“Now I’m looking at the budget approved by the Santa Ana City Council for the fiscal year starting July 1st, and it looks like the axe just kept chopping away. The department will be merged into the Parks and Recreation Department, music CDs will be 50 cents for each checkout, adult funding will be reduced 24%, children funding will be reduced 40%, adult material acquisitions will be slashed from an already low 5,400 items to a paltry 2,200 new items…and on and on…,” according to the Brix and Trix blog.
And you wonder why Santa Ana is number one in violent crime in Orange County?
“Nineteen districts will not be able to meet their financial obligations for the school year that just ended, or the upcoming school year, without making drastic cuts, including El Rancho Unified and Wilsona Elementary in Los Angeles County. Eighty-nine districts, including big city school systems in Los Angeles, Oakland, Santa Ana and Sacramento, are in jeopardy of not meeting their financial obligations in the school year that just ended or the two upcoming years,” according to the L.A. Times.
If the SAUSD cannot meet its financial obligations, then why did they recently bring back all their laid off administrators? They now have to keep them on the payroll for at least one year. There are still a lot of teachers laid off. Is it just me or are the folks in charge at the SAUSD completely insane?
And don’t expect improvement at the polls. I hear that MIke Gonzalez and Cecilia Aguinaga will be challenging SAUSD Trustee Audrey Noji next year. Good grief! Is that the best we can do? No wonder our lame Trustees keep getting reelected. Gonzalez by the way came in LAST in last year’s SAUSD elections. Read more…
“A group of men got into an argument that turned into a gunfire exchange Tuesday night at Lincoln Elementary School, police said. Police were first called about a fight happening at the school’s volleyball court at 425 S. Sullivan St., near Willits Street, and were called again about shots being fired, said Santa Ana police Cmdr. Tammy Franks,” according to the O.C. Register.
In all about five to eight men were involved. “A soccer game was being played at the school when the shots were fired and several people ran from the school.”
I am assuming that these gang members were playing at the school because of our park shortage.
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido recently announced that he wants to build up to 200 homes on lots seized by the city, over by the train station. His plans do not include any parks. Read more…
Overhill Farms, Inc. (NYSE Amex: OFI) today announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Nativo Lopez and six other leaders of an unlawful campaign aimed at coercing the company to violate federal law by rehiring former employees who have no legal right to work in the United States.
Say what you will about Latinos in Santa Ana, but understand this - they LOVE fireworks and celebrate the 4th of July with great abandon. Santa Ana is one of the few cities in Orange County that allows you to use “Safe and Sane” fireworks.
Of course they are only “Safe and Sane” if you use them in the proscribed manner. In the video above a bunch of Santa Ana kids are having a “fireworks war.” Not a good idea but it is not surprising either. All kids are pyros!
“Safe and sane” fireworks – the term for those that don’t fly or explode and are approved by the state fire marshal – will be sold from July 1-4 in Stanton, Buena Park, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Garden Grove,” according to the O.C. Register. Read more…
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Wednesday to strip $6 million out of the department’s budget, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
By cutting $6 million from next year’s budget, the committee made good on a promise to reduce public safety funding to stem cuts to health and human services proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. And while the board’s liberal wing has been locked in a months long battle with the powerful firefighters union over anticipated public safety cuts, the supervisors only took one-quarter of the $24 million they had threatened to remove from the Fire Department’s budget earlier this month.
“In Santa Ana, a city of nearly 338,000, the Fire Department has chipped $2.7 million from its $54 million budget, pushing back training, holding vacant firefighting positions open and pulling firefighters from desk jobs and sending them back into the field. Six firefighters scheduled to go to paramedic school next month were told they would have to wait until next year. Overtime is being used to fill in for vacant spots, which saves money in benefits, but consecutive shifts can wear on firefighters. Santa Ana limits its firefighters to working 96 hours in a row,” according to the O.C. Register. Read more…
For anyone interested in sharing nostalgic high school football memories, The Orange County Memories website has a recent entry that you might want to check out, LINK. An anonymous poster reminisces about high school football at John Adams, Smedley, Mater Dei and Valley High Schools. ~~~~Snip~~~~~
Hello to the Class of 66 from Valley High!……. Oh my gosh….I have no idea how I found your website but I love it! In the past few moments, I feel as though my life has flashed before me.Read more…
Santa Ana “City officials have begun meeting with private developers to talk about building as many as 200 homes on a swath of mostly empty land the city owns near downtown. They envision an entirely new neighborhood built on dozens of lots the city has bought and cleared over the past decade. The city paid nearly $18.5 million for those lots, records show, but will likely give at least some of them to the developers to keep the homes built there affordable,” according to the O.C. Register.
This action borders on the illegal. Those lots were acquired using federal grants for affordable housing. The City of Santa Ana is essentially relocating people they don’t want in the area to the west side of the city, and using these properties as they please.
To rub salt in the wound, they are going to give away some of these lots, to developers, allegedly to build affordable housing. Do YOU truste the Pulido bunch to get any of this right? Read more…
Sources close to Santa Ana Chief of Police Paul Walters confirmed for me earlier today that Walters will not run for Orange County Sheriff in next years election. My sources had told me several weeks ago in confidence that Chief Walters would most likely not seek the position of the county’s “top cop” but he was not ready to make it public yet. Though Walters has not formally announced his intentions I was given the green light to share this.
Walters was a finalist to replace disgraced felon Mike Carona last year, however three members of the Board of Supervisors, led by John Moorlach, foolishly passed him over and played politics awarding the job to Sandra Hutchens, the darling of an influential group of rich south county Republican woman. Clearly Walters, a true law enforcement professional, was the best choice as Hutchens first year in office has shown us.
According to my source Walters has decided to remain as Santa Ana’s Chief, a position he has held for over twenty years, because city officials and his officers really want him to stay. With budget cuts being the story of the day Walters did not feel now would be the time to leave the department he cares so much about and folks at city hall are glad to keep him here. Read more…
The L.A. Times agrees with me that the City of Santa Ana’s locked trash cans are an affront to the poor. The Times addressed this with an editorial in today’s newspaper. Here it is in its entirety:
Editorial Santa Ana locks its trash cans
Have we become so hard-hearted that we deny the homeless even our trash?
June 20, 2009
In Santa Ana, the city has agreed to place locks on outdoor recycling bins for a dozen neighbors in the Wilshire Square district. The devices, as Times staff writer Tony Barboza reported, were designed to keep bears out of trash cans in Alaska, but there aren’t any bears in Santa Ana. Nor are the locks intended to thwart native critters such as raccoons, opossums, ravens or coyotes. Read more…
If you cannot get online, you can’t see this Mars Rover model at a discount, at the Discovery Science Center
Santa Ana’s Discovery Science Center is offering a discount summer pass, in the wake of a recent drop in attendance - but get this, they are only offering this online! In so doing they are shutting out hundreds of thousands of Santa Ana residents who do not have access to the Internet. Well, that figures.
“Starting July 1, families who show proof of residence in Southern California can purchase a summer membership for $40. This one-time fee gives families unlimited visits through mid-September. The center, which experienced a 20 percent dip in attendance last month (read story), will only sell the tickets online, starting sometime next week. Click here for updates,” according to the O.C. Register.
This policy of only selling the discount summer passes online is a major barrier to entry for Santa Ana’s working class Latino families. Read more…
Is the City of Santa Ana trying to stop Mexican bears from stealing recyclables out of trash cans?
“Fed up with urban foragers who root through neighborhood trash in search of plastic and aluminum, residents of one Santa Ana neighborhood are locking up their recyclables in a container designed to withstand the brute strength and cunning of brown and black bears,” according to the L.A. Times.
We wrote about this a few weeks ago when the O.C. Register broke the story. It is obviously yet another attempt by Santa Ana’s Usual Suspects, in the Wilshire Square Neighborhood, to bash Mexicans.
But the Register missed a tiny detail.
“It was pretty much a given that the economy was driving the increase in scavenging,” said Mary Gonzales, the city’s project manager, who is overseeing the program. Read more…
