California Coastal Commission and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area - Blog #13

Today in class Airan Scruby presented on the California Coastal Commission, which is one of the largest bureaucracies in the state. The commission has 12 voting members that are appointed by the Governor, the Sentate Rules Committee and the Speaker of the Assembly. There are also non-voters from a variety of sources.

The commissioners are not elected and can be effected by political influence. The voting members tend to be environmentally conscience while the non-voting members are competing for various interest, according to Scruby. The Commission is one of two agencies to administer the federal coastal zone. The meeting can last days and are broadcasted over the Internet.

The Commission's responsibilities are responsible for partnerships between local and state governments, regulate coast and coastal buildings, create a response plans for oil spills off the coast of California. The Commission has a great deal of power to stop project and impose regulations for cities without providing any funding.

Members of the public can reserve time to speak at the meeting or can submit something in writing. The zone extends inland and can engulf entire cities. Regulations can be imposed on any building in the zone and any future construction within the zone. Any new building or improvements to existing buildings need to meeting the standards set by the Commission and get it approved.

The Commission is suing the Navy because allegedly the sonar technology used by the Navy is causing Whales to become beached. The Commission does not have the resources to pay for the clean up so they are trying to hold the Navy responsible for the beachings. If the Commission wins this case against the Navy the Commission should then take over patrolling the oceans of the world.

There are a lot of news stories occurring now with the Commission including their exercise of power over the Santa Monica Mountains to allow camping. There are many stories that can come out of the Commission including a look at their power and the effects their decisions have on cities like Malibu, and a look into the case of the Commission versus the Navy.

The second presentation was from Shuhei Matsuo on the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area. The agency controls numerous camping sites and trials throughout and near Malibu. The national park was incorporated in 1978 and comprises of 153,000 acres. Because of the parks location it is frequently used for the filming of motion pictures and television shows. The park is the world's largest national park.

There are a large variety of native plants and fish located in the mountains and steams that run through the mountains. The current issues in the park are preserving plants and animals in these dry conditions as well as wildfires. The possible story ideas that Matsuo presented to the class were a story on the mediterranean ecosystem and Dr. Davis, fire issues and mountain biking.

Calabasas and Agoura Hills City Councils - Blog #12

The joys of covering a city council meeting is something that every young journalist will learn about working at their first newspaper. I attended many city council meetings while working in Florida as an IHS Intern for the News Herald.

I wrote two or three stories about the Cedar Grove City Council while in town. The most recent one I wrote was about the name of the city. The charter for the city calls Cedar Grove a town while all the signs, stationary and everything else refer to Cedar Grove as a city. When a new city clerk took over and noticed the error he had the item but on the city council agenda. Before the meeting I called the Florida League of Cities and they told me that there was no difference and any local government can choose to name themselves a town or a city.

Another story I covered for about the Lynn Haven City Council was when one member, who was a local principal, took a job in Georgia but was remaining on the Council. One citizen who ran for a seat and lost demanded that this councilmember step down since he was going to be living in Georgia during the week.

Small city council meeting can be extremely boring when everyone agrees on everything and the council goes through the motions of accepting gifts and giving out awards. The councilmembers are humans and unually there are more intersting things going on behind the scenes.

I live in the city of Calabasas so it is interesting to hear about the people that make decisions that have an effect on my life and home. The big recent news is the recent election of Mayor Pro Tem Mary Sue Maurer who was at the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy meeting last night. The history of Calabasas dates back to the Chumash Indians and continues through the citys incorporation in 1991. The city is 12.9 square miles with a population of 23,123. The median age is 38.5 years with an median household income of $93,860 and a average home price of $1,624,522, which is higher than the average for Orange County.

The Agoura Hills City Council seems pretty subdue. The city itself incorporated in 1982 with a population of 23,200. The median home value in Agoura Hills is $647,000 about half of that of Calabasas'.

The Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza and the Santa Monica Arts Commission - Blog #11

There were two presentations today in class, the first from Carissa Marsh was on the Santa Monica Arts Commission. Following, was Shannon Kelly presenting on the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

The Santa Monica Arts Commission has 13 members and is under the Cultural Affairs division of Santa Monica. The city council appoints citizens that live or work in the city and have a background in art to the commission. The city of Santa Monica considers public art to be a basic city service. The city believes that by supporting all forms of art within the city limits there will be educational, social and economic benefits.

Santa Monica has some amazing public art that comes close to competing with my favorite Orange County artistic community of Laguna Beach. The promenade on 3rd Street has great sculptures and the traveling museum that is placed in the parking lot by the pier every Fall is amazing. The biggest problem with the art commission is that they are using public money to attempt to give housing to struggling artists and extort businesses.

The commission funded through the city council is working on finding affordable housing for struggling artists. In a free market when someone is unable to meet their basic needs they have to adapt and find something else they are good at. I am sorry but if a great artist can not provide for himself he need to become a good craftsman and do some art projects during his weekends. It is not the publics responsibility to fund art, not matter how great it makes the city look.

Another troubling matter is the "percent law," which requires any new development has to have some artistic elements or otherwise donate funds to the commission. How is requiring public art good for the economy? I understand that these artistic elements might be easy and even cheap to incorporate but the idea of making it mandatory leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The commission is doing some positive things with the taxpayer money they should not have. The commission hosts a festival, May 20, and Jazz on the lawn. There are two programs under way that I actually would not mind attending/supporting (with my private donations). The first is the GLOW festival, which is a 12 hour art festival from dusk till dawn. The second program is the Arts Alley project that aims at sprucing up some of the allies in Santa Monica with some art.

Moving to another and potentially better run art organization is the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. The Plaza located off the 101 Freeway is huge, it is so large that it is actually the largest performing arts center between San Francisco and Los Angeles. More than 250,000 patrons visit the venue every year.

The organization is interesting because it is a public/private partnership between the city and the Alliance for the Arts. The Alliance for the arts has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts and the League of Cities as a successful model for these partnerships. The Alliance formed in 1994 has kept the center from going over budget due to private donations and support. The Alliance provides the center with marketing, advertising and public relations.

Both organization presentations were well done and the two organizations are vastly different.

Santa Monica-Malibu Unifed School District Presentation - Blog #10

A fellow classmate, Lisa Yamada, did a great job presenting on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. In the school district there are 11,900 students, 1,400 staff members and 18 schools ranging from elementary to high schools. The student makeup of the district is almost 50 percent Caucasian and 50 percent ethnic.

Yamada spent a day at two different schools to get a flavor of student life. The two schools she visited were Santa Monica High School and Olympic Continuation High School, for student that are behind in academic credits, need a smaller learning environment or have other continuation education needs.

The district has four schools in Malibu, a high school, two elementary schools (Webster, Juan Cabrillo) and the Point Dume Marine Science School.

The day Yamada spent at Santa Monica High School provided her with some valuable insight she was able to then pass on to the rest of the class. The school has nearly as many students as Seaver Undergraduate College at Pepperdine, with 3,200 students. The district has counteracted the feeling of a giant school by creating "houses," which act as smaller high schools for the students. There are six house at SMHS, and each house has a house principal, a teacher leader, counselor, two ad visors, a student outreach specialist, house assistant and approximately 550 student ranging from grades 9 to 12.

The school is inhabited by students from the surrounding Santa Monica homes and the homes in Pico that tend to have more ethnic students and a much smaller median family income. Despite the integration of the house there is still a lot of racial tension at SMHS. One of the counselors said that SMHS has a two-school phenomenon because students only associate with their own race during lunch.

My high school was much less diverse than SMHS and more expensive to attend. My catholic high school did recruit students from lower economic backgrounds by offering large scholarships. Two of my best friends came from a much lower economic status than the majority of the students and they outperformed the students that came from higher economic status. There was less diversity at my high school but there was no segregation between the students. Every student at my high school could have chosen to go to a public school, but by choosing to go to Catholic school they were their to learn and did not have the racial front that is appearing at SMHS.

This raises an interesting question of privatization of schools. If parents and students from every economic background have the option to choose what school to send their child too, would black parents only send their children to the school that were majority black, etc., etc. SMHS is outperforming many of the other public school in the nation in every aspect but they face many different racial issues.

I read an article from the SF Gate about the privatization of school. The article was poorly organized so it was confusing to understand when the article was covering politics versus the school privatization issue. The best quote from this story comes from a member of the school board.

"The biggest misfortune of focusing on (Edison) is that it's dividing us and costing us the
political goodwill we need to do big reforms, like eliminating the achievement gap
between ethnic groups," said Dan Kelly, school board vice president and the only
incumbent endorsed by the union and parents' lobby.

When school board members want to prevent privatization of schools because they eliminate the achievement gap between ethnic groups this issue has become more political than a social good standpoint.

Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy - Blog #9

To get better acquainted with my organization I attended a Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy board meeting. The meetings are open to the public and are held monthly at various locations around the Los Angeles County.

The meeting I went to was held in Pacific Palisades at a campsite. It was because visitors and board members alike had to park at the park entrance and walk about a mile to the meeting location. The meeting started at 7:30 p.m. and last more than 2 hours. Leaving the meeting and trekking back through the forest to the cars was an interesting experience.

The board of directors consists of nine voting members, three ex efficio members and six legislative members. The board also has a twenty-six member Advisory Committee that meets jointly with the conservancy and contains a wide array of representatives.

The most interesting voting member of are Chairperson Elizabeth Cheadle, appointed by the Senate Rules Committee, William Burke, appointed by the California Coastal Commission, Edward J. Begley, Jr., appointed by the mayor of Los Angeles and James Berkus, appointed by the governor.

There are two empty legislative seats on the board but there are three senators Kuehl, Romero and Scott. One assemblywoman Brownly represents the majority of Malibu, Calabasas and surrounding coastal cities. Although there are legislative representatives those members are rarely at the meeting and aids are sent to the meeting.

I expected to see a bunch of tree huggers at the meeting all driving Prius’ and eating granola. The truth is that the board is political, different people and organizations appoint people to the board and many different interests are at work. Everyone in the room cares about the environment but these are not tree huggers.

The meeting was very long packed full of information. Take a look at the agenda. The first hour of the meeting was going over staff reporters from the numerous organizations and state agencies that work with the conservancy. There is an hour reserved for public comments. The interesting formatting had the comments section before any agenda items were talked about.

This meant that many of the members of the public that came to speak had 3 minutes and could not respond to any of the boards concerns, they could only deliver a speech and hope they covered the concerns of the council.

After the hour for public comments the board spoke about agenda items. Most of the items were about sending letter of compliance to others that were not upholding their part of agreements.