislators fight over sales and other taxes.
Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said Californians are in no mood to pay more.
“I think people are seeing the symptoms of recession, people are seeing neighbors losing their homes to foreclosure, they’re seeing their jobs leave the state – and I think they’re angry,” Vosburgh said. Read more.
Weekend links:
Montebello is prepared to pay an extra $227,000 for a third administrator. Here’s the story.
Glendora is facing a balanced budget. Read here.
Plans to develop 45 acres off the 60 freeway in Monterey Park could mean a previous deal with the old developer fell through. Here’s the story.
Baldwin Park, El Monte top the jobless rate in the SGV, although all of Los Angeles County saw the rate increase by one percent last month. Read here.
Duarte seeks to block Vulcan Materials from expanding in Azusa, near the border of Duarte. Read more.
A group of nearly 200 residents are upset at a development plan in Rowland Heights that would displace a Christian school. Read more.
A consultant deal out of La Puente is raising eyebrows, and at least one councilwoman is calling for the District Attorney’s office to get involved. Read more.
Some residents are fighting a plan to bring a discovery center that they say is too big and that it will wipe out part of the natural habitat in the Whittier Narrows. Read more.
Here’s this week’s Leftovers column:
Recall talk not going away in Baldwin Park
Article Launched: 06/22/2008 10:44:48 PM PDT
Here’s a challenge for the proponents who are trying to throw three council members out of office in Baldwin Park: Anthony Bejarano Jr. said he’ll happily save everyone the trouble of a recall election if his opposition can get the roughly 4,700 validated signatures needed to move forward with the process.
“I will step down,” Bejarano said. “No need for an election. I will walk away.”
Game on, according to local businessman Greg Tuttle, who served the recall intention notices on Bejarano and councilwomen Marlen Garcia and Monica Garcia on Wednesday.
Even while Bejarano scoffed at the recall – calling it a blip on the radar – Tuttle remained hopeful he could get an election going as early as a year from now.
Experts say a recall election could easily run in the tens of thousands of dollars, and maybe even upwards of $100,000.
“It’s very hard,” said Douglas Johnson, a fellow with the Rose Institute of State and Local Government. “Very few recalls ever make it to the ballot. It takes money and it takes a lot of lawyers.”
Johnson estimated less than a quarter of recalls that start actually end up on the ballot.
Several of Baldwin Park’s recall proponents are members of the Community Alliance for Redevelopment Accountability, which is opposed to the city’s proposed downtown project.
CARA has received heavy support – including financial support – from some major statewide groups backing eminent domain reform.
But Tuttle has made it clear that the recall has nothing to do with CARA.
“This is something separate, from us the voters,” Tuttle said.
He doesn’t live in Baldwin Park, so … he’s not a voter, though he said others involved in the recall are.
Tuttle said he’s taking things one step at a time and he expects to file official recall paperwork with the City Clerk’s office today.
After, he said, he will file for a political action committee, so that the proponents’ major donors can start funneling in dollars for the recall effort.
It’ll be interesting to see who their backers are.
Until then, Bejarano said he’s not too concerned.
Tuttle said he has retained an attorney to help move the recall process along, though Bejarano said he can’t tell from the notices served Wednesday.
Here’s one of the grievances listed as a grounds for recall:
“Anthony Bejarano is more concerned about eating sushi at restaurants than taking care of the city and problems of day laborers and public safety.”
Mayor Manuel Lozano said he’s ready for the fight.
As for the Garcias? (Who are not related.) Marlen Garcia did not want to comment, saying she didn’t want to add “fuel to the fire,” and Monica Garcia didn’t call back.
Rosemead just approved nearly $80,000 to start broadcasting its council meetings online. Glendora started live streaming its meetings nearly three months ago, and El Monte has been doing it for nearly three years.
Officials from each city said that broadcasting the meetings helps promote transparency in government.
“It’s not cheap,” El Monte spokesman Matt Weintraub said. “But it is an absolutely fantastic way for residents to monitor what is going on in the city.”
Well, maybe that explains why some West Covina residents are upset after hearing that their City Council members are looking to save a few bucks by halting the broadcasts of their meetings on TV and online.
The total savings: $150,000.
Several residents expressed concern that this was an attempt by the city to try to prevent its residents from knowing what’s going on.
City officials deny that’s the motive. It has more to do with a $2 million budget deficit, they said.
City Manager Andrew Pasmant said the city will try to find alternative ways to communicate what is happening in the city, like posting the results of the meetings online.
Meanwhile, as El Monte deals with its own budget shortfalls, it isn’t considering eliminating the broadcasts of the meetings.
“Sure there are minutes,” Weintraub said. “But they don’t tell you everything that they want to know.”
jennifer.mclain@sgvn.com, tania.chatila@sgvn.com
(626) 962-8811, Ext. 2477, 2109 www.insidesocal.com/sgvgov
More response over the proposed consultant agreement story. This time from La Puente Councilman Dan Holloway. This is the text of an e-mail he sent me:
I read your story about the Charles Co./Del Terra contract. It had a lot of facts and comments. My only real concerns were that it failed to explain that I was the only Council Member to force Charles Co. and our City Manager to acknowledge the existence of the contract and voice mail in question. That only through my repeated questioning and not taking “no” as an acceptable answer to my questions did the truth finally came to light. By failing to do so you left the impression, based on Solis unsubstantiated comments, that I (along with others) could be the City Hall connection to Del Terra. Just for the record, I’m not and I have no connection with either Del Terra or the Charles Co. Failing to report that my reasons for not extending the ENA with the Charles Co. were wanting to finalize our city budget (which would take 45 days) and my opposition to a multi-million dollar subsidy to the Charles Co. which Solis and Storing support, left readers with an incomplete view of why I voted to wait. Secondly, you printed Solis allegations of a rumored City Hall connection to Del Terra without referencing Solis’ rumored connection to the Charles Co. including his being the driving force behind their selection as the projects contractor, their top supporter on the council and pushing hard for the subsidy. Without doing so you failed to give the reader the context in which to judge his comments.
I know we have talked about the slant of some of your stories before and I try and provide as much information as possible. Maybe it would be good to ask us if we want to respond to comments that reflect negatively on us when made by others. In this case, especially when there was no deadline constraint, I would have pointed out my role as I did above.
That’s what La Puente Mayor Louie Lujan told me this afternoon in response to the consultant proposal story that ran in today’s paper.
Lujan said he wants to move on with the project already, and just focus on getting things done.
But in the meantime, there likely will be further discussion on this failed agreement between the Charles Co. and Alliance Services Group, Inc. and whether “something fishy” was actually going on.
Lujan said the City Council will perform City Manager Carol Cowley’s employee performance evaluation in closed session on Monday (they’ve been putting this off for a while now).
“I’m sure this will come up,” Lujan said. That’s because, he said, some of the council members (most vocally, Dan Holloway) have taken issue with the fact that Cowley didn’t bring up the proposed contract and voicemail with the council before, even though she knew about it.
Here’s a sneak peek at the Leftovers column set to run in tomorrow’s paper:
Here’s a challenge for the proponents who are trying to throw three council members out of office in Baldwin Park: Anthony Bejarano Jr. said he’ll happily save everyone the trouble of a recall election if his opposition can get the roughly 4,700 validated signatures needed to move forward with the process.
“I will step down,” Bejarano said. “No need for an election. I will walk away.”
Game on according to local businessman Greg Tuttle, who served the recall intention notices on Bejarano and councilwomen Marlen Garcia and Monica Garcia Wednesday.
Even while Bejarano scoffed at the recall — calling it a blip on the radar — Tuttle remained hopeful he could get an election going as early as a year from now.
Experts say a recall election could easily run in the tens of thousands of dollars, and maybe even upwards of $100,000.
“It’s very hard,” said Douglas Johnson, a fellow with the Rose Institute of State and Local Government. “Very few recalls ever make it to the ballot. It takes money and it takes a lot of lawyers.”
Johnson estimated less than a quarter of recalls that start actually end up on the ballot.
Several of Baldwin Park’s recall proponents are members of the Community Alliance for Redevelopment Accountability, which is opposed to the city’s proposed downtown project.
CARA has received heavy support — including financial support — from some major statewide groups backing eminent domain reform.
But Tuttle has made it clear that the recall has nothing to do with CARA.
“This is something separate, from us the voters,” Tuttle said.
He doesn’t leave in Baldwin Park, so … he’s not a voter.
But Tuttle said he’s taking things one step at a time and he expects to file official recall paperwork with the City Clerk’s office today.
After, he said, he will file for a political action committee, so that the proponents’ major donors can start funneling in dollars for the recall effort.
It’ll be interesting to see who their backers are.
Until then, Bejarano said he’s not too concerned.
Tuttle said he has retained an attorney to help move the recall process along, though Bejarano said he can’t tell from the notices served Wednesday.
Here’s one of the grievances listed as a grounds for recall:
“Anthony Bejarano is more concerned about eating sushi at restaurants than taking care of the city and problems of day laborers and public safety.”
Mayor Manuel Lozano said he’s ready for the fight.
As for the Garcias? (Who are not related.) Marlen Garcia did not want to comment, saying she didn’t want to add “fuel to the fire,” and Monica Garcia didn’t call back.
*****
Rosemead just approved nearly $80,000 to start broadcasting its council meetings online. Glendora started live streaming its meetings nearly three months ago, and El Monte has been doing it for nearly three years.
Officials from each city said that broadcasting the meetings helps promote transparency in government.
“It’s not cheap,” El Monte spokesman Matt Weintraub said. “But it is an absolutely fantastic way for residents to monitor what is going on in the city.”
Well, maybe that explains why some West Covina residents are upset after hearing that their city council members are looking to save a few bucks by halting the broadcasts of their meetings on TV and online.
The total savings: $150,000.
Several residents expressed concern that this was an attempt by the city to try to prevent its residents from knowing what’s going on.
City officials deny that’s the motive. It has more to do with a $2 million budget deficit, they said.
City Manager Andrew Pasmant said the city will try to find alternative ways to communicate what is happening in the city, like posting the results of the meetings online.
Meanwhile, as El Monte deals with its own budget shortfalls, it isn’t considering eliminating the broadcasts of the meetings.
“Sure there are minutes,” Weintraub said. “But they don’t tell you everything that they want to know.”
jennifer.mclain@sgvn.com, tania.chatila@sgvn.com
(626) 962-8811, Ext. 2477, 2109
I just got this e-mail with the results of theAltadena Town Council June 21, 2008 Election. It’s listed here based on census track. The winners are in bold:
4601
*Eugene Sund – 75
4602
Okorie Ezieme – 118
Regina Grimes – 52
*Mabel Duncan – 31
4603.01
Alice Wessen – 65
*Walter Olszewski – 49
4603.03
*Dr. Sandra Thomas – 24
4610
Tecumseh Shackleford – 108
*Bobby Thompson – 46
Rev. C. R. Tillman – 4
4611
*Allan Wasserman – 29
4612
Ruth Neilan Edwards – 96
*George Lewis – 27
4613
*Susan Goldman – 11
*incumbents
As promised, a story about concerns over a proposed consultant agreement that involves La Puente is out. Here’s the link.