City Council Election Cycle is Rolling Along

On November 3, 2009, eligible voters living in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes will vote to elect two new members to our city's Council.

Current Mayor Larry Clark and Councilman Dr. Peter Gardiner will leave the seats they have honored and two new behinds will occupy them.

Here is the current list of probable candidates, in the order listed on the city's Web site, with their Email address under their names.

(The period for filing for the election will end on August 7 and more candidates may be added. I will post their names and Email addresses as they are added)

Jim Knight

JimKnight@palosverdes.com

Anthony Misetich

mizie@cox.net

John C. McTaggart

mrrpv@palosverdes.com

Jeff Lewis

JeffLewis@palosverdes.com

Paul Tetreault

paul.rpv@gmail.com

Brian Campbell

brian@CampbellForRPV.com

Nomination papers for the 6 have been issued but none of them have been deemed "Qualified Candidate" at this point in time.

Here is a list of words I feel the candidates should offer their opinions about before the election is held:

Ponte Vista

Traffic Signal at Miraleste and P.V.D.E.

Traffic Signal at Forrestal and P.V.D.S.

Voter apathy in Eastview

Terranea

Trump National

Storm Drain Levy

Full Eastview inclusion into P.V.P.U.S.D.

Marymount College Facilities Redevelopment

Restoring the shared Deputy position.

Securing more funding for the constant repair of P.V.D.S. in the slide area

Remaining Storm Drains under Western that haven't failed.....yet

Traffic in the Eastview area

Added traffic in the East Rancho Palos Verdes area

R.P.V.'s business concentration along Western Avenue

Restoring lost seats on Commissions and Committees

Finding ways to have more residents of the Eastview area care about and work with the city of R.P.V.

Our dismal turnout at for City Council elections

There are a small number of unique cities in Southern California and Rancho Palos Verdes is the most unique among those cities.

I will offer more on a future post dealing with how we are so very different and the challenges put upon us and our environment because of who we are and where we live.

It is almost certain that two of the names appearing on this post will appear as Council Members soon after November 3.

It is certain that the next City Council Election, just two years from now, will have three available seats to fill and we may seem names typed above, as names of candidates for those seats.

We may see more candidates for this election cycle. It is probably that not all of the six named above will appear on the November 3 ballot.

Mr. Campbell followed Mr. Lewis in creating a Web site. The sites I know about at this time should be viewable on the links icons

I will post links to other candidates' Web sites if and when they are published.

Look folks, there are over 2,000 residential units in the Eastview area of Rancho Palos Verdes. We have the greatest concentration of our city's businesses located in the Eastview area.

During the last two City Council election cycles, we had about 11% of our eligible voters willing to vote for candidates at each election.

We provide so much into our city, yet too many of us are apathetic to our own government and issues.

Shame on us in Eastview.

I am not going to even consider that we not keep our hearts towards San Pedro. We are an old "San Pedro" area and have not been legally part of Rancho Palos Verdes for as long as that city has been incorporated.

But when we and our wonderful San Pedro neighbors spend money along Western at The Terraces, Think Prime, Smart and Final, Marie Calender's, Western Plaza, Green Hills Memorial Park, and other businesses in Rancho Palos Verdes, we provide much more income to the city than any other business area within the city. 

We have a very dense concentration of residential units in Eastview including condominiums and single-family houses.

Along with Miraleste, we have the vast majority of the oldest homes in the city.

If we want more influence in matters that are important to us, we must get more involved with our own city's government, processes, and issues.

One way to do this is to welcome discussion, debate, and the opinions from the candidates who wish to govern us.

Two of the candidates listed above should offer the residents of the east side of Rancho Palos Verdes enough so that our votes help them get elected.

We have not done that yet, since we were annexed. Nobody really needs to care unless we show up in numbers and let them know we want them to govern us.

If we can just vote in numbers to make a real difference, then we can move to the next step.

Perhaps by 2011 we will have shown by are participation in this November's election that we need to be listened to and governed properly, according to the issues WE find important.

And then, dreamingly as early as 2013, we may offer up a candidate for a City Council seat who lives in the Eastview area, who actually wins a seat.

The block of votes that has a possibility of being obtained strictly from Eastview residents could be enough to secure a seat someday.

Adding Miraleste to become the full voting block that would be East R.P.V. surely would create the ultimate goal of running the city we are so much a large group of.

Not to worry, I will NEVER run for a City Council seat in R.P.V. I don't have the educational background to be considered. Our city's history is so full of incredibly gifted and well-educated folks.

There are plenty of Miraleste residents and Eastview residents who are so much more qualified than I am.

After attending or watching as many C.C. meetings as I have, I would not enjoy enough the time serving in that volunteer position.

So please learn about the candidates for this coming election and vote for your two choices for seats.

Get involved in your city. Sure there are more than enough problems with San Pedro/Los Angeles to keep us occupied, but we don't live there and our city government is not there.

There are still four storm drains under Western that haven't failed. Wouldn't you like to see the same type of response we saw for two of the three one that failed and watch as our city's government dealt with any situation like they did with the McCarrol Canyon issues?

An Historically Significant Tract in East R.P.V.

No, it's not the original 'Eastview' tract of homes. It is the first tract of houses built west of Western Avenue in an area that eventually became part of the city of Rancho Palos Verdes.

These houses marked the beginning of a building boom along the eastern side of The Hill that seems to continue today.

Pictured below the new tract is the Channel Heights Apartments area. The store in the lower left of the photo was just about where In and Out Burger now stands.

The yard I grew up in and try to tend today is outlined in yellow. My dad bought the house and lot in 1950 and paid $7,500.00 for what was the largest yard and house on the south side of the first block on Trudie.

At the top of the photo are individual houses in the Miraleste area.

An Article from The News Pilot dated May 4, 1950:

Harbor Area Project Includes 215 Houses
Two Hundred and fifteen new homes are being erected in county territory above Peck Park as the harbor area continues its residential building boom.
The dwellings, known as Western View Homes, are being constructed by Shinn-Worzburger Building Corp. of Los Angeles.
Two Hundred of the structures are two-bedroom homes with attached garages, while the other 15 are three-bedroom houses with detached two-car garages.
The Price range of the smaller structures is $7200 to $7650. The three-bedroom houses are being offered for $8950.
Forty of the dwellings have been completed and several families already have moved into the project. Pioneer families in the area include those of M.O. O'Brion, James J. Prendergast, R. A. Marcoux and F.T. Veazey.
Three new streets have been created by the project-Highmore Ave., Jaybrook Dr. and Homeworth Dr.
The Shinn-Wurzburger firm built 55 new houses in Walteria in 1948 and has also done large-scale housing construction at Hawthorne, Monrovia, Arcadia and Fontana and in the San Fernando Valley.
The Western View project was started last December. One hundred homes are expected to be completed before the end of this month.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The streets that comprise Western View Homes are Trudie, Highmore, Homeworth, Jaybrook, and the cul-de-sac of Bayend that is barely visible on the right side of the tract.

If you are old enough to remember the area, on the corner of Trudie and Western stood a Signal service station followed by an Enco, Exxon, and then Marie Calendar's, which remains today.

The southwest corner of Trudie and Western would eventually become the Western Plaza shopping center.

The first business nearest Trudie was actually a pharmacy. When I was about 2 year's old, Hillside Liquors opened on that spot and is one of the oldest businesses still there.

The other two businesses that seem to have remained over the many decades are 31 Flavors and the Barber Shop.

In the photo you should be able to detect that MacArthur, Caddington, Enrose, and other streets were just dreams that became true by 1955-57.

I doubt there are any tracts of houses in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes that were built when Western View Homes were completed.

Sure there were lots of individual and historic houses in what would become Rancho Palos Verdes, but this first tract in what is now Eastern Rancho Palos Verdes signaled the beginnings of growth that the city hopes will continue.

Welcome New Visitors!

This blog is about a small portion of the largest city on the Palos Verdes peninsula.

Eastern Rancho Palos Verdes contains homes that were built in the 1920's and contains the first tract of homes built west of Western Avenue.

Eastern Rancho Palos Verdes has the businesses and shopping areas needed by the entire city.

We have two Los Angeles Unified School District schools within our borders but about 80% of the kids who live in the area attend a different school district.

This blog is fairly new and was established primarily to deal with an expansion project of a Junior College not located in this particular area, but would have well over 50% of the traffic going through our area.

So if you are visiting this blog after seeing the advertisement in the program for "Upton Sinclair's Singing Jailbirds, The Musical" thank you.

I was a picketer, The Dominie, and The Bailiff in the show and I hope you enjoyed all of the performers on the stage.

Marymount College Removed From Academic Warning

I have been informed that Marymount College received its reaffirmation of their ACCJC accreditation in Feb 2009.

This is good news! When I looked up academic warnings by the group that placed them on the warning, I learned that colleges are placed on warning for a period of two years.

Marymount College was removed from academic warning just over one year after it was placed into that situation.

I really still can't figure out why Marymount was placed on academic warning in the first place.

But now that period has ended and we can continue to feel the College provides its students with a great education. Dorms or no dorms.

Marymount College Expansion Update

Last Tuesday three of the four voting members of the Rancho Palos Verdes Planning Commission voted to oppose the construction of on-campus residence halls at Marymount College.

They also voted on other specific things dealing with the athletic facilities at the campus.

These votes were taken in preparation for the Commissions final recommendations concerning the Marymount College Facilities Expansion Project being sent to the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council for final approval or disapproval.

For those of us living on the eastern side of Rancho Palos Verdes and northwest San Pedro it was both a victory and a defeat.

Commissioner J. Lewis is recommending the Living Campus/Academic Campus Alternative favored by the main opposition group to the Expansion Project.

Concerned Citizens Coalition/Marymount Expansion (CCC/ME) is siding with Commissioner Lewis that the 'Superior Environmental Alternative' is to stick all student housing along Palos Verdes Drive North at the College's 'Palos Verdes North' facility.

The College's Preferred Project which has been essentially voted down sought to add 624.4 vehicle trips along Western Avenue between Palos Verdes Drive North and Trudie Drive.

If the Living Campus/Academic Campus ever finds approval there is no real estimate given on the additional number of vehicles trips between the Palos Verdes North facilities and the College's campus.

Oh yea, that Alternative also calls for ALL of the athletic instruction to be conducted at Palos Verdes North.

Please remember the elephant that roams along Western Avenue in the form of Ponte Vista at San Pedro.

So for us, we won't be having late night younguns heading from the campus along foggy P.V. Drive East to the fast food outlets near us.

But we will need to work a bit to insure that the Alternative suggested by Commissioner Lewis and CCC/ME is just a bit of humor with no real prospect of actually happening.

At least we have a couple of things on our side.

Dr. Michael Brophy, the President of the College and all of the supporters of the Project want nothing to do with trying to put more students at Palos Verdes North.

We have the giant bureaucracy that is the Los Angeles City Planning Department the College would have to encounter to have that Alternative worked on.

We have HOAs, Coalitions, San Pedro Neighborhood Councils, and R Neighborhoods Are 1 to assist us if we might need them.

There are a whole lot more of us than there ever could be members of CCC/ME.

We have already won a major victory against that elephant in the living room roaming along Western.

We also have seen a victory by San Pedro residents against a greedy developer who attempted to change the nature of a neighborhood.

And I think we are all growing more tired of having folks living on other parts of The Hill dumping on us and San Pedro.

There are many great things about the Marymount College Facilities Expansion Project we all should support.

But having on-campus housing and that pesky Living Campus/Academic Campus Alternative are not things we should allow.

Who knows really. If Marymount doesn't successfully complete its second year on academic warning everything may actually become moot.

The College's central point of the Expansion Project is a marketing ploy to bring more students to the College and increase the enrollment by offering parents more control and observation of their kids because of on-campus housing.

Not to worry right now. It's all going to end up in court anyway.

Latest News About the Marymount Expansion

Below is a very recent article dealing with the Marymount College Facilities Expansion Project as it winds its way through the approval processes

Commission continues Marymount discussion
By Ashley Ratcliff, Peninsula News
Thursday, April 9, 2009 11:29 AM PDT

RPV — Incremental progress toward a final decision on Marymount College’s facilities expansion is achieved with each passing meeting that Rancho Palos Verdes’ Planning Commission deliberates.

While a majority of commission members present on Tuesday night said they were prepared to certify the project’s final environmental impact report, the commission stopped short of doing so but directed staff to prepare a resolution for the document’s certification.

Commissioners Paul Tetreault and Stephen Perestam were absent, and Commissioner Edward Ruttenberg recused himself.

Joel Rojas, director of planning, building and code enforcement, clarified on Wednesday that while the commission took the first step toward certifying the EIR, it doesn’t guarantee approval of the project, which calls for the construction of two residence halls, an athletic facility and a library, and additions to Marymount’s auditorium, faculty, student union and administration buildings.

During the public hearing, which wrapped up at about 12:30 a.m., the panel reviewed the traffic and circulation section of the EIR, as well as the comments and response table that includes questions posed by commissioners, college officials and members of the public.

However, the discussion ran the gamut from restricting freshman drivers to the project’s visual character. It was evident that concerns with aspects of Marymount’s modernization effort remain, while numerous residents spoke as to why they "whole-heartedly" advocate the plan.

"This project is moving toward a green certification under LEED, which is a very important thing," said Bill Dunlop, whose daughter attends the two-year liberal arts college. "This facility will be built under a highly critical environmental requirement to get a green-approved building, whether it’s silver, gold or platinum … and I think that’s a credit to them."

An item that got the attention of some opposing the project was theclaim made in Marymount’s advertisement, which ran in last Thursday’s Peninsula News and the Daily Breeze’s Sunday paper, that 80 percent of RPV residents support the campus improvement plan.

Marymount President Dr. Michael Brophy provided the city with a list of 900 supporters’ names and numerous support letters from members of the community at large, including the Palos Verdes Peninsula Chamber of Commerce.

"We have consistently polled the public in 2006 and 2008 and we have those results … We found that in the neighborhood, there are 122 people who live close to the college who are willing to support the college’s plans," Brophy said.

Peter Brown of MWW Group, the college’s public relations firm, said Wednesday that Public Opinion Strategies sampled 300 "likely" registered RPV voters and "over-sampled" 25 people in five precincts near the campus "to make sure we had statistically reliable votes." From those calls, an 80-percent support rate was garnered.

According to Brown, when conducting calls, the pollsters discussed every feature of the project, from libraries to dorms, and alternated questions between the project’s positives and negatives.

Long proposed by the Concerned Citizens Coalition/Marymount Expansion Inc., the "living campus/academic campus" model that calls for keeping the residence halls and athletic facilities separate from the campus also resurfaced during the discussion.

According to Marymount’s land use counsel Don Davis, the split-campus alternative is "infeasible" and "doesn’t meet our project objectives." But CCC/ME member Tom Redfield opined that, "all the problems with the neighbors, all the noise, traffic goes away" with that option.

But former RPV Traffic Safety Commissioner Mark Wells said he hopes both sides put the idea to rest.

"The living campus-academic campus alternative would find a great deal of opposition from people in Rolling Hills Riviera, eastern Rancho Palos Verdes, Lomita, Harbor City and northwest San Pedro, including their Neighborhood Council," he said. "Please. It’s time to let that go because it will never fly. For my Marymount friends, I’m sorry — the campus was built as a day-use campus. It would be a safety problem to have on-campus housing for students."

Among other complaints from the opposition was that the EIR in its current form is not certifiable."If an agency adds significant, new information prior to certification but after consultation with the public and other agencies, it must recirculate the EIR prior to certification," said CCC/ME President Lois Karp.

She pointed to "Appendix A" — a summary of changes to the document since the final EIR’s release — and the college’s proposal to allow 150 students to attend night school five times per week on the campus, and to extend the operating hours until midnight.

RPV Principal Planner Ara Mihranian said the EIR is based on the "worst-case" scenario of having a 24/7 operation and already accounts for the on-site dormitories and ancillary uses of the campus, such as athletic events at the new facilities.

Mihranian clarified that there are four "significant, unavoidable" impacts associated with the Marymount project: the land use regarding construction on an extreme slope, traffic projected by forecast year 2012 at the Palos Verdes Drive East-PV Drive South intersection, construction noise impact and the project’s visual character.

The commission also modified several of the project’s mitigation measures, continued the public hearing to April 14, when the officials will review the planning applications, and authorized erecting a silhouette for the proposed athletic field net.

June 9 is the date tentatively selected for the commission’s final decision on the EIR and planning applications.

aratcliff@pvnews.com

March 31 Planning Commission Meeting

The Rancho Palos Verdes Planning Commission began its continued hearing concerning the Marymount College Facilities Expansion Project on March 31 and it finally ended at about 30 minutes past midnight on April 1, 2009.

Talk about a real April Fool's joke.

There was a great deal of comments, questions, answers, and discussion that put members of the audience to sleep.

Here are some of the basics I gleaned from the meeting.

Marymount uses a coordinator or orchestrator for their supporters before and during the meeting.

I should think that there would be more supporters that don't need to be coached or facilitated, but I guess they feel more comfortable having a ring mistress dealing on their side.

Every seat, except one was reserved for either supporters of Marymount or supporters of CCC/ME, the main opposition group to the college's plans.

I took the only seat not reserved. I guess I was 'the public' at the meeting.

The next two meetings by the Planning Commission scheduled to deal with the continuance of the hearing is on April 14 and May 26.

It is now expected that "Staff" will prepare the resolutions and necessary documentation dealing with the certification of the EIR by the Planning Commission and the rest of the legal documents required to be approved of by the Planning Commission.

It seems that the first item to be voted on is certification of the EIR. At this time it appears that at least three of the four members of the Planning Commission allowed to vote on the matters are ready to vote to certify the EIR.

One member of the Planning Commission is interested in having a large amount of foliage planted on the southern side of the campus to hide the views of the dorms from below the campus.

I got the feeling that there are probably two of the four members who may actually vote to allow dorms to be built on the campus.

Marymount supporters would need three votes by Planning Commissioners to get approval from the Planning Department for the construction of on-campus housing.

If and when the Planning Commission certify's the EIR, the next step would be to look at and include conditions on the project.

In short, there is still quite a long way to go before any approvals to build anything at Marymount is approved of by the City Council.

The Applicant has also produced an Appendix that includes additions and changes to plans at the College if everything is approved.

It seems that the campus would be open until midnight with some of its students' activities.

The Applicant now states that if organized sports leagues wishes to use the college's facilities, they would need a conditional use permit from the city of Rancho Palos Verdes.

The Concerned Citizens Coalition/Marymount Expansion (CCC/ME) group still clings to the concept that the Living Campus/Academic Campus is the best alternative to having on-campus housing.

Both the Applicant and 'the public' disagree and hope that idea fails.

The Living Campus/Academic Campus Alternative has all student housing at the Palos Verdes North facility which already houses about 300 students. That Alternative would also mean having ALL of the athletic department at the Palos Verdes North facility, along Palos Verdes Drive North.

I have been about as nice as I can be with my explanations as to why more student housing should not be along Palos Verdes Drive North, but it continues to look like CCC/ME is not willing to listen.

Members of OUR community living in northwest San Pedro, eastern R.P.V., Harbor City and Lomita should probably show up in numbers to the next Planning Commission to prove to the CCC/ME folks that there are a whole lot more of us then there are CCC/ME members and we don't want more students living on Palos Verdes Drive North.

One Planning Commissioner stated that he thought students living in on-campus housing would drive to late night food runs and other things by going to 25th and Western.

Fantastic Cafe is near that intersection and is only open until 11:00 PM on weeknights.

What the Commissioner doesn't realize is there are 24-hour fast-food restaurants along Western closer to Trudie and Crestwood.

As far as it still stands, there will be 624.4 added vehicle trips along Western Avenue each weekday between Trudie and Palos Verdes Drive North, if the project is approved.

That figure was not calculated for when dealing with Ponte Vista.

It looks like the R.P.V. City Council will be getting the project handed to them this summer.

There is also an upcoming City Council election where at least one member of the Planning Commission is running for a City Council seat. This could get interesting.

My warm fuzzies tell me that Marymount may just get approval for the reduced capacity on-campus housing, at this point.

It is not what anyone wants, but it may just end up being the politically correct thing to do.

What a shame!