Orange County restaurants shut down by health inspectors (April 25-May 2)

• May 4, 2024

Restaurants and other food vendors ordered to close and allowed to reopen by Orange County health inspectors from April 25 to May 2.

Kitchen at Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club, 1601 Bayside Drive, Newport Beach

Closed: May 1
Reason: Cockroach infestation
Reopened: May 2

Texas Pit Bar-B-Que, 24601 Raymond Way, Suite 2, Lake Forest

Closed: April 30
Reason: None provided

San Clemente Sushi Co., 305 S. El Camino Real, Suite 102, San Clemente

Closed: April 30
Reason: Rodent infestation
Reopened: May 1

Zankou Chicken, 2424 W. Ball Road, Suite T, Anaheim

Closed: April 29
Reason: Cockroach infestation
Reopened: April 30

Orange County Pizza, 21612 Plano Trabuco Road, Suite G, Rancho Santa Margarita

Closed: April 29
Reason: Insufficient hot water
Reopened: April 30

Golden Rose Mediterranean Cuisine, 7115 Beach Blvd., Buena Park

Closed: April 29
Reason: Rodent infestation
Reopened: April 30

CTB Eatery, 9904 Westminster Ave., Suite B, Garden Grove

Closed: April 25
Reason: Rodent infestation
Reopened: April 27

John’s Incredible Pizza Co., 8601 On The Mall, Buena Park

Closed: April 25
Reason: Cockroach infestation
Reopened: April 26

Royal Wok, 1868 N. Tustin St., Orange

Closed: April 25
Reason: Cockroach infestation
Reopened: April 26

Cho Tam Bien, 9906 Westminster Ave., Suite B, Garden Grove

Closed: April 25
Reason: Rodent infestation
Reopened: April 27

Seoul Haus, 13925 Yale Ave., Suite 140, Irvine

Closed: April 25
Reason: Cockroach infestation
Reopened: April 26

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This list is published weekly with closures since the previous week’s list. Status updates are published in the following week’s list. Source: OC Health Care Agency database.

​ Orange County Register 

Judge’s order: Anaheim can’t require permits for transitional housing

• May 4, 2024

An Orange County judge has ruled Anaheim can’t require transitional or supportive housing operators to get permission from the city to open after the City Council denied a nonprofit from opening a group home in 2021.

State law governs group homes, such as when they need to be licensed and how many people per bedroom. Anaheim’s laws required transitional or supportive housing with seven or more people to get a permit from the city to open in all types of neighborhood zones.

Judge Walter Schwarm issued the order April 26; it comes out of the city’s loss in the nonprofit Grandma’s House of Hope case, where the city tried to prevent a transitional home for women from opening in its Anaheim Colony Historic District.

Schwarm’s new order rules that Anaheim must allow Grandma’s House of Hope to house more than six residents at its facility in the neighborhood. He also said the city’s law requiring transitional and supportive housing for seven or more residents to get a permit to open is void.

Schwarm ruled in February that the city violated state housing laws by not allowing the nonprofit to open the transitional housing facility. In that ruling, Schwarm wrote that Anaheim doesn’t require single-family homes with seven or more residents to get permits, therefore it can’t require transitional housing to do so.

The City Council in 2021 had voted unanimously to deny issuing a needed permit for the Anaheim Colony group home after community opposition.

The home would have housed 16 women in an eight-bedroom home, which the nonprofit has said would have served mostly homeless women over 40 with mental health issues and recovering from trauma. The nonprofit then sued the city in 2022 and was later joined in the lawsuit by the state.

The city will need to notify other transitional housing operators that Anaheim no longer requires permits for transitional or supportive housing. It will also have to post an update on its website with a copy of the notice sent to operators. Conditions for other permits issued by the city for transitional or supportive housing can no longer be enforced as well.

City spokesperson Mike Lyster said in an email that the city respects the court’s decision and will review it. Lyster said the city needed to be an advocate for its neighborhoods, saying the city has embraced Grandma’s House of Hope by welcoming 10 other facilities in the city at the time.

“This wasn’t a case of ‘NIMBY’ and was always about equity and a reasonable balance for all, including those in transitional housing,” Lyster said. “Throughout this process, our City Council has sought to ensure that both our neighborhoods and facilities don’t become negatively impacted by overconcentration.”

Lyster said the city estimates it has around 150 group homes, a portion of which would be affected by the judgement.

The City Council could vote to appeal the case. Lyster said the order does not go into effect if the city does appeal.

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​ Orange County Register 

Here are bulbs that are excellent for a shade garden

• May 4, 2024

While the vast majority of bulbs are meant for sunny locations, some are excellent candidates for the shade garden. Walking in my neighborhood the other day, I spotted the flowers of two bulb species that are durable and guaranteed to spread in shady locations.

The first shade lover I spotted was Natal or bush lily (Clivia miniata). Its silky, pastel orange to vivid reddish orange trumpet blooms are breathtaking in late winter and early spring. They form in clusters with as many as ten flowers per cluster. Leaves are broad straps of green that provide ocular pleasure on their own after flowers have faded. Yellow clivias are also occasionally seen. Spherical red fruits form where flowers have been and these contain seeds that germinate readily enough. The problem is that Clivia grows so slowly from seed that you will have to wait five years until flowers develop. For this reason, it is wiser to plant grown specimens. You can also acquire Clivia bulbs which are apt to give you flowers within the first year of being planted. One source for Clivia bulbs is Terra Ceia Farms (terraceiafarms.com), where you can acquire three bulbs for around twenty dollars.

The only enemy of Clivia is too much love. Plants should not be watered in winter and sprinklers kept on during that season can bring about their death. They also crave fast-draining soil. As indoor plants, they grow best in an orchid mix and, in the manner of orchids, thrive when their roots are exposed. This is not surprising since Clivia, like orchids, is epiphytic — that is, it is found growing in trees where one branch forks off from another.

The other flowering bulb for shade I noticed on my walk was summer snowflake (Leucojum aestivum), a misnomer since it blooms in every season except summer. Flowers are nodding, scalloped bells or lampshades with a green spot on the tip of each petal. This is one of the toughest bulb plants as it can grow in dry or wet soil and spreads quickly in the garden bed. 

And now we come to Lenten rose or Hellebore (Helleborus orientalis) which, unfortunately, I did not encounter on my walk but wish I had. Hellebore is perfectly content growing in a shade garden. It does not grow from a bulb but has a clumping growth habit and will spread slowly but surely throughout a garden area that is protected from hot sun.

The Lenten rose is highly decorative – if in a somewhat subtle way – yet durable plant that deserves more of our horticultural attention. Also known as hellebore (hell-uh-BORE), it belies its name since it is a heavenly addition to the garden and far from boring. It blooms for many months in winter and spring with flowers that are typically pale greenish white, but may also appear flushed with pink, burgundy or purple. 

Many varieties have blueish-green foliage with saw-toothed margins. Hellebores need excellent drainage so If your soil is heavy, amend it with plenty of compost before planting. Gypsum, probably the least expensive amendment for softening hard soil, will similarly improve drainage when it is dug into the ground. Although they need good drainage, hellebores are not drought-tolerant and require some moisture in their root zone throughout the year.

Two notes of caution regarding hellebores: First, all plant parts are poisonous; second, hellebores should not be moved during the first few years after planting. Established plants may be carefully divided and moved as long as you are willing to wait several years for the divided clumps to re-establish and re-bloom. Hellebore is one of the most undeservedly neglected plants and I do not recall ever seeing it in a nursery, although it is readily ordered from Hellebore growers with a presence on the Internet. The mail-order nursery with the greatest selection of Hellebores, in addition to many, many exotic plant species that neither you nor I have ever encountered, is Sunshine Farm and Gardens (sunfarm.com).

Hellebores belong to the buttercup family (Ranunculus), a group noted for the diversity of its foliage, which is always a pleasure to behold. Meadow rue (Thalictrum polycarpum) is a California native buttercup for the shade garden that has soft, intricately-laced leaves atop succulent stems that rise up from underground. Anemone or windflower (Anemone coronaria), another type of buttercup, grows from a tuber and is flowering now in red, white and blue. The fall-blooming Japanese anemone (Anemone x hybrida), which sends up four-foot stems topped with white or pink blooms, is another neglected, but eminently suitable perennial for the shade garden. Finally, there are Ranunuculus corms themselves, which send up lacy foliage and tight turban-shaped flowers in white, yellow, orange, red, and pink.

Other plants that are compatible with hellebores include ferns of every description, low-growing palms and mahonias. Mahonia, or Oregon grape, is a sturdy grower that is also noted for saw-toothed foliage. Native to California, mahonia has edible blue fruit that is attractive to birds and other wildlife. Keep in mind that these plants will not grow in deep shade but do well grown under deciduous trees. 

Japanese maples are often seen growing in the proximity of hellebores due to their similar light requirements. A Japanese maple variety called Coral Bark (Acer palmatum var. Sango-kaku) is special. In addition to its salmon- to red-colored bark which, after its leaves have fallen, glimmers brightly in winter and spring before leafing out, Coral Bark can take more sun than the average Japanese maple. It is a fine specimen tree for light shade, partial sun or container gardens.

California native of the week: Creeping sage (Salvia Gracias) is a ground cover that grows six inches to two feet tall and is in full bloom from now until summer. Flowers are blue, foliage is gray and aromatic when crushed. In one year, creeping sage may cover up to eight feet of ground in every direction and single plants may spread to more than 30 feet with the passage of time. Yet where conditions for growth are limited, it may take much longer to reach that size. Still, it is a tough plant that will live for four decades under virtually any conditions. It will grow in rocky or sandy soil where other sages struggle and is seemingly impervious to heat and drought.

If you have bulb plants – or any other plants, for that matter – that you are proud of growing in the shade, please send your success story to [email protected]. Your questions and comments as well as gardening tips or garden problems are always welcome.

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​ Orange County Register 

Thousands of runners expected at 20th annual OC Marathon Sunday

• May 4, 2024

About 13,000 runners are signed up to trek the seaside route for the 20th running of Orange County’s signature marathon on Sunday, May 5.

The weekend also features a 5K and a fun run for kids on Saturday and a half marathon on Sunday.

Festivities for the Hoag OC Marathon Running Festival including an expo, live music, food vendors and the finish line celebration that will all take place at the OC Fair & Event Center.

The 26.2 mile marathon is set to begin at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, starting in front of the Vea Newport Beach Marriott Resort and Spa near Fashion Island. Runners will go through Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana before finishing off at the fairgrounds. This course is relatively downhill from beginning to end, but does have a few minor hills.

The half marathon starts and ends in the same locations, but features a shorted course that skips Santa Ana. The race is set to begin in front of the same hotel at 6:15 a.m.

Runners can look forward to a panorama view of the Pacific Ocean within the first mile of starting, before making their way through the seaside community of Corona del Mar.

“It’s probably one of the most attractive courses out here in Southern California. It’s a net downhill course. Runners love that. The first seven miles are downhill, so they will really feel good those first seven miles,” Gary Kutscher, race director of the marathon event, said. “The marathon and half marathon split at where the Santa Ana Country Club is located and the marathon continues north into Irvine, and then Santa Ana and then returning back to the OC Fair &  Event Center here in Costa Mesa.”

Bleachers will be set up at the finish line to welcome the runners are they make their way through the last quarter mile of the course. Community members are invited out to the event center to cheer on the participants free of charge.

“It’s just amazing to see people coming in all the way on the far east side of the property,” Kutscher said. “And once they finish, and they come through their food and fluids, they’ll exit and be reunited with their family members inside our festival.”

Online registration closed on Friday night, however, folks can sign up in-person before Sunday at the OC Lifestyle and Fitness Expo during regular hours if races have not sold out. Participants can pick up their race bib and T-shirt at the expo between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturday. There will be no packet pick-ups on Sunday.

Additional details and registration information can be found at OCmarathon.com.

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​ Orange County Register 

Southern California real estate bosses slash hiring

• May 4, 2024

Southern California real estate bosses have dramatically cooled their hiring pace as high interest rates trim construction plans and home sales.

My trusty spreadsheet found property-linked employment in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties was 755,900 in March 2024. That’s up only 2,200 jobs from February and 36% slower than the seasonal norm. In pre-pandemic 2015-19, an average 3,460 jobs were added in March.

Another slowdown sign: In the last 12 months, real estate work grew locally by 7,400 positions, but the industyr’s hiring pace has averaged 13,800 a year since 2010. So, 2024 is running 46% below par on an annual basis.

Also, current real estate staffing is 26,800 jobs below the most recent employment peak set in July 2022. Remember, many people who work in the real estate world are self-employed and are not tracked by traditional government job counts.

Don’t overlook real estate’s job-market clout, with its share of local employment at 9.5% in March 2024. The industry’s hiring equaled 11% of all new local jobs since 2010, the end of the Great Recession.

Across Southern California, employment in all other industries was 7.19 million workers in March – up 25,600 jobs in a month. Over 12 months, non-real estate jobs were up 69,500, or a 1% gain – equal to real estate’s growth rate.

By the slice

Here’s how key real estate-related employment niches in Southern California fared …

Trade construction specialists: 248,800 employed by contractors – up 700 for the month and up 7,100 over 12 months, or a 2.9% gain. Average March in 2015-19 had a 2,760 job increase. It’s 9,500 below post-Great Recession high (October 2023).

Building, civil, construction: 121,400 workers in many trades – up 900 for the month and up 2,000 over 12 months, or a 1.7% gain. Average March was a 350 job gain. It’s 2,100 below post-Great Recession high (October 2023).

Lending: 88,200 folks in various slices of credit work – down 100 for the month and off 4,000 over 12 months, or a 4.3% drop. Average March was a 340 job loss. It’s 36,700 below post-Great Recession high (December 2012).

Real estate services: 138,200 people handling transactions – down 1,200 for the month and up 200 over 12 months, or a 0.1% gain. Average March was a 160 job loss. It’s 5,200 below post-Great Recession high (December 2022).

Building supplies: 50,700 sellers of equipment and materials flat for the month and off 800 over 12 months, or a 1.6% drop. Average March was a 640 job increase. It’s 5,300 below post-Great Recession high (June 2021).

Building services: 108,600 jobs in commercial property operations – up 1,900 for the month and up 2,900 over 12 months, or a 2.7% gain. Average March was a 220 job gain. It’s 100 below post-Great Recession high (October 2023).

Geographically speaking

Here is real estate employment’s breakdown, by metro area …

Los Angeles County: 361,300 real estate jobs – up 300 for the month vs. an average March in 2015-19 with 1,100 hires. It’s down 700 over 12 months, or a 0.2% one-year drop. Jobs are 15,400 below post-Great Recession high (February 2020). Real estate equals 7.9% of all LA jobs.

Orange County: 213,700 real estate jobs – up 800 for the month vs. average March with 500 hires. It’s up 2,300 over 12 months, or a 1.09% one-year gain. Jobs are 16,700 below post-Great Recession high (August 2018). Real estate equals 12.6% of all OC jobs.

Inland Empire: 180,900 real estate jobs – up 1,100 for the month vs. average March with 1,800 hires. It’s up 5,800 over 12 months, or a 3.3% one-year gain. Jobs are 5,200 below post-Great Recession high (October 2023). Real estate equals 10.7% of all IE jobs.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]

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​ Orange County Register 

Tech meets trash in Orange County’s landfill future

• May 4, 2024

Last month, Tom Koutroulis, director of Orange County Waste & Recycling, signed off on a grant request that he hopes could fundamentally change how America handles one of the oldest but least understood drivers of global warming: garbage.

It isn’t a huge ask as these things go; $25 million from a $5 billion fund overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency. The money would pay for what Koutroulis calls the “Smart Landfill System,” essentially a cluster of new technologies (specially equipped drones, 24/7 sensors and the like) aimed at improving the way his agency measures and tracks the methane that belches out of the three big active landfills in Orange County.

But if the request sounds like it’s limited to a few local garbage piles, its impact, in Koutroulis’ view, could be much bigger — modernizing an already-complex world (landfill management) where change happens slowly and is often met with strong resistance.

It also dovetails with his even bigger goal, to improve public health by slowing the  rise (literally) of a particularly nasty cause of global warming.

“What we’re proposing would be a disruptor,” Koutroulis said.

“If they (the EPA) give us this money, our system will probably be the first of its kind used at this scale,” he added. “It could change the entire industry.”

Yet that still might not be enough.

Even if Koutroulis’ idea works as he hopes, and the EPA eventually requires that some version of a Smart Landfill strategy be implemented at the 1,700-plus active landfills around the country, a growing number of scientists believe the problem he’s hoping to combat – the amount of methane sent into the atmosphere from landfills – is far more dire than previously believed.

New mystery

Methane is the gas created from the decomposition of organic matter, which means lot of human activities and natural events can generate it. Cows, for example, are well-known methane leakers. So are oil and gas refineries, rice fields, volcanoes, gas stoves, water treatment plants, restaurants and farms, among others.

Another well-known methane generator is garbage. But how much methane is produced by our biggest garbage piles – landfills – is a new and important mystery.

In the April 30 edition of the journal “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics,” engineering researchers from Harvard published a study that says the EPA vastly underestimates the amount of methane generated by landfills, urban areas and in several states.

Specifically, the Harvard researchers found this: The amount of methane spewed into the atmosphere by U.S. landfills in 2019 was 51% more than the methane emission numbers reported to the EPA by landfill operators.

The Harvard study came out just weeks after the publication of a separate report – conducted, in part, by a Pasadena-based nonprofit, Carbon Mappers – that suggested U.S. landfills are producing methane at a rate even higher than that, roughly three times more than what is reported to regulators by landfill operators.

Though their exact numbers differ, both studies raise common questions that, for a couple reasons, are potentially important climate news.

First, the EPA already lists landfills as the nation’s third-biggest source of human-produced methane. If that estimate is based on numbers that are decidedly lower than the amount of methane that’s actually flowing into the atmosphere, it could mean global warming is happening at a pace already in excess of current projections.

What’s more, landfill-generated methane has been regulated for decades. State and federal rules call for operators to routinely measure methane plumes at every landfill and, when possible, to trap and reuse the gas as a form of energy. Since 2016, a power plant at the Frank R. Bowerman Landfill in Irvine has used methane captured at the site to generate enough electricity for 26,000 homes, according to the county. Similar operations happen at many urban landfills, though few are as efficient or produce as much energy as the plant in Irvine.

So if a significant amount of methane is leaking into the atmosphere even after modern recycling systems have been put in place, it’s possible that landfill regulations might need an overhaul if state, national and international goals on slowing climate change are going to be met.

The second reason a methane undercount could be grim is this: Methane is a powerful driver (and a potential solution; more on that later) of global warming.

Like carbon dioxide, which is the most common ingredient in global warming, methane boosts the earth’s temperature by serving as a heat-trapping blanket. Methane is particularly good at this, and early in its life it can capture 80 times more heat than can be captured by carbon dioxide.

That’s why reducing the amount of methane released into the atmosphere is listed as a specific goal of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Overall, climate change rules say methane emissions in 2030 are supposed to be 30% lower than they were in 2020.

The new reports suggest that goal might be farther away than previously realized.

Running routes

Scientists and others who care about methane emissions talk about “top-down” versus “bottom-up” systems of tracking.

Top-down tracking combines measurements of actual methane plumes with mathematical models based on everything from the amount of garbage poured into a specific landfill to the types of industry and waste that are most common in a particular community.

In their report, the Harvard researchers described “top-down” measurements as being based on “observations of atmospheric methane to infer emissions, often through inverse analyses using a chemical transport model.”

Bottom-up measurements aren’t so tricky.

Though modern landfills are technologically complex structures, regulated by dozens of agencies and overseen by trained environmental engineers, the bottom-up method of measuring methane is a fundamentally low-tech operation – humans walking up to and sometimes over garbage while carrying hand-held devices (called “sniffers”) that detect and measure methane plumes.

Koutroulis and others even use a football term – “route running” – to describe the strategy. And the goal is just as simple: to find places on the outer layer of the landfill where methane or any other gas is seeping out and measure those so-called “fugitive emissions.”

But in many modern landfills, such as those in Orange County, there’s so much ground to cover – the Bowerman landfill in Irvine (one of the nation’s biggest) eventually will grow to 534 acres, or slightly bigger than Disneyland plus California Adventure – that it isn’t practical to physically track methane plumes.

Even though current regulations call for methane-detection routes to be run every quarter at every landfill, and for independent measurements to verify what is found by the landfill operators, results from the two new methane studies, and other reports, suggest the rules might not match the problem.

It’s why Koutroulis wants to create a new tracking system, one that relies on low-flying drones and sensors at key spots on the landfill, to generate real-time data. Such information, he said, might make it possible for his team to reduce methane emissions as they occur, not after.

“A landfill is a living, breathing entity. It can get upset. It can get a fever, burp; it can go sideways on you,” Koutroulis said.

“That’s why you have to constantly monitor everything – flow rates, temperature, moisture content; all these points of data – to determine the overall health and efficiency of the landfill gas collection systems.”

The current rules, which include the use of humans and hand-held detection devices, have been in place in California since 2010. They call for landfills to trap 75% of the gasses (including methane but also carbon dioxide and others) they generate, meaning a quarter of those gasses can be released legally into the air.

Koutroulis and others suggested new state and federal rules could be in place within the next 12 months. If his drone-based experiment influences what those new standards look like, Koutroulis said he’s OK with that.

“If the end result is tougher standards, and it helps set standards for the rest of the nation, then fine,” he said.

“All of the greenhouse gasses coming out (of landfills) are problematic. The question, the issue really, is how we control them.”

Methane watch

Scientists aren’t alone in tracking – or trying to track – methane emissions.

“I worry about it, given where we live,” said Angela Nguyen, who lives near the Great Park in Irvine, about 4 miles south of the Bowerman landfill.

Nguyen studied environmental science in college and worked for a hazardous-waste clean-up company before choosing to stay home to raise three kids. A few years ago, she said, when she and her family were looking for a home, she learned that methane from landfills can boost ozone levels and that ozone, in turn, can cause or exaggerate asthma and other health conditions.

“Everything we can see suggests it’s not a problem around here. But I don’t know if the data is really available.”

It’s not, yet, but it might be soon.

On March 4, between the publication of the two new studies on landfill-generated methane, a SpaceX rocket took off from a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base to ferry a new satellite into space: MethaneSAT.

The public-private venture is aimed at creating the first-ever public database of methane emissions, and of the biggest emitters. It’s also indicative of how methane is viewed as both a key cause of global warming and a potential game changer in the battle to prevent the earth from overheating.

While methane is odorless, colorless, ubiquitous and tragically excellent at trapping heat, it also doesn’t stick around too long, dissipating from the atmosphere far sooner than it takes for carbon dioxide to go away. That means any reduction in methane emissions could produce comparatively fast results when it comes to keeping the planet from overheating.

So, for the past two months, MethaneSAT – a venture from the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and the New Zealand Space Agency that was financed in part by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – has been circling the planet about 15 times a day at an altitude of 360 miles. It captures detailed methane counts from 50 regions of the earth.

How detailed?

In an interview with the New York Times, Steven Hamburg, a scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund who helped lead the MethaneSAT project, suggested the view would be granular enough to track specific methane violators.

“It allows us to basically put on a pair of bifocals so we can see things both in the small scale, and the wider scale.”

If the project creates a public database, and if the database can show where methane is coming from – even a local landfill – it’ll attract some eyeballs.

“I’ll check it out,” Nguyen said. “I’ll be watching.”

​ Orange County Register 

Single-family zoning scores a win in court with blocking of Senate Bill 9

• May 4, 2024

The California Legislature specializes in lawless, partisan hackery. The list of bills that disregard the state constitution, or the federal one, borders on comical if you haven’t yet lost your sense of humor.

Remember the law that required a fixed number of women on corporate boards? Unconstitutional. Or the law that limited what doctors could say to their patients? So embarrassingly unconstitutional that the legislature and the governor actually repealed it while the legal challenge was still ongoing.

Currently the Legislature is considering three bills — and they’re moving through the goose quickly — that would cause your water rates to go up and up, while making it harder to get your money back if you’re overcharged. All three of these bills conflict with Proposition 218, a constitutional initiative approved by voters in 1996 that provides Californians with protection against excessive fees and rates that go beyond the cost of service.

Assembly Bill 2257 messes with your right to challenge water rate hikes by limiting the time to do so, while allowing water agencies to hide the various reports you would need in order to contest the rate increase. AB 1827 allows water agencies to set higher rates for parcels that potentially might use more water, even if they don’t, and also to charge more for peak usage times, which water agencies can’t even measure. Senate Bill 1072 takes away the right to a refund if a property owner is overcharged for services such as water and sewer, allowing only a credit on future bills instead. That cheats people who have moved.

You may want to call your representatives — look them up at findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov — and let them know what you think of these proposed laws, before they glide under the governor’s signature and somebody has to sue over them.

The good news is that sometimes even the California courts can’t take it anymore, and they strike down lawless laws as unconstitutional.

That’s what just happened to Senate Bill 9, gleefully and lawlessly authored by then-Senate Democratic leader and now candidate for governor Toni Atkins.

SB 9 abolished single-family zoning throughout the state of California. The law forced cities to approve plans to split single-family lots into two, or build duplexes on parcels that were zoned single-family. Although the final version of the bill had a few “but only if” and “except when” provisions tacked onto it to win the last few votes needed, the law created “by right” approval to demolish a single-family home and build two houses, each entitled to have a separate accessory dwelling unit, for a total of four households on the same parcel.

“By right” means the city must grant approval ministerially, regardless of the development’s impact on traffic, parking, privacy, aesthetics or trees in the neighborhood.

During the Senate debate over SB 9, then-Sen. Pat Bated, R-Laguna Niguel, held up a four-page, single-spaced list of community associations, city councils and individuals opposed to Atkins’ bill.

The Senate majority didn’t care. SB 9 was passed and sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Aug. 30, 2021, and he signed it on Sept. 16, right after the polls closed in his recall election.

However, SB 9 has now been stopped. In a decision issued on April 22, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin ruled that the law is unconstitutional.

It’s a victory for the cities of Redondo Beach, Whittier, Carson, Del Mar and Torrance. They filed a lawsuit challenging SB 9 as a violation of the state constitution’s protections for charter cities.

There are two kinds of municipalities in California: “charter” cities and “general law” cities. Cities that adopt charters, which are like a local constitution, have more autonomy over municipal affairs. The state Legislature can’t pass a law that overrides the will of the residents of a charter city unless it first “finds and declares” that it is addressing “a matter of statewide concern.”

Atkins’ bill said the “matter of statewide concern” was “ensuring access to affordable housing.” But the Legislature did not require property owners to charge below-market rents for any of the new units they were entitled to build “by right” on their single-family lots.

And that, Judge Kin said, fails the test of whether this particular state law may override local control. “SB 9 is neither reasonably related to ensuring access to affordable housing nor narrowly tailored to avoid unnecessary interference in local governance,” he wrote. “SB 9 is therefore unconstitutional as violative of the ‘home rule’ doctrine.”

The ruling applies to the five cities that were parties to the case, but if Attorney General Rob Bonta appeals the decision and loses, it will apply to every charter city in California. There are more than a hundred, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Long Beach, Riverside, San Bernardino, Anaheim, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Irwindale, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Pasadena and Arcadia.

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Of course, the Legislature could try again to pass a bill that abolishes single-family zoning, and they could “find and declare” some other reason that it was “a matter of a statewide concern.” But there are good reasons for opposition to a law that takes zoning control out of the hands of local elected officials and forces one-size-fits-all policy on every city.

People spend their life savings and their life’s earnings to buy a single-family home. One of the fundamental tenets of liberty is the right to own and enjoy property, but the “enjoy” part is confiscated when the state changes local zoning in a way that enables all the neighbors to put four households on their single-family lots, and doesn’t even allow local governments to consider the impact.

They would never do this to the habitat of a Delta smelt.

And for now, at least, they can’t do it to endangered homeowners in five California cities.

Write [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register 

Meet the student journalists bringing college campus protests to the world

• May 4, 2024

All eyes are on America’s college students.

Over the past two weeks, a new wave of activism has unfolded at college campuses across the country — with students gathering in marches, demonstrations, and tent encampments to protest the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

The largely peaceful, pro-Palestine demonstrations have been upstaged by sometimes violent counter-protests, police force, and brought America’s college students to the forefront of the international issue.

But it can be difficult to know exactly what’s been going at these universities with countless media outlets, social media posts, and other speculation mucking up the truth.

And that’s where student journalists — who’ve been boots-on-the-ground covering the happenings on their respective campuses — have played a crucial role in keeping the world at-large abreast of how the college protests have played out.

In Southern California, demonstrations at UCLA and USC came to a head last week.

At UCLA, a largely peaceful group of pro-Palestine demonstrators in a tent encampment in Dickson Plaza were violently attacked by a group of counter-protestors in the late hours of the night on Tuesday, April 30, into the next morning.

The violence went on without intervention from UCLA’s campus security and law enforcement, who were on scene, for several hours. The university has since promised to investigate the delayed police response.

Four student journalists for UCLA’s student-run newspaper, the Daily Bruin — whose reporting has been critical in getting information about the encampment and university’s response — were assaulted by the counter-protestors. Some were sprayed with chemical irritants, while others were physically beaten, according to the newspaper.

The encampment at UCLA was dismantled at around 2:45 a.m. Thursday, when scores of law enforcement officers from three different agencies, clad in riot gear, encircled, then took control of, the encampment and arrested more than 200 demonstrators.

Staff members of the Columbia Daily Spectator, the college newspaper, work into the night as police cleared out demonstrators from Columbia University’s campus, late Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York. Left to right; Isabella Ramirez, editor in chief; Esha Karam, managing editor; Yvin Shin, head copy editor; Emily Forgash, deputy news editor; and Shea Vance, university news editor. (AP Photo/Jake Offenhartz)

USC’s campus, meanwhile, was also home to a pro-Palestine encampment — until 93 protestors were arrested on suspicion of trespassing on April 24.

“As student journalists, we are often dismissed in favor of mainstream media to the detriment of our safety and coverage,” Anna Dai-Liu, a Daily Bruin reporter, said Thursday on social media. “I hope that despite all the violence that has happened, it has been made clear that student journalists – here at UCLA, at Columbia and beyond – have mettle.”

My name is Anna Dai-Liu, and I’m a reporter for the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper. Never have I been prouder to say that, or more conscious of our responsibility.

Thank you to everyone who’s reached out. As we as a newsroom reflect, I thought I’d write a bit here.

— Anna Dai-Liu (@yaxiins) May 3, 2024

The violence against the student journalists  — and strong law enforcement response to the protests generally — stirred strong reactions from elected, university, and journalism leaders across the board.

“These students play a critical role in ensuring that communities remain informed with critical and accurate reporting during even the most intense moments of protest and conflict on their campuses,” the L.A. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists said in a Friday statement.

“Ensuring their ability to safely cover these events is not merely a responsibility of academic institutions but also a fundamental protection under the First Amendment,” the statement continued.

For Tamara Almoayed, a USC sophomore majoring in journalism, the last few weeks on campus have been a trial by fire.

She had only written about six or seven stories since joining the team with Annenberg Media, the college’s student-led multimedia news platform, before protestors set up their encampment on campus.

Almoayed, a Muslim international student from Bahrain, initially wanted to separate herself from the pro-Palestinian encampment that had begun to grow in Alumni Park.

So, she began to work on a story about graduation instead.

But on April 24, she said, all that changed.

As Almoayed walked around campus, what she saw differed from what was being reported in the mainstream media.

“I don’t feel like this is being represented fairly in the media,” Almoayed said. “So, I asked my editor: ‘Would you mind if I jump on this story?”

What she saw at the encampment, Almoayed said, was a well orchestrated, thoughtful protest — complete with meditation sessions, yoga, even kite-making.

What the media were reporting, she said, was hostility, violence and tension.

One news outlet she watched interviewed only counter protesters who actively sought out press to talk to, according to Almoayed. That network never bothered to speak to the protesters themselves, she said.

That’s when Almoayed knew she had to get involved.

And as she recorded a live show for Annenberg Radio News on scene on April 24, things went from calm to chaos within a few hours.

At 5 p.m., she said, she described to listeners what was happening in Alumni Park.

“It seemed relaxed,” Almoayed said. “There had been one scuffle with (USC) Public Safety officers.”So the crew stopped recording.

Sometime later, she and her crew noticed a large public safety vehicle come through campus from which officers gave their first dispersal notice: Campers had to leave within 10 minutes or they would be charged with criminal trespassing.

Almoayed immediately went back on air as the young journalists “tried to figure everything out.”

Students knowing they would be arrested formed a circle, she said. Then Los Angeles Police Department officers arrived.

“There were a lot of LAPD,” Almoayed said, adding the police came “in masses.”

And, that’s when things got crazy, she said.

“It wasn’t really clear what the police wanted us to do,” Almoayed said.

A journalism professor came to their aid, said Almoayed, and informed police of their rights to stay at the scene and report.

It was only then that LAPD cleared a spot for the young news reporters.

One by one, students stood up, put their hands behind their backs and waited to be arrested, she said.

From Almoayed’s perspective, it wasn’t until police arrived that the protest situation got tense and uncomfortable.

After the arrests, she wrote her editor’s phone number on her arm, just in case.

Then, she said, police charged the remaining students who were still on campus toward one of its main gates.

Almoayed was frightened, she said.

“If this gate falls down, she said, I could get hurt,” she thought. “I need to step back a bit.”

She stepped back, started filming with her phone, then heard a shot.

People, thinking police were firing tear gas, started running.

Another Annenberg student journalist spoke to someone who said they got hit with a rubber bullet to the abdomen. Police have yet to confirm whether employed less-lethal weapons toward the crowd that night.

A week later, Almoayed is thankful for the lessons she learned covering the protest, she said — but she’s also feeling frustrated.

USC, she said, feels “militarized” with only two gates to the 226-acre campus open to even students who have finals this week.

And the campus is closed off to everyone but students and faculty — including the media.

“There’s no one here to document what is going on,” Almoayed said, adding that puts more pressure on her and other student journalists to be the eyes and ears for the entire community.

The fact that outside media have been barred for the campus has also reinvigorated Nicholas Corral’s sense of responsibility as a student journalist.

Corral, a freshman staff writer with USC’s independent student newspaper the Daily Trojan, was also on scene to document what played out between the pro-Palestine demonstrators, counter-protestors, and police at the university.

“This period has been very tough because this is one of the biggest protests we’ve had on our campus,” Corral said, “and it’s not something that there’s this whole wealth of institutional knowledge in covering.”

It’s been a bit of a learning curve for Corral and other student journalists who are still learning the complexities of the industry.

“We were just starting out as the news was breaking, and we had to learn as the news was breaking,” Corral said. “Every single (thing needed) to be very specific, very correct — or maybe we’ll hear about it from someone who is affected by this. So that was a tough period for me personally.”

There was also concern amongst Daily Trojan reporters about being misidentified by law enforcement as protestors or regular students, Corral said, as they had yet to receive official press badges.

Once law enforcement got involved, he said, Daily Trojan reporters did their best to make it clear they were press. Some donned name tags reading “Hi, my name is ‘Daily Trojan reporter,’ while others wrote ‘reporter’ on their backs.

“There was a lot of uncertainty because in my mind, I’m a reporter,” Corral said. “In the mind, someone who’s coming on campus who’s never met me, I’m a student.”

But despite the challenges, Corral said, covering the situation at USC has been rewarding — especially once outside media were barred from coming on campus.

Police advance on demonstrators on the UCLA campus Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

Student reporters, for example, were the only media able to directly report on a faculty march in support of student protests rights on Wednesday, May 1.

Outside media were only able to access those faculty members after they made their way to a gate were media were allowed to assemble.

“Student journalists (at organizations) including Annenberg Media and the Daily Trojan fill a big role,” Corral said, “not just for the campus community, but the outside world.”

And through the experience, Corral said, he’s never lost will do to journalism.

“I was never really in doubt,” Corral said. “I’m incredibly proud of the work that I’ve done and that we’ve done. It’s important — I never doubted that.”

Aside from UCLA and USC, other Southern California schools have also seen pro-Palestine demonstrations over the past few weeks — though on much smaller scales.

Danna Miramontes, a senior majoring in English with a minor in journalism at Cal Poly Pomona was on scene at her campus to cover one such demonstration this week.

Miramontes, who just begun working for the school’s newspaper, the Poly Post, at the start of the spring semester, got her start covering the Israel-Hamas conflict earlier this year — when some students came under university scrutiny after protesting a Lockheed Martin job workshop hosted on the campus.

Things were relatively quiet on campus, though, until the wave of protests at universities across the country kicked off a few weeks ago.

Protestors gathered at Cal Poly Pomona on Monday, April 29, to voice their concerns about Israel’s brutal counterattack in Gaza.

The demonstration consisted of a peaceful on-campus march and some speeches, with no plans for a long-term encampment seen at other universities including Columbia.

Miramontes, who had found out about plans for the event a few days prior, was on scene to report.

“I was pretty nervous,” Miramontes said in a Wednesday, May 1 interview, “I was just hitting the ground running. I was like, ‘I guess the training wheels are gone — and I have to face this head on.’”

And that she did. With guidance from fellow student reporters, faculty members, and mentors, Miramontes said she was able to navigate the nuances of covering her first big protest, despite concerns about her own safety in the back of her mind.

“People are harassing (journalists) more and more while they’re reporting, like the counter-protestors being really forceful at UCLA,” Miramontes said. “My mom, when I told her what I was doing, she was really worried for my safety because she also knows that journalists are attacked for what they have to say.”

And though the protest at Cal Poly Pomona was peaceful and over relatively quickly, Miramontes said it was a crucial way for her to learn how to approach protestors, counter-protestors, and law enforcement in a high-emotion situation like a political demonstration.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a nonpartisan website, which manages a database of assaults against journalists, has tallied more than 1,000 attacks against reporters — perpetrated by private individuals, police, politicians, and more — since 2017, for example.

“It does worry me. It’s always at the back of my mind,” Miramontes said. “But I think what gets me out of that mindset is knowing that people deserve to know what’s happening — that when I go into this field, I’m not gonna back down from reporting on the hard stuff because that’s what people go to news for.

“That’s important,” she said.

​ Orange County Register