This probably happened years ago, but I noticed the city concreted in the tunnel at the bottom of the playground airplane at Palm View Park on Lark Ellen and Puente avenues in West Covina. I grew up in a cul de sac across the street. And I spent a lot of time playing in that thing.

In case you”re not old, the plane used to have a tunnel on the bottom that ran from front to back.
It always smelled like urine, so I only went in when my mom wasn’t paying attention.

Some of my best memories took place at Palm View. I remember getting a remote-controlled car and launching it out of the tunnel into the sand for a couple hours until the car broke. I also remember the city park staff putting down black trash sacks on the hill by the clubhouse and turning on the sprinklers so we could go sliding on hot days.

During the course of our reporting on city finance, reporter Daniel Tedford found out an interesting quirk about Irwindale.
During their City Council meetings, the council convenes two other governing bodies: the city’s redevelopment agency and it’s housing authority.

The get paid $60 for the redevelopment agency and $100 for the housing authority.

Tedford found out they often convene the meetings even if there is nothing to talk about on the agenda.
I had to see it for myself, so I went to their council meeting last week.

After talking about a parking garage and getting a presentation from the city’s chamber of commerce, the council opened the redevelopment agency. In a total of about 60 seconds, they opened the public comment period, approved the minutes and Manuel Garcia requested an update. Then the meeting was closed. The same thing happened with the housing authority.

Five people were in the audience: me, two of Councilman Mark Breceda’s friends, a woman and a man with a very full mustache.

City Attorney Fred Gallante said the council is mandated to approve minutes from the previous housing authority and redevelopment agency meetings. No other city I know of does this.

Click this link if you want to see a City Council that exudes manliness.

I know we don’t write much about Irwindale, but we should. A town with staches like these should have its own newspaper. I know only three of the council members have true mustaches, but I feel the goatees are awesome enough to warrant mention.

For three years a student failed to make any progress.

A staff member for U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis told us on Friday that Solis wouldn’t talk to us because we ask hard questions.

Solis, who grew up in La Puente, was one of five people given awards at a fundraiser in Monterey Park on Friday night.

The money was to benefit East Los Angeles Women’s Center, a shelter that helps abused women or women who are suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Reporter Juliette Funes was kept away from Solis because our reporters, in the past, have asked questions that required too much research, according to Cindy Chen, Solis’ special assistant.

This has been a common experience with Solis. She usually won’t take questions about issues that deal with labor.

Solis was literally holding hands with a Spanish-language television reporter.

—

* A commenter asked what Funes planned to ask Solis:
Funes said she was only going to ask about the award.

From Staff Writer James Wagner

LA PUENTE – Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against a La Puente planning commissioner and councilman whom the District Attorney’s Office investigated on allegations of conspiracy and money laundering, according to a memo released Wednesday.

The La Puente City Council is scheduled to hold a meeting Friday to consider Klinakis and Vince House, who are finalists for a council seat vacated by former Mayor Louie Lujan.

If I could name a prototype for a perfect small park, it would be Jardin de Roca Park in Irwindale.

The four-acre plot has a skate park, basketball hoops, tennis courts, a nice trail, native plants, historical placards, picnic benches and a playground.

In the middle sits a nice open field.

Jardin de Roca, by the way, means “rock garden” in Spanish.

The last two weeks, I’ve had the chance to eat and walk there with my wife during lunch breaks.

It’s given us a peaceful place to relax and talk about our future.

And since it’s so close to the newspaper office, members of the the staff often go there after work to exercise.

Since most of us regularly get traffic tickets in Irwindale, I feel like we’ve helped pay to keep it beautiful.

***

USC last week put out an interesting study on local television news.

You can see it at http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/LALocalNews2010.pdf

The study found that local television news covered local government about 1 percent of the time – about 22 seconds per broadcast.

Business and the economy got 2 percent. Fires and water line breaks got about 4 percent. So did local civic issues.

Entertainment got 7 percent. Light features and offbeat stories got about 8 percent. Crime got 10 percent. Sports and weather got 12 percent. Seven percent was teasers.

About 25 percent of the news was local. And about 28 percent of the time was spent on commercials.

KCBS and KCAL did the best job at reporting things of “civic importance,” such as local government, crime of public officials, rewards, coverage of local catastrophes and citizen-related health issues. Those stories made up 17.2 and 15.8 percent of coverage.

The study reported that TV used 1.9 percent of its news hole to cover government in the LA media market.

For comparison purposes, the study also looked at the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles Times used 3.3 percent for local government.

I didn’t have time to duplicate the methodology in the report, but I took a quick look at our papers.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week, we published in our news section 33 local news stories and 26 non-local stories. That doesn’t count coverage of prep sports and local opinion pieces.

As far as “civic importance” goes, our percentages were a little higher than those covered in the study.

We dedicated about 3 percent to 5 percent of our news hole – usually about four or five stories – to local government. Most of those started on the front page. Civic affairs also came in about 4 percent each.

In Wednesday’s paper, for instance, we ran about 11 stories about government or civic issues.

– Ben Baeder is the Deputy Metro Editor of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

I thought dogs were supposed to have psychic ability to predict earthquakes.
My lazy mutts were sawing logs when Tuesday morning’s 4.4 quake woke me up.
My wife was screaming, though.
One of our picture frames fell down and broke.
It looks like the earthquake was centered where Rosemead Boulevard goes over the Whittier Narrows Dam, according to coordinates on the USGS map.
We live in Whittier.
This whole place is pretty geologically active. Geologists say the Montebello and Puente hills are relatively new – I forget how old – and were caused by uplifting from earthquakes. In addition, there’s still oil in the ground underneath the Whittier Narrows. Oil is often found pooled up along fault lines. About six years ago, I wrote a story about all the oil there. I’ll dig it up later if I have time.
There’s also lots of oil in the hills. PXP pumps it out of the Montebello Hills. And Matrix Oil pumps it out of the Puente Hills north of Whittier.

Here’s an update on the story from 2008 when then-Councilman Anthony Bejarano was arrested after he intervened when the police pulled over his friends. Bejarano, who said he had been drinking, told the driver of the car he didn’t have to answer the officers’ questions. Then he and the officers got into an argument. The officer claimed Bejarano and one of his friends were very drunk. Bejarano and his friend said the weren’t:

BALDWIN PARK – The city rejected a $1 million claim filed by a man who says police wrongly arrested him during an incident that also led to the arrest of a city councilman.

626-962-8811, ext. 2230