Tuesday, February 28, 2012
At a Board of Supervisors hearing Tuesday, county officials gave their preliminary approval to a 20-year county bike plan, while making changes that will affect a proposed Altadena bike boulevard.
The County Board of Supervisors gave their preliminary approval Tuesday to the county's master bike plan while also making a revision that would ensure a proposed Altadena bike boulevard will have traffic calming measures installed that would be designed to slow car traffic. The board voted to close the public hearing on the plan, though a version of the plan with amended language will be on the agenda of a future meeting. However, according to Andrew Veis of Supervisor Don Knabe's office, it will appear on the "consent calendar" segment of the meeting, meaning that unless a member of the public specifically request to speak about it, it will be voted on without any further Board discussion. The key amendment for Altadena residents is a …
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Should the federal government be able to limit the review time for wireless tower projects to three months? County officials are against a court ruling that would give the Federal Communications Commission that power.
A lawsuit brought by local governments across the country hit a snag last week when a federal appeals court rejected a challenge to a court ruling limiting the review period for telecommunications companies looking to build cell towers and other wireless equipment. If the ruling stands, the FCC could put into place guidelines that would force governments to make a ruling on right-of-way telecommunications equipment within 90 days for equipment co-located on existing infrastructure. For new cell towers and other stand-alone equipment jurisdictions would have 150 days to make a ruling. By comparison, a tower proposal for Loma Alta Drive that was rejected last June took 17 months from the application date until the final decision was made, …
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The plan includes a 5 mile bike boulevard on streets in Altadena and was approved by the County's Planning Commission. With Board of Supervisors, the boulevard and other bike improvements in Altadena will become part of the county's future plans for the t
A hearing has been scheduled for the county's master bike plan, which includes a five-mile designated "bike boulevard" for Altadena and a new bike path of nearly eight miles, starting from Eaton Canyon, which would connect to other paths to form a trail to Long Beach. The bike boulevard would run east to west in Altadena, starting at the intersection of Windsor Avenue and Ventura Steet. It would run along Ventura, switch north to Calaveras east of Fair Oaks, then later to Mendocino Street, Midwick Drive, Glen Canyon Road and down Roosevelt Avenue (the proposed boulevard route is highlighted in purple on the map on the right). The route of that proposal has been changed several times since it was first discussed at a public meeting last …
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
At Tuesday's County Board of Supervisors meeting, county officials faulted Edison for poor communications, for not coordinating with local officials, and for not having a good enough plan in place to deal with extended power outages.
At its regular Tuesday meeting, the County Board of Supervisors summoned Southern California Edison officials to discuss public complaints about how they have responded to extended power outages resulting from last week's wind storm. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who represents Altadena and other San Gabriel Valley cities, told Edison officials that "99 percent" of the phone calls his office has received about the storms have been to complain about Edison's response. He faulted them for not coordinating with public officials, and for not coming up with a plan to go door to door to give customers information on how long their power would be out. Veronica Gutierrez, the utility's vice president for local public affairs, told the …
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Can one elected L.A. County official represent one-fifth of the county and still really look out for Altadena?
Something’s gone wrong. Let’s say your email is down for the tenth time this month, or the morning paper failed to arrive for the seventh day in a row. So you make a call and go through the punishing, mind-numbing, soul-zapping, head-splitting process known as the phone tree. And the phone robot says those irritatingly disingenuous words--“OK” and “got it” and “hmmm, I didn’t catch that”--in hopes you’ll vent all your frustration to a machine. But, no, you’re going to keep your own counsel. You’re going to wait until you reach a real live person, someone of flesh and blood, no matter how long it takes. Finally, your persistence is rewarded; you’ve clawed your way up to the live-operator queue. A queue with long hold times and looping …
Laura Monteros
10:19 am on Tuesday, February 7, 2012
I've been covering the appeal of a cell phone radome at California & Grand Ave. in Pasadena. It went on for 8-10 months. It's my understanding that after 3 months, the company could have said, "We're done" and the installation would have gone in, but the company allowed the appeal to go forward. I don't know why, but I suspect it was because the company knew it would win in the end, and allowing … more ›