Mayor says state is bullying Huntington Beach, calls on other cities to fight Sacramento
Good morning. It’s Wednesday, April 24. I’m Carol Cormaci, bringing you this week’s TimesOC newsletter with a look at some of the latest local news and events.
As they promised last week after canceling one hastily scheduled news conference to respond to a lawsuit filed against the city by state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, three members of the Huntington Beach City Council, accompanied by City Atty. Michael Gates, rallied in front of City Hall Thursday and issued a “call to action.”
The state’s suit announced by Bonta on April 15 claims the city unlawfully passed an ordinance that allows it to require voter ID in local elections. This new law was born from Measure A, which included a series of amendments to the city’s charter that would also authorize city officials to monitor ballot boxes. It was approved by voters in March.
(Because I was asked about this after last week’s newsletter on the same topic, Huntington Beach has 132,370 registered voters, but of course not everyone regularly participates in elections. In the March Primary, Measure A received 32,892 votes in favor while 28,701 were opposed to it.)
Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark had some fighting words to say during the makeup news conference Thursday, according to the Daily Pilot report on the event by contributing writer Eric Licas.
“When the state announces a lawsuit like this over a measure adopted by the people of the city, the state is declaring war on the people of the city,” Van Der Mark said.
“I would like to make this a call to action,” she added. “I’d like to call for other cities who feel that they are being bullied by Sacramento to please join us.”
The city attorney also believes the state, as personified by Bonta in this case, is a big bully.
“We will not be bullied or intimidated while the attorney general takes to the podium at press conferences to fight policy battles in a public fotrum,” Gates said.
About two dozen supporters of the measure turned out to cheer on Van der Mark and the others as they spoke, Licas reported.
One of them, Huntington Beach resident Becky Ettinger, said she voted in favor of Measure A. She said she doesn’t believe existing election safeguards are sufficient.
“How do they know this is me?” Ettinger said. “This could be anybody. So I’m completely in favor of it, and I think our nation needs to go that way.”
Roughly a dozen opponents to Measure A also turned out for the news conference, Licas reported, standing to the side holding signs of protest and occasionally speaking out.
Another opponent of the voter ID law, Huntington Beach City Councilwoman Natalie Moser, who is on the opposite side of the political spectrum from the four-member majority of the council, also stood to watch the proceedings. Moser said she was not invited by her colleagues to participate in the event, and she saw it as more of political campaign event than a traditional city-sponsored news conference.
Her city is still in the middle of sorting out its budget and is falling behind on critical infrastructure projects, Moser told Licas. She pointed out that Measure A did not include any specific instructions on how to implement voter ID checks and ballot monitoring and that early analysis suggests that doing so would cost the city a minimum of $1.5 million.
“We are picking fights with the state, causing chaos, and we are not managing our home,” Moser said.
MORE NEWS
• A new $154-million ammunition pier at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach recently welcomed its first warship, the guided-missile destroyer Paul Hamilton. According to this news feature by contributing writer Daniel Langhorne, the visit essentially decommissioned the base’s World War II-era pier. After the last segment of the new pier is completed this summer, two destroyers will simultaneously dock in Seal Beach for the first time. Langhorne notes that since the closest Naval Weapons Station is in the state of Washington, far from the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s hub in San Diego, the new pier raises Seal Beach’s strategic importance for the Navy.
• Although some of the panel complained about the company owner’s tone while communicating with them, the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ultimately voted 4-0 to approve a five-year, up to $60-million contract with Ace Parking to provide parking services at John Wayne Airport.
• After three years of refining plans in trying to meet city requirements, a new Raising Cane’s last week received the narrow approval of the Costa Mesa City Council to build a 2,913-square-foot fast-food restaurant with two outdoor dining patios and a parking lot large enough to accommodate a two-lane drive through and 34 parking spaces on a vacant, 1-acre trapezoid of land just south of East 16th Street.
• The biggest expansion of the Disneyland Resort in 30 years, the $2-billion DisneyForward plan was approved on a unanimous vote last week by the Anaheim City Council but not without lingering questions on the part of the some Anaheim residents, according to this report by my colleague Gabriel San Román. Chief among the concerns is that the complete financial analysis of the project by the Woods Center for Economic Analysis and Forecasting at Cal State Fullerton has not been made public. Disney commissioned the $150,000 report and then touted it as an “independent economic analysis.”
• In other Disneyland Resort news also reported by San Román in the past week, a coalition of its union workers rallied for a boost in pay ahead of a contract fight. The Master Services Council, comprised of four major unions, represents 13,000 workers at the resort. Before long there may be more workers unionizing: Sales reps responsible for convincing people to buy timeshares in the Villas at Disneyland Hotel are seeking an election on whether or not they will join Unite Here Local 11, a union that already counts thousands of Disney hotel workers among its ranks. They are looking not only to get better pay but to be given higher commission rates.
• Fountain Valley recreational vehicle dealer Mike Thompson’s RV Super Stores, located on the south side of the 405 Freeway, has been struggling to get customers since the freeway was expanded and the view of the RV lot was obscured. On a split vote, the City Council last week approved an ordinance that would allow for a large digital sign to be erected facing the freeway. The dealership is on city-owned land that has been leased by the business since 2003. The proposed sign would be 50 feet tall, with two digital display panels measuring 13 feet tall and 34 feet wide. The business will still have to apply for the sign and gain the approval of the city sign committee.
• In the 18th year of a 20-year, $50-million commitment, the Irvine Co. and Donald Bren Foundation last week handed over a giant presentation check representing a $2-million donation to the Irvine Unified School District to enhance arts, music and science educational efforts at the district’s elementary schools. The gift was presented to district officials at the 40th annual Donald Bren Honors Concert at Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, in which more than 600 students participated.
PUBLIC SAFETY & COURTS
• New details emerged late last week in the April 16 break-in of a $5-million Newport Coast home that ended when one intruder was shot by a resident. Shortly thereafter, his accomplice found dead nearby of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The two suspects had been armed with a firearm, zip ties and a rope, according to Orange County Superior Court records. Pomona resident Andrew Miguel Rosas, 24, who was taken to a hospital after being shot by the resident, was arrested and faces charges of first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, carrying a loaded firearm in public and conspiring to commit a crime, all felonies.
• Two lawsuits were filed against Ovation Fertility last week alleging negligence at its Newport Beach location, where an employee mistakenly used hydrogen peroxide to clean an incubator holding embryos instead of a sterile solution. That action is alleged to have led to the deaths of embryos, which were later transferred to the plaintiffs. But there might have been other causes behind the lost embryos that all occurred during the same two-week time frame in January, lawyers note, since a variety of explanations were given by doctors to the couples involved. We learned late yesterday afternoon that nine more couples are suing Ovation over the loss of their embryos and that a 10th couple contacted a lawyer after they heard of the latest spate of suits.
• A Santa Ana man who was convicted in February of first-degree murder for the gang-related fatal shooting outside an apartment complex six years ago was sentenced Monday. Alexis Ascension, 25, was given life in prison without the possibility of parole, City News Service reported.
• Elijah Domminic Barrera, 29, pleaded not guilty Monday to molesting two girls 10 years ago at Boys & Girls Club in Garden Grove, according to a CNS report. Barrera, who was arrested Friday in the city of Orange, is accused of molesting one girl when she was about 7 or 8 and another when she was about 6 in August 2014, according to police. Barrera is being held on $1-million bail. Police suspect there may be more victims and asked anyone with relevant information to call Det. Adam Nikolic at (714) 741-5877 or email him at adamn@ggcity.org.
SPORTS
• The Angels played their 10,000th game Monday night, losing 4-2 at Angel Stadium to the Baltimore Orioles before a crowd announced at 26,081. Coincidentally, according to a City News Service report, the Angels also played their very first game against the Orioles on April 11, 1961, in Baltimore, winning 7-2. On Dec. 6, 1960 a group headed by the late Gene Autry, the singing cowboy film actor who became a media entrepreneur, was awarded an American League expansion franchise. Autry named the Angels for the Pacific Coast League team that had played in the city from 1903 through 1957.
LIFE & LEISURE
• Knott’s Hotel, formerly known as the Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel, showed off its recent multimillion-dollar renovation at an open house event, according to this report by TimesOC’s Sarah Mosqueda. The hotel features 322 redesigned guest rooms and suites, a lobby and great room, outdoor courtyard, expanded gift shop, a new coffee bar and full-service hotel restaurant. Many of the decorating touches are in homage to the late Walter and Cordelia Knott, founders of Knott’s Berry Farm. For example, each guest room is decorated with one of four sets of dinner plates hearkening back to Cordelia’s wedding china. Each set depicts different eras of the farm, starting from the berry stand to the roaring ’20s.
• Current and former members of Huntington Beach Boy Scout Troop 1, founded in 1917 (making it one of the oldest troops west of the Mississippi) celebrated their landmark log cabin in Lake Park on its centennial this past weekend. After the original cabin had to be demolished more than 50 years ago, a new one was built in 1974 with the help of the community and named the Russ Paxson Cabin, in honor of a highly respected former scoutmaster who had been a member of the troop as a youth.
• Dignity Memorial, a national business that assists people with funerals and cremations, operates several sites in Orange County. Among its offerings is a program that assists people who have lost their spouses to ease into a new normal without their loved ones. My colleague Sara Cardine was intrigued when she learned of this program, which is called Living Information for Today (LIFT) and is organized locally for Dignity clients by Santa Ana’s Fairhaven Memorial Park & Mortuary. For this feature story, Cardine accompanied some of the participants in a recent LIFT outing to Marconi Autmotive Museum in Tustin, where she learned just how much this kind of program means to widows and widowers.
CALENDAR THIS
• The edgy comedy “Beetlejuice the Musical,” based on Tim Burton’s 1988 film, is on stage at the Segerstrom in Costa Mesa through Sunday. According to this entertainment feature by Sarah Mosqueda, while film Burton collaborator Danny Elfman wrote the score for the film, the music and lyrics for the musical version are by Eddie Perfect, with a book by Scott Brown and Anthony King. Tickets can be ordered here.
• La Palma Festival of Nations will celebrate La Palma’s cultural heritage through dancing, performances and exhibits on Saturday, April 27. The day starts at 10:30 a.m. with a hometown parade along La Palma’s Walker Street, followed by a festival that lasts until 6 p.m. Organizers promise carnival rides, a petting zoo, games and cultural entertainment. Food trucks will be on site as well as a wine and beer garden. La Palma Central Park is located at 7821 Walker St.
• Think Laguna First has organized a Spring Sidewalk Sale on Saturday, April 27. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 30 Laguna Beach retailers were listed on the nonprofit’s website as those who will welcome sidewalk shoppers that day during their regular business hours. To learn more visit thinklagunafirst.com/springsale.
• The annual Rancho Days Fiesta is returning to Heritage Hill Historical Park, 25151 Serrano Road in Lake Forest, on Saturday, May 4 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. This free event puts the spotlight on Orange County’s rancho era. It includes interactive activities, cultural performances, craft workshops, piñata breaking and more. Guests can also watch Charro horseback riding and roping demonstrations and explore the park’s historic buildings with guided tours provided by Amigos de la Colina docents.
• Looking a couple of weeks ahead: Sherman Library & Gardens’ Volunteer Assn. is hosting its Spring Garden Art Faire on Saturday, May 11. There will be one-of-a-kind handmade spring items for sale, with all of the proceeds benefiting Sherman Library & Gardens. Children can create a birdhouse at the craft table and make a Mother’s Day card to take home. Instructor-led classes will feature spring-themed projects throughout the day. The event is free with garden admission, which is $5 for nonmembers. Sherman Library & Gardens is located at 2647 E. Coast Hwy. in Corona del Mar.
KEEP IN TOUCH
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