QUARTER LOSSES: The Orange County Transportation Authority...

QUARTER LOSSES: The Orange County Transportation Authority issued nearly 160,000 monthly bus passes during the first quarter of this year. Nearly a third were the $1 coupon books for one-way fare. . . . They aren’t discounts; you pay the same in cash to the bus driver. But spokesman Ed Clifford says people buy them for convenience, not for value: “Kids are great at losing change. The parents can give them coupons to get them to soccer practice and not worry they’ll lose the bus money.”

NOT ALL RITZY: The new Zagat Survey of U.S. hotels and resorts is out, heaping lavish praise on the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point. Zagat ranks it the fourth-best resort in the country, with kudos such as “majestic,” “near perfect,” “killer views” and “paradise.” . . . Newport Beach’s Sheraton Hotel fares less well: “bad service,” “our surveyors had few kind words.” As for the Inn at the Park Hotel in Anaheim, Zagat deems it “shabby . . . in need of remodeling.”

IT’S NO SECRET: Carole Walters of the Committees of Correspondence, which opposes the Measure R half-cent sales tax increase, often complains about political back room deals. But at Tuesday’s supervisors’ meeting, she had a different idea. She praised Supervisor Jim Silva, who announced his Measure R opposition at a strategy meeting of its opponents. “Thank you for coming out,” Walters said. “But you should have had a secret meeting” to avoid controversy.

DEATH ABOARD: It was 1947 when Beulah Overell and her boyfriend were charged with bludgeoning to death her wealthy Newport Beach parents aboard their yacht, then dynamiting the boat in Newport Harbor. Both were acquitted. . . . International photographer Lewis Baltz has special reason to remember. His father, as county coroner then, was a key prosecution witness. Baltz produced an illustrated book about the case last year, “The Deaths in Newport.” . . . He has since turned it into a photographic exhibit, now on display at the Gallery RAM USA in Santa Monica. (F1)

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Hop on the Bus

The most popular monthly bus pass the first quarter of the year was a coupon book for one-way fares: Type of Pass: Number Sold $1 coupon book: 55,706 Local: 47,513 Student: 20,879 Senior/disabled: 20,493 Other: 14,828 Source: Orange County Transportation Authority