WestchesterParents

This story appears on Ron Kayes web site, www.ronkayela.com.  Editors note: Whatever waivers the Mayor gets in his iDesign schools OUR LMU/iDesign schools should get the same. None of this some schools get better deals than others.

You got to love life’s little ironies like Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa figuring out one month into the school year — and three years after he wanted to take over all of LAUSD — that there’s 86 state laws that make it impossible to run good schools.

No kidding, he’s cut a quiet deal with LAUSD to seek state a waiver from the 86 state laws that protect teachers and students from administrators who think they can do anything they want with public money. And the school unions are mad as hell.

So here’s the guy who started as a teachers union organizer, the man who these days brings companies to their knees in labor disputes and now suddenly he wants to “waive all laws that can be waived.” because he finds requirements on teacher certification, math training, the employee merit system, student promotion, student retention and dozens other issues.

“Everyone agrees that the regulations imposed by Sacramento have taken dollars away from our classrooms and wasted them on the bureaucracy,” mayoral spokeswoman Emma Soichet to the Daily News’ George Sanchez.

A lot of people who said the same thing for years — like the Valley school breakup movement and other reformers — got the cold shoulder from Antonio and his pals but this time it’s different. “We need to do this quickly because things have not been working in the district for a long time,” said school board president Monica Garcia.

Read the rest of the article at Ron Kaye LA

The Daily News article is here

Tags: GENERAL // Add Comment »

Blogger LA Creek Freak writes about the recent so-called Sustainable Water Forum and describes a very different H. David Nahai from the one that I’m familiar with.

The forum was put together to launch the cities effort to convince residents that recycled sewage is safe enough to mix into our water supply system and drink from the tap. A process known as Toilet to Tap.

At the moral center of the event was David Nahai who has served as the head of of DWP since late last year. I’ve encountered Nahai before, in his longtime role as a environmental stalwart on the regional water board. He’s great. One of the mayor’s very best environmental moves was to hire him to run the DWP. David Nahai is up-front, clear, principled and generous. He continually emphasized that water solutions would be based in partnership and collaboration - with an array of city departments, other governmental agencies, neighborhood councils, community groups, and an engaged public. He frequently voiced praise of (and deferred credit to) the work being done by his staff. He uttered the most stark (for a public official) assessment of the damage caused by L.A.’s thirst for imported water, saying that, in the Owens Valley “we left in our wake an environmental calamity.”

The moral center? An Environmental Stalwart? Principled and generous? That is not the Nahai that I’ve seen. Here is the Nahai that I know.

• Nahai tells the mayor and the city council that the LADWP has $182 million in ’surplus’ funds that it can transfer to the city’s general fund. Nahai approved this transfer while acknowledging that the cities underground electrical infrastructure has been decaying badly. Days later he begins a campaign for an electricity rate increase while holding up the tragic Westchester underground electrical explosion that took the life of a LAFD firefighter as evidence for the rate increase.
   
  If Nahai had a moral center he would have resisted requests by city officials to transfer money away from the LADWP and argue that the LADWP needs these funds to upgrade the underground infrastructure and protect the people. The hundreds of millions of dollars in power transfers over the last decade could have gone a long way into modernizing the system but the principled and generous Nahia instead decided that his boss’s (Villaraigosa) request to put money into the general fund was more important than ensuring a safe electrical supply.
   
• An audit performed by his own department found that Nahai’s own home uses over 1,100 gallons of water per day! That’s about 300% more than the average resident. Weeks later, Nahai and the Board of Water and Power Commissioners drew up an Emergency Water Conservation Ordinance that places the entire burden on water conservation entirely on residents and none at all on current and future housing production.
   
  If Nahai was an environmental stalwart his family should have been using about 350 gallons per day which is about average for a family of four. An environmental stalwart would also be arguing with city leaders that the last decades housing production and the accompanying water requirement has outstripped natures very real water supply water limits.  He should be urging city leaders to support a housing production moratorium until they can guarantee sufficient supplies.
   
• Nahai is proposing a so-called Green Path North power transmission project to supply Los Angeles electricity from geo thermal sources. The transmission line would put towering structures that would would mar scenic vistas and intrude on private property. Met with criticism of his proposal, an undaunted Nahai later proposed burying some portions of the transmission but critics responded by pointing out that digging up the land would mar the sensitive desert landscape for years and harm plants that have lived there for perhaps 1,000 years. 

In reality H. David Nahia is less the environmental stalwart and more the mayors point man to provide water and electrical infrastucture for this city’s unsustainable plans for growth.

LA Creek Freak got this right saying: “Basically, we’re not getting any more imported water, so we’re going to have to make the water that we already have go further. ”

However the fact is, we’ll be getting less imported water and even with recycled water it will not be enough to sustain city halls housing appetite. In November the State Water Project will be coming out with their preliminary estimates on how much water their contractors (including the MWD) will get. I suspect that there will be further cutbacks.

Tags: MANAGING GROWTH, WATER // 3 Comments »

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving. But in all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. 

By David Blankenhorn

I’m a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.

Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans have increasingly emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage, and in part because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That’s certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I’ve come to a different conclusion.

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

[Read more →]

Tags: GENERAL, RAISING CHILDREN // Add Comment »

Assembly member Mike Feuer (D) was quoted in the Los Angeles Times that Measure R will “protect Los Angeles forever” by allowing “us to clear up our gridlock and clean the air.” 

Uh, yeah.. right Mike. Forever.  

The ballot measure will hike the sales tax in Los Angeles County from 8.25 cents to 8.75 cents for each dollar spent and must be approved by 2/3 of the voters who presumably want to tax themselves further.   I wonder if anyone can afford it given the state of our economy today.

The first thought I had when he made that claim were the $16 BILLION in water bond measures that made promises or assurances that never came through:

1996 - Voters approved Proposition 204, the “Safe Clean Reliable Water Supply Act,” a $995 million bond that promised to “increase water supplies.”

2000 - Voters approved Proposition 12, the “Safe Neighborhood Parks, Clean Water, Clean Air and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2000” borrowed $2.1 billion based on proponent’s assurances that “This measure is vital because it protects the lands that give us clean water.”

2000 - Voters also passed Proposition 13, the “Safe Drinking Water, Clean Water, Watershed Protection and Flood Protection Bond Act,” for an additional $1.97 billion of bonds after proponents warned them (in language almost identical to the arguments for Prop. 204) that “We can’t take our drinking water for granted. Water officials predict major shortages and say existing programs won’t fix the problem.”

2002 - Voters approved Proposition 40, the “California Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe Neighborhood Parks and Coastal Protection Act of 2002” that borrowed $2.6 billion. Proponents promised (in words exactly the same as the empty promise they made in Proposition 12): “This measure is vital because it protects the lands that give us clean water.”

2003 - Voters authorized $3.44 billion of water bonds by passing Prop. 50, “The Water Security, Clean Drinking Water, Coastal and Beach Protection Act of 2002.” Supporters promised: “California’s population is expected to nearly double in the next forty years. Proposition 50 funds state and local water system improvements needed to keep up with population growth by providing new water supplies and supporting water conservation programs.”

2006 - voters approved Prop 84 that for a $5.4 billion bond. The “Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act Of 2006″. Supporters promised: “Prop. 84 will increase the reliability of California’s water supply.”

The problem with today’s elected officials is that they always treat the symptoms (traffic, electricity, water, overcrowded schools) and never the root cause, the city’s obsession of encouraging growth.  They also make promises that they simply cannot deliver on.

This tax, like many of the other bonds and measures passed before it that never lived up to their promises will only continue to hurt LA’s families.

Vote NO on R

ref: Picture borrowed from LACityBeat

Tags: GENERAL // 1 Comment »

For years, local Westchester and Playa Del Rey residents have been wrestling with the issue of LAX expansion. A VERY large portion of our town has been forever lost to airport expansion.

In the early 1960’s, a movement to regionalize LAX and move the majority of the flights to Palmdale, CA was close to becoming a reality. In 1966 The Los Angeles Department of Airports, now called Los Angeles World Airports, orLAWA, acquired several thousand acres of land around Plant 42 to be developed into the future “Palmdale Intercontinental Airport,” with the goal of surpassing the air traffic of LAX. To date, LAWA has so far not developed its Palmdale airport beyond that of a small commuter airport serving only the Antelope Valley. With few airlines able to sustain long-term service from the airport, only recently has work towards the construction of a larger terminal been started.

The mighty Palmdale Airport. US Air Force Plant 42 had its early beginnings in 1935, when its airstrip was used to bivouac squadrons of planes.

Also beginning in the 1960’s, many former homes and residential areas began to be acquired, and or condemned by LAWA. This remains the most hotly contested issue in the area: Expansion or no expansion. However, in many parts of the world, the airport expansion issue has been taken out to sea, and at one point LAX looked offshore as well. Beginning in 1968, plans were made to move a large part of LAX into the Pacific Ocean. No kidding.

THE ISLAND RUNWAYS OF LAX, 1968. This is a drawing of a combined Los Angeles International Airport. The drawing shows a new Santa Monica Island (off Playa Del Rey) with a subway connecting to the airports (bottom) and a causeway, bridges and subway at the top of drawing. The island had provisions for the SST (the now defunct: Concorde), with 2-15,000 ft. runways. (Courtesy, Los Angeles Public Library).

Continuing in the tradition of naming our offshore islands after Christian Saints (Santa Catalina, San Nicolas, San Clemente, etc.), a new island: Santa Monica Island, was to be built offshore and connected by two bridges and subways. In the end, the construction would have substantially mitigated the need to condemn homes in the area, and would have drastically lessened aircraft noise.

Santa Monica Island was to have its own commercial area, hotels, art center, trade center and office building, apartments, parks and beaches, an aerospace university and a sports center. This is drawn by architect R. Donald Jaye. The idea was to use the current LAX runways for quieter regional flights, and use the island terminals for international and transcontinental travel. (Courtesy, Los Angeles Public Library).

The idea of a runway in the ocean may seem fantastic to many, but all over the world major international airports have been built on reclaimed land. San Francisco International, Hong Kong’s’ Kai Tak; now Chek Lap Kok, and Singapore’s Changi airports, are all built on land-fill. In Tokyo, Japan, and other places, several very serious studies are being held concerning floating runways, called Mega-Floats.

Of course, LAWA officials are well aware of the growth problems faced at LAX. Southern California air traffic is expected to double over the next 20 years. Without further plans and imaginative methods to disperse air traffic away from LAX, Playa Del Rey and Westchester residents will continue an uneasy dance with LAWA; and that outcome can only mean more land being gobbled up by LAX.

DJ “Duke” Dukeshere is the author of the A Reader Writes… column can be found in the Westchester HomeTown News each month.

Tags: GENERAL, One Reader Writes..., WPDR HISTORY // 3 Comments »

It’s difficult to believe that the Syrian government would allow these men to live inside of their country if they were able to get there.  The men abducted these Westchester kids, scammed many people including members of their own family, they have warrents out for their arrest. The list goes on. For more information visit http://www.silahboys.blogspot.com/

Westchester Lutheran School rallies to help mother find missing Silah brothers

Authorities believe that the father abducted the children; also missing are their cousin and his father.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 21, 2008

Zarouhi Meguerian’s older son started first grade at Westchester Lutheran School in 2002 and since then, she’s never missed the first day of class.

On Sept. 8, Meguerian continued her ritual, visiting the classrooms of sons Alex and Zaven Silah. But the industrial engineer walked alone, holding hands with other mothers instead of her boys.

Authorities say Alex, 12, and Zaven, 8, were abducted in July by Meguerian’s former husband, George Silah, 46, an Armenian Syrian. The same day, Silah’s brother John left town with his 8-year-old son Greg.

Parental abductions are not unheard of in Los Angeles, where freeway signs often advertise amber alerts for the missing. But the Silah boys’ case has had a profound effect on students, teachers and parents at Westchester Lutheran, a 58-year-old private school of 400 students on busy Sepulveda Boulevard. The school has rallied around Meguerian with fundraisers, Internet postings — and comfort.

Follow this link to the rest of the Los Angeles Times story.. Westchester Lutheran School rallies to help mother find missing Silah brothers

Who are they?

 
George Silah (left) John Silah (right)

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At today’s Board of Airport Commissioners (BOAC) there was information that flight operations are down to 1650 operations (take-offs or landings) per day which are barely above 9/11 levels. 

Operations were as high as 1800 per day. By year end it’s believed that operations will drop further to about 1400 operations.  

Late night flights are being cut back substantially and airlines have said that they will be keeping their slower schedule for at least 16 months… Presumably this is because of fuel costs, the frail shape of domestic airlines and the value of the dollar internationally.

Other airport news:  The inboard runway (24L) will be closed for sixty days beginning Monday, September 15th for maintenance and installation of runway safety lights on the taxiways.

Residents may notice an increase in the number of aircraft takeoffs on the north runway at night.

Tags: GENERAL, LAX - AIRPORT // 1 Comment »

Kudo’s to Tracy over at living90045.com for researching this subject and posting about it in an article called What The Heck Is MicroBlogging?

In previous times when you wanted to throw a party you got on the phone, talked to real people and told them what time and date to show up.  Sometimes you might have made up a quick flyer and passed it around to others but needless to say it was a lot of work.

No more.  In the days of instant messaging and wireless internet, parties have become a spontaneous series of events and less predictiable for our families living next door to LMU students living in single family homes throughout the community.

In a previous article I wrote about a series of parties next door to me noting that “these frankly -odd- parties that start and stop in fits where I have to almost weekly call LAPD. Sometimes I think these kids are following a script and moving from one house to another because the partying sometimes doesn’t start -until- 12:00AM, other times they start at 10:00PM and end at 12:00AM and later restart again at 2:00PM.”

Well, the script is the common cell phone and its messaging features. Notably Twitter and Facebook.

www.living90045.com points out an article called Micro-blogging will get you into parties in The Loyolan that elaborates on ‘micro-blogging’. This is a cell phone sized blog that constantly keeps students up to date on where their friends are reporting they are, what parties are going on, what parties are happening and what parties where the police are showing up.

Microblogging includes short little text messages and even rolling newsfeeds of what your friends are doing.

The author of the Loyolan articles writes about Twitter saying:

There wasn’t a dull moment. On a Friday night, I could pull up the site and just see a list of my friends’ activities - which bars they were at, who was still pre-gaming,… (what) people were throwing parties (and if there were free drinks). No need for that superficial what-are-you-doing-tonight conversation.

As far as parties go - there’s more to it than just finding them. It’s about letting people know when a party gets rolled by the cops. It’s letting your friends know when the party moves elsewhere or when you go from dinner to the dance.

So if your wondering if these parties seem to be more spontaneous than they used to be, your right. Instant messaging means instant party, and they can start quickly at any time of the day or evening. Just as quickly they can end abruptly and restart hours later as students move from party to party fed by today’s technology and making it more difficult for police to respond.

Your best bet is to call the police right away (1.877.275.5273) when parties start at odd times. If the parties are frequent then file a “disturbing the peace” report the next morning at Pacific Division and let Loyola Marymount know of the problem so that they can send letters to the property owner.

The City of Los Angeles has a very strict Loud Party Ordinance on the books (41.57 and 41.58 LAMC).

This is how it should work: The police is called about a loud party. The police responds and contacts the responsible party at the party location and issues a written warning on a loud party violation form, which explains the consequences of a second police response. The officer then calls the station and causes the responsible party’s name and identifying information to be placed on a Loud Party Violation Log in the Watch Commander’s office.

If the party continues to be a problem and there is a second police response, the following should occur:

The officers will respond with a supervisor and and will contact the responsible party from the prior contact. They will issue a Misdemeanor citation for violation of the above municipal ordinance. The officer will also request necessary assistance from other police units, and maybe even a helicopter, in order to close down the party.

Besides the fine, the responsible party will also be billed for the costs (police salaries, jet fuel for the helicopter, and any other police expenses) associated with shutting down the party. That means police assets will remain in the area until ALL party goers are gone from the area.

These expenses will be tallied at the end of the call and will be forwarded to the city attorney’s office to be added to the fine the responsible party will be paying. It can get VERY expensive.

Tags: GENERAL, NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH, OUR ENVIRONMENT // 13 Comments »

One interesting claim that seems to pop up over and over again during this recent LMU partying dialog is that Westchester is a college town.

It’s been repeated in comments here at www.westchesterparents.org, on our local listservers, in the comments under the video at the KNBC website and elsewhere that we are living in a college town. Usually it’s repeated by the people defending the excessive partying that has been going on over the last five years that have turned our normally quiet streets upside down. The charge is that we should move or shut our f’ing trap if we don’t like it because we live in a “college town”.

Westchester however is by definition not a college town. Claims that it is are a kind of identity theft meant to dismiss the homeowner place in the community.

Real ‘college towns’ owe their very existence to the college or university they serve. College towns are like mining towns, or steel towns in that their economy depends entirely on one employer.

Looking closely at communities around Los Angeles,  Westwood might come closest to a college town because of its tens of dozens of restaurants, movie theaters, clothing shops, book stores, comedy stores, rows of  streets with apartments that cater almost exclusively to students and are in close proximity to the school.  Westwood largely depends on a single employer, UCLA.  Davis, California would be an even better example of a college town because it depends so heavily on UC Davis and its payroll.

But Westchester has none of that. Westchester doesn’t owe its existence to LMU in any way, shape, or form. If LMU were to shut down for a year because of construction, I doubt that life here would skip a beat. Whatever taxes the school pays, little of it is spent here since Los Angeles is quite a large city and downtown politicians control how its spent.

LMU, rather than being a benefactor to the community, it has been the beneficiary of residents of Westchester such as the late Kentwood resident and real estate magnate Howard Drollinger who understood the importance of higher education and donated much of his family’s wealth to Loyola Marymount and Loyola Law School in downtown Los Angeles. LMU’s beauty and almost rural ambience are a result of its nestled location deep within a residential community. Compare its campus to its law school in the gritty downtown area and you’ll know what I mean. Not even UCLA or USC can compare.

Even the more recent arrival of Otis Art Institute has not transformed Westchester into anything that could be described as a college town.  With LMU’s enrollment at 7,800 students (many that don’t live in our immediate community), the schools population footprint is just a shadow of Westchester and Playa del Reys permanent residential population of over 50,000.

Looking back at our history, Westchester’s growth was a result of a post WW-II housing boom of returning overseas troops. Later an aerospace boom that dominated the region in the late 40’s through 70′ fueled housing production and sales.

Since the downturn of the aerospace industry, Westchester’s residents have gracefully transitioned to dependence on many thousands of employers spread all over the West side and South Bay. Unlike traditional college towns, Westchester depends no one employer.

So none of us should buy the claim that Westchester is a college town. It’s simply not. 

It’s a specious claim that only serves the temporary arrivals of the LMU party circuit who claim that our homes and our community don’t really belong to us. It’s a kind of identity theft. 

Westchester is not a college town, it is a town with a college. Don’t buy their claim.

Tags: GENERAL, OUR ENVIRONMENT // 8 Comments »

http://video.knbc.com/player/?id=290031

I live next door to one of those party houses in the Westport area and about once a week we have these frankly -odd- parties that start and stop in fits where I have to almost weekly call LAPD. Sometimes I think these kids are following a script and moving from one house to another because the partying sometimes doesn’t start -until- 12:00AM, other times they start at 10:00PM and end at 12:00AM and later restart again at 2:00PM.

Yeah…. I’m a little out of touch with today’s college students but frankly with all the partying that is going on at this house very late in the evening and throughout  Westchester, I have to wonder if these students are really college material!!!! The amount of play time they engage in seems to far outweigh what I would think is the amount of study that is required of an under-graduate in an institution such as Loyola Marymount!

Fr. Robert B Lawton, S.J….. your flock is out of control! You can’t keep pretending they are angels.

Tags: NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH, RAISING CHILDREN // 8 Comments »