Daxon: Raise the flag for Flag Day — and new Brea businesses

• June 13, 2024

Did you know that a declaration to proclaim June 14 as Flag Day started with President Woodrow Wilson in 1916?

Again in 1927, President Calvin Coolidge’s Flag Day proclamation went nowhere. Finally, in 1949, under President Harry Truman, Congress finally gave approval for June 14 to be observed nationally as Flag Day. But it is not a legal holiday, except in Pennsylvania, but we proudly honor our flag on that day.

Flag Day is also a good time to replace that flag that’s faded or a bit tattered. When you do replace it, the old one doesn’t go in the trash. The proper disposal of our flag is by burning it in a retirement ceremony usually done by scouts and veterans’ organizations.

In 2018, Danielle Eby chose to create flag disposal boxes out of wood and painted in red, white and blue for her Girl Scout Gold Award project, equal to Boy Scouts’ Eagle Award. With help from other scouts, her parents and others, the boxes were built and ready for old flags.

Today, as in the beginning, the disposable boxes are conveniently located around town at the Brea Lions Scout Center, Brea Museum, Brea Senior Center, Brea Community Center, Brea Fire Administration offices in the Civic Center and at Birch Hills Golf Course.

Danielle’s parents, Denise and Dale Eby, currently maintain the boxes. Yes, Denise Eby is also Brea’s treasurer and Danielle is a senior at Northern Arizona University.

“Last October,” said Denise, “I took a large quantity to the Orange County Fire Authority when they did their annual retirement.”

She added that Boy Scout Troop 707 plans to take over the project.

Just remember when your flag is ready for retirement, place it in one of flag retirement boxes all around Brea.

Something not retiring in Brea are new places to shop and eat.

Just recently, l discovered the J. Crew Factory store in the Brea Union Plaza center. It took over the former Hallmark Shop and is next to Ultra Beauty Store & Hair Salon, located in the former Pier One store.

A lot of us remember the cool J. Crew Store that was at Brea Mall.  J. Crew Factory is looking good and so are its reduced prices.

A surprise to me is that its manager, Hector, told me it’s been there for three months. It has cool clothing for women, men and kids, plus accessories and even shoes. Hard to believe that was once a card shop.

And there are even more big changes to the Brea Union Plaza.

The former Sears Outlet, next to Nordstrom Rack, is being transformed into a Mor Furniture Store. According to Mike Zeller of Mor, it expects to open in August.

In Brea Downtown, the former Ruby’s Diner is being transformed into a Finney’s Craft House & Kitchen. According to Brad Finney it is family owned, family friendly and was started eight years ago by his twin brother, Greg.

There are currently 14 Finney’s and the Brea location and a couple more are in the works.

Finney’s features an array of craft beers and a varied menu that includes everything from tacos and flatbread pizza to gourmet sandwiches and burgers.

He expects the Ruby’s signage to be gone in about 30 days. Then we’ll see Finney’s “coming soon” signs, but they are making major changes to the property and Finney doesn’t expect them to open until February or March of 2025. I bet it will be worth the wait.

Terri Daxon is a freelance writer and the owner of Daxon Marketing Communications. She gives her perspective on Brea issues twice a month. Contact her at  [email protected].

​ Orange County Register 

Despite budget crisis, Orange will save cherished community events, hire police and fire — for now

• June 13, 2024

After weeks of budget deliberations on a projected deficit, the Orange City Council voted Tuesday to temporarily protect beloved community events such as the 3rd of July fireworks celebration and the Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

The council also directed city staffers to continue to hire police and fire officers for roles never before filled, while authorizing a freeze on vacant positions outside of public safety. In addition, the council mandated cuts to community and library services.

Still, the city faces a deep hole for the new fiscal year beginning in July, and the council appears inclined to ask voters for a sales tax in November to fill it.

Orange is facing a $19.1 million structural budget deficit and is on pace to run out of emergency reserve funds within two years, officials say. If approved, the council’s latest direction for revenue enhancements and cuts would still leave the city with a budget deficit next year of more than $8.7 million, according to Finance Director Trang Nguyen.

“Our task is to pass a balanced budget,” Mayor Dan Slater said to the council Tuesday. “Tonight, we couldn’t get there.”

He said he hoped some more cuts might be identified before the seven-member council has a final opportunity at its next meeting June 25 to adjust the city budget before the new fiscal year. Regardless of their decisions in two weeks, councilmembers plan to revisit expenditures in December including the idea of chopping community events or freezing public safety hires.

“We cut tonight $5 million and we saw how painful that was, and if we don’t have revenue coming in, the problems will still exist,” Councilmember Kathy Tavoularis said Tuesday.

A majority of the council rejected again recommendations from city staff to sign off on budget reductions to public safety – spending on police and fire accounts for about two-thirds of Orange’s general fund, or day-to-day, spending.

Conversely, councilmembers provided direction to hire for previously budgeted, yet left vacant, roles that when filled will grow the Police Department to its largest size in city history. They acknowledged the city needs to raise new revenue to sustain the police force and other services.

“The only way we’re going to get there (to a balanced budget) is to pass some kind of a sales tax measure,” Slater said.

The council is still weeks away from having to decide whether to ask voters for a local sales tax this November, but on Tuesday, all seven members voted in favor of city staff coming back to the council with a formal study of some sort of proposal to levy a local tax.

Sales tax in Orange County is 7.75% and 10 cities, as City Manager Tom Kisela pointed out, have added their own local taxes as an additional revenue source. The highest are Los Alamitos and Santa Ana at 9.25%.

Slater and Councilmember Denis Bilodeau called for staff to examine a half-percent sales tax addition that would sunset after six years, but their five colleagues voted instead for studies of either a 0.75% or 1% sales tax, citing a need for the city to raise more revenue.

“I can’t in good conscience light off fireworks while asking people to dig into their pockets,” Bilodeau said before his minority vote, along with Slater and Tavoularis, to end the 3rd of July fireworks show. “We don’t have the money to fund all these things. There are things that we need to have and things that we want to have, and this is a want to have.”

Councilmember John Gyllenhammer, in the majority, disagreed. “There’s value to these events, value to living in Orange,” he said. “It’s an investment in Orange.”

City Attorney Michael Vigliotta said he needed to research the legality of a sunsetting sales tax that could potentially vanish after Orange ran a budget surplus for a certain number of years. Currently, staff estimate that a 1% sales tax could help Orange increase annual revenue by up to $40 million.

In support of a sales tax measure, Tavoularis called Orange a “cheap city” that historically has spent less than many of its neighbors. But she and others on the dais also expressed their opinion that the city has not done enough economic development to keep up with services for a growing population and an increasing number of unfunded state mandates. A city staffer pointed out that Orange has run a structural deficit since fiscal year 2009 during the Great Recession, but through the years has used one-time money sources and other options for covering costs.

Councilmembers Jon Dumitru, Ana Gutierrez and Arianna Barrios made informal calls for a budget audit going back at least several years to determine how Orange ended up in this predicament and why previous city leaders allowed an annual deficit to grow for more than a decade.

City staff will also continue research into fee studies to see where Orange can generate more money. Tavoularis and Barrios are advocates of asking Chapman University, which is exempt from property taxes, to make a payment to the city in lieu of taxes. The council previously discussed imposing some sort of per-student public safety fee on Chapman, a measure that Gyllenhammer said in May might not be warranted without assessing data on the university’s impact.

Staff say they also are working on development plans to help Orange capitalize on its proximity to Disneyland, potentially bringing forward an incentive program to lure upscale hotels to the west side of the city.

Near the end of the meeting this week, Kisela apologized to the council for delays in responding to their study requests, saying that staff has had little time to examine anything other than line item cuts to the budget.

In a warning about overworked city staff and their low morale, Kisela said City Hall faces a “self-correcting problem.” He worries overburdened employees will find new places to work by the end of the year — inadvertently correcting the city’s budget crisis by trimming the payroll.

“I would say in about six months that people aren’t going to be here, and that’s going to be a result of some of the things that are happening tonight,” he said.

“The only reason I’m still here is because I made a commitment for two years,” he added. Kisela, a former Orange police chief, was lured out of retirement by the council to become interim city manager in 2022. The interim tag was removed in early 2023.

Kisela said Orange has a history of “always getting by.”

Now, he said, it’s time for the city to start “thinking big.”

And, he said, “Thinking big costs money.”

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​ Orange County Register 

California has No. 1 US wage gap between haves and have-nots

• June 13, 2024

”Survey says” looks at various rankings and scorecards judging geographic locations while noting these grades are best seen as a mix of artful interpretation and data.

Buzz: The pay gap between California’s upper and lower halves of the pay scale is larger than any other state.

Source: My trusty spreadsheet looked at some federal jobs data for May 2023, tracking two noteworthy slices of wages by state – the 75th and 25th percentiles, or the medians of the top half and bottom half of salaries. This spread offers clues about uneven paychecks across a state.

Topline

There’s a 146% difference between what California bosses typically paid in the top half of salaries versus the bottom half. That’s the No. 1 chasm among the states and well above 108% nationally.

After California came Massachusetts and New York at 144%, then Maryland at 142%. The smallest gap was in Maine at 81%, then South Dakota at 82%, Iowa at 84%, and North Dakota at 85%.

And this measure of income inequality in California’s two big economic rivals? Texas ranked No. 8 at 128% and Florida was No. 32 at 100%.

The details

How did we get to this gap?

Well, California homes still sell (slowly), our roads are filled with new vehicles, and our shopping centers are busy because many bosses in the Golden State pay really well.

The state’s 75th percentile pay – the mid-point of the upper half – ranked No. 3 in the U.S. at $93,250 a year. Nationally, that pay is $70,035. So Golden State bosses pay 33% better for the higher-pay work.

Topping California were Massachusetts at $98,110 and Washington at $95,180. The lowest was Mississippi at $55,870, Arkansas at $58,900, and South Dakota at $59,980.

REAL ESTATE NEWSLETTER: Get our free ‘Home Stretch’ by email. SUBSCRIBE HERE!

By the way, Texas was No. 22 at $72,640 and Florida, No. 30 at $67,600.

Yet, many California jobs don’t pay well – thus the huge have-versus-have-not divide.

Wages at the 25th percentile – mid-point of the lower half – in California ranked No. 7 at $37,890 vs. $35,030 nationally. So, for the lower-salaries worker, Golden State bosses pay only 8% better than US peers.

Tops? Washington at $43,370, Massachusetts at $40,130, and Colorado at $38,830. Lows? Mississippi at $27,910, Louisiana at $28,900, and West Virginia at $29,260.

And Texas was No. 41 at $31,920 and Florida, No. 32 at $33,730.

Bottom line

Whenever you wonder who can afford California, don’t forget that some people can – as this math shows.

However, while California pay level for the upper half may seem generous – it does not go very far in the Golden State. For example, ponder those paychecks as fuel for house hunting.

SHOPPING NEWS: What’s the big trend? Who’s buying what? CLICK HERE!

The California Association of Realtors estimated buyers needed a $208,000 household income to qualify to buy the median priced home in the spring of 2023 – when this wage data was tabulated.

That’s more than double the 75th percentile wage. Yes, a household with two jobs paying more than what three-quarters of Californians make doesn’t cut it.

And that why’s the Realtors math says only 16% of households could “afford” to buy.

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 

Report: Lakers interviewing JJ Redick for coaching job this weekend

• June 13, 2024

The Lakers will reportedly interview JJ Redick in Southern California for the organization’s head coaching vacancy this weekend.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Thursday morning that Redick, the former player-turned-broadcaster, has the opportunity to “move him to the forefront” of the Lakers’ coaching search with a strong interview performance.

Redick’s interview will come after the organization’s failed pursuit of UConn men’s coach Dan Hurley, who turned down the Lakers’ six-year, $70 million offer and returned to the Huskies.

Redick was considered the frontrunner for the Lakers’ job before their pursuit of Hurley became public.

The Lakers hope to hire a coach before the NBA’s June 26-27 draft.

Redick met with Lakers VP and GM Rob Pelinka last month at the draft combine in Chicago, and is expected to have a more formal and thorough interview with Pelinka and Lakers governor Jeanie Buss this weekend.

New Orleans Pelicans associate head coach James Borrego, who is also in the mix for the Cleveland Cavaliers’ coaching vacancy, is reportedly the only candidate to interview with the Lakers twice. Borrego interviewed with the Lakers two weeks ago and interviewed with the Cavaliers this week.

Redick is a color commentator for ABC’s broadcast of the NBA Finals between the Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks.

If the Lakers hire Redick, an announcement isn’t expected to be made until the series is over. Game 4, the earliest the series could end, is Friday, with the Celtics leading the series 3-0.

If necessary, Game 5 would be played on Monday, Game 6 is scheduled for June 20 and Game 7 would be on June 23.

Redick, who played in the NBA for 15 seasons (four with the Clippers) and retired in 2021, has no professional or college coaching experience, never coaching above the youth level.

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But he has interviewed for multiple head-coaching vacancies recently: the Toronto Raptors’ last offseason, which went to Darko Rajaković, and the Charlotte Hornets this spring, with Boston lead assistant Charles Lee set to join the Hornets after the conclusion of the Celtics’ playoff run.

Redick became an analyst/broadcaster for ESPN immediately after retirement and has hosted a podcasts since 2016, including, “The Old Man and the Three” which is part of the ThreeFourTwo Productions company he co-founded.

Notably, Redick has also been co-hosting a podcast, “Mind the Game”, with Lakers star LeBron James since March.

​ Orange County Register 

Supreme Court preserves access to widely used abortion medication

• June 13, 2024

By MARK SHERMAN (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.

The justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA’s subsequent actions to ease access to it.

The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.

The high court is separately considering another abortion case, about whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals overrides state abortion bans in rare emergency cases in which a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk.

More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation.

Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.

President Joe Biden’s administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in this case could undermine the FDA’s drug approval process beyond the abortion context by inviting judges to second-guess the agency’s scientific judgments. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, argued that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved.

The abortion opponents argued in court papers that the FDA’s decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions on getting the drug were unreasonable and “jeopardize women’s health across the nation.”

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The mifepristone case began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Abortion opponents initially won a sweeping ruling nearly a year ago from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee in Texas, which would have revoked the drug’s approval entirely. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. But it would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.

The Supreme Court put the appeals court’s modified ruling on hold, then agreed to hear the case, though Justices Samuel Alito, the author of the decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded.

​ Orange County Register 

Disneyland cuts back on entertainment during peak summer season

• June 13, 2024

Disney California Adventure has canceled two shows and cut back performances on two more as atmosphere entertainment continues to shrink at the Anaheim theme park heading into the busy Fourth of July weekend during the peak of summer.

Disney California Adventure is trimming schedules in July for the Warriors of Wakanda in Avengers Campus and the Citizens of Buena Vista Street along the park’s main entrance promenade.

ALSO SEE: Disneyland president remembers ‘kind’ and ‘gentle’ employee who died after backstage accident

Disney California Adventure will soon adjust performance schedules on select entertainment offerings, according to Disneyland officials.

Disney California Adventure continually evaluates entertainment offerings and makes adjustments, according to Disneyland officials.

ALSO SEE: Where Disneyland hid all 52 Pizza Planet trucks during Pixar Fest — and how to find them

Warriors of Wakanda: The Disciplines of the Dora Milaje features the Black Panther’s bodyguards offering strength and skill training sessions to visitors in the Marvel themed land.

The Citizens of Buena Vista Street include a police officer, bike messenger and the mayor dressed in period costumes who interact with visitors and bring the entry promenade’s 1920s Los Angeles theme to life.

ALSO SEE: See full ride-through video of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure coming to Disneyland

Both Warriors of Wakanda and Citizens of Buena Vista Street performed daily in June and will cut back performances by 20% or more during July — one of the busiest vacation months of the year.

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Citizens of Buena Vista Street will not be offered on Thursdays and Fridays during most of July while Warriors of Wakanda will not be offered on select Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays throughout the month. The Disneyland entertainment calendar only extended to July 24 as of press time.

The latest entertainment cutbacks come on the heels of the cancelation of “Doctor Strange: Mysteries of the Mystic Arts” in Avengers Campus and the Club Pixar dance shows during the middle of Pixar Fest at Disney California Adventure.

WDW News Today reports the show closures and reduced schedules are part of a series of entertainment cuts coming to Disneyland and DCA.

​ Orange County Register 

Are there too many council meetings?

• June 13, 2024

Is the primary duty of a legislative body whose members represent farflung constituencies to gather together in some central location for (yet another) meeting — or is it to serve the citizenry in the field?

This is a simple question that it would seem governmental bureaucracies don’t ask themselves often enough.

But some members of the Los Angeles City Council are calling the question, as it were, about whether their schedule of meeting three days a week en masse in City Hall really serves Angelenos best, and it’s an issue worth discussing.

It’s a big city, and while Downtown may be at its heart, L.A. is so sprawling, from the far West Valley to San Pedro, from Pacific Palisades to Pico Union, that the commute alone takes up a big chunk of council members’ time.

Once there, they’re pretty much stuck for the day. Of course citizens can and do make the trek to Spring Street themselves, where they are (more or less) welcome to, as the First Amendment entitles us, “petition the Government for a redress of grievances” during public comment.

We would just note what is perhaps impolitic to say: Many such speakers are from the seemingly professionally aggrieved, people with too much time on their hands, while the rest of us have to work, raising the same issues every meeting. Plus, the merely eccentric, not that they don’t have the right to speak as well.

As David Zahniser reports in the Los Angeles Times, Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky and Tim McOsker last week raised the idea of asking “voters for permission to reduce the number of required weekly council meetings from three to one.”

There’s the rub, or perhaps the purely democratic solution: The move would require a change in the City Charter, and thus citizen approval.

Yaroslavsky says she’s “restless and frustrated” from the myriad presentations of ceremonial scrolls and plaques during the thrice-weekly meetings, and, yes, from public comment: “A lot of it is the same 15 people screaming racist, misogynistic, antisemitic epithets.”

There’s resistance from some to putting the issue on the Nov. 5 ballot. Certainly there are other priorities. But the Board of Supervisors runs the county with one weekly meeting. The council could run the city that way, too.

​ Orange County Register 

CSUF’s new dean excited about research, serving first-generation students

• June 13, 2024

Celestina Barbosa-Leiker will soon be back in familiar surroundings.

Barbosa-Leiker, a longtime resident of Orange County, has been appointed dean of Cal State Fullerton’s College of Health and Human Development.

For the past 14 years, Barbosa-Leiker has been an educator at Washington State University, serving as executive vice chancellor and professor in the College of Nursing at WSU Health Sciences Spokane for the past 17 months.

When she steps into her new role at CSUF on July 1, Barbosa-Leiker will oversee 7,000 students and more than 365 faculty members in the College of Health and Human Development.

Barbosa-Leiker was drawn to CSUF’s College of Human Development, in large part, because of the college’s commitment to meet the health care workforce needs of the region and its contributions to research, along with its emphasis on serving first-generation students.

When researching whether CSUF would be a good fit, Barbosa-Leiker was “blown away” upon discovering that the university is among the most affordable in the nation and is ranked No.1 in California and No.3 in the nation for the number of underrepresented undergraduate students among the student population.

“I was really inspired by that and really …  coming from community college as a transfer student, and understanding that experience, all of that completely resonated with me with who I am and with my internal values.”  Barbosa-Leiker said. “The college is uniquely situated to help the region and really beyond too.”

The College of Health and Human Development offers degrees in child and adolescent studies, kinesiology, counseling, human services, nursing, public health and social work.

“Celestina has a strong sense of our mission for moving the college forward,” said Amir Dabirian, provost and vice president for academic affairs. “I am confident that our campus community will welcome her with open arms.”

Barbosa-Leiker was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley before moving to Anaheim.

She attended Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut and Fullerton Community College.

The soon-to-be dean went on to earn a master’s degree and doctorate in psychology from Washington State University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in substance abuse from that university.

Prior to attending WSU, Barbosa-Leiker earned a bachelor’s degree at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts.

Much of Barbosa-Leiker’s research has centered around substance use in underserved populations, including gender differences in the measurement of opioid withdrawal, relapse while in treatment and predictors of relapse.

“We’re seeing that in really high proportions across a lot of demographic groups,” Barbosa-Leiker said. But certainly, since the pandemic, these health disparities that have existed for so long have just been exacerbated, and behavioral health, mental health, addiction, substance use, right along with that.”

Barbosa-Leiker leads an interdisciplinary research team to assess mothers, infants and health care providers in order to better care for women with opioid use disorders, and for women who use cannabis during pregnancy.

She also received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the link between psychological risk factors such as stress, substance use, depression and quality of life with brain aging in American Indian adults. The results of these studies will help improve standards and shape policy.

“I have been really privileged and honored to work with tribes across the nation,” she said.

In 2020, Barbosa-Leiker became a member of the Diversity Task Force for the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, and she serves as an associate editor for Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.

At CSUF, Barbosa-Leiker hopes to collaborate with the faculty in the College of Health and Human Development on more research projects.

“There’s a lot of great research already going on in the college, and so it’s fantastic and a lot of overlap with the focus on health equity and trying to decrease health disparities,” she said. “So, I think that will be great. I think I will be joining a great group of colleagues who have that expertise and that passion.”

Barbosa-Leiker met her husband Matthew Leiker, an accomplished artist, while they both had jobs at Disneyland in the 1990s.

The couple will be moving back to Orange County with their two sons, who are 10 and 13.

“We have hundreds of family members down in the area, so it’ll be so nice to be coming back home to all of our family down there,” she said. We are excited to be coming home.”

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​ Orange County Register