Recently in Rancho Palos Verdes Category

Rancho Palos Verdes officials are warning motorists that road work is expected to cause "significant" traffic delays on Palos Verdes Drive South near Schooner and Conqueror drives from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday.

Motorists are encouraged to use alternate travel routes.

For all those Rancho Palos Verdes residents -- or maybe just the subset in Portguese Bend -- who are eagerly awaiting news of a ruling in one of the lawsuits I wrote about recently, there's been a delay.

The ultimate tally of election results reveal that Rancho Palos Verdes' Measure C went down to defeat even more soundly than I reported last night.

The initiative, which would have turned RPV from a general law city to a charter city and adopted a broad charter document, earned just 27.7 percent of the vote, according to results online.

The results, which still need to be certified, show 6,582 ballots cast -- turnout of about 23.7 percent. Rancho Palos Verdes voters also voted in the Los Angeles Community College District elections.

One thing to note on the voting results page for the city of Los Angeles -- which tallied the RPV ballots -- is the ballot measures in both cities. For L.A., it's yes, yes, yes, yes ... and one no for nine initiatives. Then, in RPV, it's a big fat NO. Hmmm ... different electorates?

The Palos Verdes Peninsula League of Women Voters is hosting a forum on Measure C in Rancho Palos Verdes tonight.

The 7:30 p.m. event -- in the community room at Hesse Park, 29301 Hawthorne Blvd. -- is set to address a March 8 ballot measure that would turn Rancho Palos Verdes from a general law city into a charter city.

In recent weeks, the debate over the measure has proved surprisingly contentious, with opponents raising the specter of  the shenanigans in Bell (a charter city) and saying the measure is coming to voters with little warning, despite multiple public meetings on the proposed charter.

Tonight's event will have speakers from both sides as well a question-and-answer session.

Marymount College President released a short statement via his political consultant this morning in response to the defeat of Measure P on Tuesday. Here it is:

"It is unfortunate for Marymount College and for the community of Rancho Palos Verdes that a campaign to obscure truth and hide the facts was successful. Despite the outcome, we are proud and honored to have earned the support of 6345 voters. We continue to believe that the Marymount Plan is the right choice for Rancho Palos Verdes.  Moving forward we will do what we do everyday, put our best foot forward to serve our students and this community."

I'll bring you more reactions with a story later today.

"How can the same City Council that wants to build a huge dog kennel on Point Vicente be against the Marymount Plan?"

*See update at the end of this post.

That's the question the Yes on Measure P campaign raises in a eyebrow-raising e-mail sent out today. Apparently a mailer that brings up a similar issue -- and visually compares a college student to a dog -- is set to be sent out soon.

It's a new twist in a fierce campaign that Marymount College is waging in its effort to persuade Rancho Palos Verdes voters to back expansion plans that include dormitories. (Most of the plan already has city approval and can proceed without voter backing. More info is in a story that ran today.)

Asked about the e-mail, which addresses the animal-centered Annenberg Project at Lower Point Vicente, college President Michael Brophy said the comparison is the first issue that voters raise with him when he's out campaigning for Measure P.

"This is a fun one," Brophy said of the e-mail.

The City Council has largely been supportive of controversial plans for the Annenberg education center, which would be built on public land. The council has also approved Marymount's plans, but the two projects have received starkly different treatment, Brophy said.

"They're certainly expediting this project on public land and you just look across town at little old Marymount and -- you know the story," Brophy said.

But calling the the Annenberg project "a big dog kennel" is clearly provocative. The project would include animal adoption suites, but Annenberg Foundation officials have bristled when opponents call the center a "kennel."

Councilman Brian Campbell, who said he shares recent concerns raised about Annenberg's plans, called the e-mail was "the dumbest political stunt in history." The council has voted unanimously to oppose the initiative.

"They will lose this election and I bet you people will say this is what did it," Campbell said.

Asked about the word choice in the mailer, Brophy said: "Is it not a kennel? I

do know that people say that."

Brophy added that Marymount supports the Annenberg project. The full text of the email follows.

*UPDATE: In a debate on Thursday night, former Rep. Steve Kuykendall, a Marymount consultant, said that the whole Annenberg this was "an attempt at humor." The college apparently apologized for the mailer/email. "Obviously, it didn't plan well," Kuykendall said.

Video of the debate is posted on the blog of anti-P Planning Commissioner Jeff Lewis. The Annenberg response is the fifth clip down.

Sixteen months after it opened amid concerning uncertainty and terrible economic conditions, Terranea Resort today finds itself under a new financial regime.

Lowe Enterprises, the Los Angeles-based developer that oversaw building of the $480 million complex in Rancho Palos Verdes, announced today that it had reached a deal to provide "for the long-term stability of Terranea Resort."

The deal is a joint venture with San Diego-based JC Resorts, which owns a handful of properties in Southern California.

According to a press release from Lowe, the deal includes an extension of loans on Terranea and "new capital commitments of over $100 million."

ST Residential, the consortium created when the FDIC sold most of the loans held by now-defunct Corus Bank to Starwood Capital and other investors, still holds the loans and has contributed capital, the release stated.

ST Residential acquired the second loan on Terranea that had been held by an investment company controlled by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates. That company, Cascade Investment, has worked closely with Lowe on previous projects.

Lowe's resort management subsidiary, Destination Hotels & Resorts, will continue to run Terranea. Maintaining that continuity had been a major concern of local government officials -- who had last year weighed loaning $8.2 million in hotel taxes to Lowe before the resort opened.

Lenders to Terranea in August 2009 had filed notices of default against the property, and other groups have filed multiple lawsuits against the Lowe subsidiary that is the official developer. Individual investors who hoped to own part-time vacation properties at the resort have also filed lawsuits. It's not clear to me yet how this deal will affect those cases.

County elections officials began mailing sample ballots last Thursday for the Nov. 2 election, a spokeswoman announced today.

You can look up your sample ballot at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's website.

Rancho Palos Verdes voters who have followed the saga of Measure P, Marymount College's bid to get voter approval for its campus expansion (most of which was already approved by the city), will be particularly interested.

The sample ballots contain the pro and con arguments and rebuttals for the initiative. The language was changed after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge earlier this month sided with opponents of Measure P in two separate but related lawsuits.

The statements are on page 18 through 21 of the RPV sample ballot, and I've pasted them after the jump. City Attorney Carol Lynch's analysis is on pages 16 to 17.

Here's your regular update on the ongoing, heated campaign for and against Marymount College's Measure P, an effort to win Rancho Palos Verdes voter approval for an expansion plan that includes dorms. With the exception of student housing, most of the plan has already been approved by the City Council, which opposes the initiative in part because it removes some city oversight.

Councilman Anthony Misetich this week laid into Marymount officials -- in a speech at a public meeting and in a robocall made to residents -- for a newspaper advertisement and mailer that featured a quote from him that he says was taken out of context.

Misetich opposes Measure P and authored a ballot argument against the initiative.

But that might not have been clear to readers of a recent pro-P mailer and full-page ad in the PV News ("Your Vote. Your Right.") that stated: "The citizens of our City are well informed and quite capable of making the right choice. Councilman Misetich agrees, telling the Peninsula News 'I have full confidence in the citizens of Rancho Palos Verdes being an engaged electorate.'"

"My comments were hijacked," Misetich told me yesterday. "It's implying that I'm in favor of Measure P when I am not. I've publicly come out against Measure P."

In the quote, he had been referring to RPV's effort to get voter approval for a city charter.

My post yesterday on a local unit of the California Republican Assembly voting to endorse Marymount College's Measure P touched a nerve.

Rick Marshall, secretary to the Palos Verdes Peninsula unit and Senate District Director for the 25th Senate District, leapt to take the blame for the vote. He apologized for the incident, saying the vote was nullified.

"On these kinds of things, the speculation is rampant," Marshall told me. "I fully take responsibility for the error. It created a controversy where it didn't need to be."

Though he knew the unit's bylaws required membership for 30 days before voting in a "local endorsing convention," Marshall said he did not know the rule existed at the statewide level and could not be suspended.

"What happened is I made an error," Marshall said.

After the jump, you can read on to learn more about this fun installment in the Marymount College expansion controversy.