CITY HALL ROUNDUP : Torrance gets its mobile stage moving--after 11 months in storage.

STAGE FRIGHT: First, we found out that Torrance officials let a $104,000 tractor-type loader sit idle for nearly two years because they didn’t have a trailer strong enough to haul it around.

Now, we hear they’ve left a $63,000 outdoor stage without actors for nearly a year.

What started as a noble endeavor to bring the arts to the people on a mobile stage has turned into an 11-month wait for the footlights.

The stage, approved for purchase by the City Council on May 14, 1991, and delivered July 21, has been sitting in a city yard, folded shut and looking less like a performance stage than a large white refrigerator truck.

Torrance officials say the stage, intended primarily for summer use, will have its premiere deployment during Fourth of July festivities at Wilson Park.

But why did its initial curtain call take so long? City officials offered several reasons.

After it was delivered last year, Parks and Recreation Director Gene G. Barnett said, paperwork delays kept the city from properly registering it with the Department of Motor Vehicles for movement to the various city parks.

State DMV records show that the stage was registered for the road Dec. 11. But by then the summer was long gone and General Services Director Bill White said winter weather could hamper its use. The city had no occasion to use it this winter or spring, despite the “hydraulically operated canopy for sun and rain protection” touted in specifications given to the City Council before the stage was purchased.

RUDE BARBS: Men who shout, drink and bully. The next “Donahue?”

No, but according to a miffed Hermosa Beach councilwoman, it describes the behavior of some of her four fellow council members--all of them men.

“I have seen all types of personalities being involved in the political process in Hermosa Beach over the last decade, but I have never seen such a disrespect to the office or members of the public from any former or current officials of this city,” Kathleen Midstokke wrote in a memo released last week.

Midstokke catalogued a list of “distasteful” actions originating from two unnamed council members over the last months. She charged some of her colleagues with shouting “vulgar profanities” in public, violating drinking laws at the annual city picnic June 6, and threatening to fire a city employee if he failed to grant a pending city permit.

First-term Councilmen Robert Benz and Sam Edgerton suspect that they were the targets of the barbed memo. Edgerton dismissed Midstokke’s accusations as either untrue or irrelevant.

Attacking what he called Midstokke’s “political correctness,” Benz suggested she could either undergo “an “attitude adjustment or she could split.” Asked if he would modify his behavior as a result of the memo, Benz laughed.

“Hell, no.”

FADE OUT: In the savage ratings wars of television, only the strong survive.

Effective July 7, MultiVision Cable will drop its live coverage of Hermosa Beach City Planning Commission meetings and replace it with live coverage of Manhattan Beach City Council meetings, which previously have been broadcast on a tape-delay basis.

MultiVision Cable believes that a city council should have priority over a planning commission. The company has offered to provide live coverage of the planning commission on Wednesday nights, if Hermosa Beach officials will move their longstanding Tuesday night meetings.

They won’t.

“Hermosa Beach shouldn’t have to accommodate MultiVision. They should have to accommodate us,” Mayor Robert Essertier said. He said the cable company should have two government cable channels and supply live broadcasts of Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach on separate channels.

But MultiVision regional program manager Art Moulsby said one channel is enough to cover both beach cities. While he couldn’t specify exactly what the ratings of the respective meetings are, he did say local viewership is “not at an extremely high rate.”

That’s show biz.

LANDSLIDE WARS: Just because the ground is moving doesn’t mean the owner shouldn’t be allowed to use it.

At least, that seemed to be the argument of a Rolling Hills man who was enraged that the City Council wouldn’t allow parking on a plot of land in the Flying Triangle landslide area that he had sold to another man.

At last week’s council meeting, Bob Lamb at first tried to cajole the council into allowing some use of the land. But then his comments began to stray into other areas, including a rambling discussion of the Vietnam War.

When Mayor Gordana Swanson asked him to stick to the point, Lamb said he had never addressed the council in his 20 years as a resident and that he planned to take his turn--all of it--right then and there.

When Sheriff’s Capt. William Mangan tried to explain proper meeting decorum, things got a little testy as the property’s new owner, Ken Thomas, entered the fray.

Shouting obscenities and making nasty gestures, Thomas promised the council members he would see them in court and stormed out.

DAWG-GONE GOOD: Criminals beware. Alk’s back.

The prize-winning Manhattan Beach police dog, who recently recovered from back surgery that saved his law enforcement career, has won his second first-place award in a row at the annual Redondo Beach K-9 Trials.

Out-sniffing and outmaneuvering canine colleagues from as far north as Bakersfield and as far south as San Diego, Alk showed his skill in the box search (finding a suspect under one of six boxes in under 90 seconds), basic obedience, agility on an obstacle course and protection work.

Now it’s back to the streets for Alk and his human partner, Officer Mike Navarette. Be careful out there, guys.

LAST WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS

Palos Verdes Estates: Rolling Hills Preparatory School last week won permission from the City Council to move its 224 students to the former Malaga Cove School campus. The campus was closed last year because of declining public school enrollments.

Torrance: The Madrona Marsh Nature Preserve will finally get an interim visitor’s center under plans approved by City Council members last week. Although far short of the multimillion-dollar facility the city hopes one day to build, the $50,000 trailer and parking lot project will provide at least some natural history exhibits to enhance visits to the marsh itself.

THIS WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS

Lawndale: Magician Bob Stone is scheduled to stage a show at the Lawndale Civic Center at 1 p.m. Tuesday to open the library’s summer reading program. Weekly reading activities will continue every Thursday from July 8 to Aug. 20 at the city’s library, 14615 Burin Ave. Call (310) 767-0177 for information.

MEETINGS THIS WEEK

Inglewood: 7 p.m. Tuesday, 1 Manchester Blvd. (310) 412-5280. No cable telecast.

Lawndale: 7 p.m. Thursday, 14717 Burin Ave. (310) 973-4321. Televised live on Channel 60 and repeated several times during the week.

Los Angeles: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 200 N. Spring St., Los Angeles. In San Pedro, (310) 548-7637; in Wilmington, (310) 548-7586; in Harbor City/Harbor Gateway, (310) 548-7664; in Westchester, (310) 641-4717. Televised live on Channel 35; meetings repeated individually at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and collectively on Sunday starting at 10 a.m.

Rancho Palos Verdes: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Hesse Park, 29201 Hawthorne Blvd. (310) 377-0360. Televised live on Channel 3; repeated at 7:30 p.m. the following Thursday.