Hermosa Beach News for 2005

Top Stories on This Webpage: Starting December 29, 2005:

Documents show Valley School gymnasium ballot lapse - A mistake that omitted a proposed gymnasium from a 2002 citywide ballot measure can be traced to a resolution approved by the Hermosa Beach City School Board.  The mistake has been seized on by residents who are suing to halt construction of the gym at Hermosa Valley School. The residents claim that the gym cannot legally be built because it was not among the construction projects listed on the Measure J ballot in 2002, when Hermosa voters approved $13.6 million in school bonds.

HB School gym suit may target bond money - Hermosa Beach Valley School neighbors who have filed a lawsuit to block construction of a gymnasium at the school are contemplating an amendment to their suit that calls into question the district’s plans for a host of other bond-funded, school construction projects.  “We didn’t mean to, but we’ve opened a bees’ nest and the bees are coming out,” said Gerry Compton, one of the neighbors behind the lawsuit.  The school construction projects are slated to be paid from a $13.2 million bond measure approved by voters in November 2002. 

From the above news story: Lawsuit filed by - Committee For Responsible School Expansion

Hermosa police arrest carjacking suspects - Pair are suspected of robbing a 50-year-old woman of her car on Hermosa Avenue in Hermosa Beach. Earlier, they allegedly attempted to kidnap a woman and take her car on Faymont Avenue in Manhattan Beach.  A young man and a 17-year-old boy, found riding in a car stolen at gunpoint from a woman in Hermosa Beach, remained in custody Friday.  Rodney Gene Parker, 24, and the unidentified juvenile, both of Los Angeles, were arrested at 10:40 p.m. Thursday in South Los Angeles, police said.

Police search for suspects in car theft, kidnap attempt - Beach cities' authorities look for men who pulled off two crimes. One victim ran to safety, the other fled to her house after watching assailants drive her car away.  Failing in an attempt Thursday to kidnap a woman and steal her car in Manhattan Beach, carjackers went to north Hermosa Beach and robbed a woman at gunpoint of her Mercedes-Benz.  Neither woman was hurt in the crimes. One woman ran to safety. The other fled to her house after watching the assailants drive her car away.  Police in both cities were searching Thursday night for two suspects in the silver 2001 Mercedes-Benz S500 sedan.

The Easy Reader – December 29, 2005

2005 in Hermosa: the year of the punch line, Part I

A bitter land-use battle, a hulking emptiness and the police

by Robb Fulcher

It was the year of the punch line, as Hermosans saw conclusions to tales that had begun long before and in many cases seemed to be dragging along with no end in sight.

A years-long renovation of the city pier was brought to completion, a possibly decisive shot was fired in a lengthy and bitter land-use battle over a school gymnasium, and a years-long struggle to reopen a giant commercial mall ended in success.

Another punch line provided no laughs for city officials as the first of several lawsuits naming the Police Department was settled for $1.1 million.

And a potentially bankrupting lawsuit continued to hang over the municipality’s less-than-optimistic head, threatening to lay down its potentially dread punch line some time after 2005.

Hermosans far-flung - It was a notable year for Hermosans far afield, as various residents and former residents brought music to the troops at the controversial Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, fled New Orleans before the fury of Hurricane Katrina, and flew a chopper over Katrina’s floodwaters to pluck survivors from rooftops.  The war in Iraq was brought home with tears for Hermosa schoolchildren when they received news that a pen pal Marine lost his life in a grenade attack.

Setting sun - The city’s police chief announced his retirement, a beloved educator ended her 37-year career, and Hermosa lost its foremost amateur historian, a well-known cookbook author and a beloved restaurateur.  Followers of the town’s funky, multi-candidate elections were stunned and saddened when a dedicated civic servant was rewarded with a seat on the City Council only to find the next day that his wife had been diagnosed with a medical condition that would claim his time and energy.  Placing wife and family first, Howard Fishman resigned before he could be sworn in, and the remaining council members deadlocked through the end of 2005 on the question of appointing or electing his replacement.

Pier punch line - The last weeks of the year saw the completion of a 12-year project to refurbish the Hermosa Beach Pier, from the pilings underneath it to the deck and railings on top.  In November hundreds of beach lovers flocked to the city’s most recognizable landmark to witness the ceremonial opening of its last refurbished portion: a small, sparkling plaza area at the leeward end.  The celebrants stood waiting in the brilliant midday sun as an 86-year-old financial donor, blind and sitting in a wheelchair, became the first person to go out onto the plaza, which the city renamed for his late twin brother.  Real estate guru David Schumacher, who had given the city $1 million to help fund the renovation, ran a hand along a shoulder-level plaque honoring brother Paul. Then the hundreds – including former and current lifeguards, political dignitaries, and police and firefighters in dress uniform – flooded across The Strand.  They crowded shoulder to shoulder to admire the plaza and the adjoining new lifeguard headquarters building, and witness the unveiling of a life-size statue of lifeguard and surfer Tim Kelly that was recast from aging fiberglass to bronze for the occasion.

Pavilion punch line - After a half-dozen years hulking vacant along Pacific Coast Highway, the hugely remodeled Hermosa Pavilion mall reopened with its centerpiece, an appropriately big 24-Hour Fitness facility with a swimming pool and basketball court.  The 100,000 square-foot mall just north of Pier Avenue also houses executive-type, ocean-view offices, a Glen Ivy Health Spa being built to rival its nationally known sister spa at Corona, a children’s dance studio, mortgage broker, real estate firm and coffee house.

Biggest punch line - Near the end of 2005 the city school board moved to break ground on a gymnasium at Hermosa Valley School, mounting what could be the decisive charge in the community’s bitterest land-use battle in years.  The board had been battling opposition, including a lawsuit by school neighbors and others, for years, and the moment of decision was a pensive one. Board members knew they were running out of money for the project and agreed to hire contractors only after determining to exhaust the small school district’s reserve funds if need be.  And they approved the $10.8 million project with only a gym and a library in the building for certain, although six additional classrooms had originally been envisioned.  Contractors will be asked to erect two science classrooms in the building if the money can be found; if not they will be asked to leave the two classrooms unfinished “shells” that can be completed later.  If gym opponents continue to lose in court and the project is built, it might please nobody entirely. To many gym supporters the project represents a dream diminished and to opponents the objectionable element, the gym itself, continues to survive.  The opponents’ lawsuit contends that the school board did not properly address concerns such as excessive noise and overcrowded traffic and parking in the neighborhood of the school on Valley Drive north of Pier Avenue.

Punch line hanging - In September the city suffered a stinging setback in a lawsuit that could lead to municipal bankruptcy, when an appeals court refused to reconsider the case of a spurned oilman who seeks as much as $500 million.  The next month the California Supreme Court surprised nobody with another ruling against the city, tossing Hermosa back onto the tender mercies of a trial court.  The lawsuit by Macpherson Oil of Santa Monica claims the city breached a contract calling for a slant-drilling project from the city maintenance yard way out under the ocean. The city council had leaned on a ballot measure in which Hermosa voters banned drilling, but that logic got kicked around the courtroom hard in 2005.

Police punch line - The first of several lawsuits naming the Police Department came to a conclusion with a $1.1 million settlement for a former club owner who accused police of harassment and excessive force.  The payment to the Roberts family, former owners of the former 705 club on upper Pier Avenue, will be made by the city’s insurance carrier after the city’s $250,000 deductible was exhausted in the courtroom.  The Roberts family in 2004 filed an administrative claim stemming from three incidents in which officers were accused of beating up a club patron and harassing, shoving and falsely arresting the club’s part owner. In the claim the family sought $7.6 million in damages.  The department also faces a civil rights lawsuit alleging that two men were falsely arrested, subjected to excessive force and maliciously prosecuted in an incident that was videotaped by a bystander on the Pier Plaza July 4, 2003. Criminal charges against the men did not stick.  Another lawsuit claims false arrest and excessive force by officers in a May 2004 misdemeanor arrest of three people on the Pier Plaza. The three were later exonerated at trial.  The FBI began investigating alleged civil rights violations by Hermosa police in two accusations of false arrest, and near year’s end an officer was fighting his firing for allegedly trying to sneak a handgun past airport security while off duty, and lying about it. He has denied any wrongdoing and is seeking to appeal the firing.

The Easy Reader – December 29, 2005

2005 in Hermosa: the year of the punch line, Part II

A bitter land-use battle, a hulking emptiness and the police

by Robb Fulcher

Fire line - The Fire Department was not spared controversy as Chief Russell Tingley received a vote of no confidence from the 18-member rank and file.  “Poor leadership abilities, weak management skills, and questionable dedication to the Hermosa Beach Fire Department is what the Hermosa Beach Firefighters Association sees from Chief Tingley,” the association stated in a letter.  Association president James Crawford cited what he called a failure by Tingley to follow up on a budget proposal by the association addressing staffing, medical billing and hospital transportation fees.

Rock the troops - The year saw a second Hermosa-to-Guantanamo Bay musical tour as producer Al Bowman brought rock and country acts to the controversial U.S. Navy base where hundreds of detainees are held in a desert fastness on Cuba’s southeastern edge.  On the way to a rugged outdoor amphitheater musicians’ vans stopped at armed checkpoints, passed over tall metal speed bumps that can be raised from the roadway to form taller metal walls, then slowed to slalom between berms set up to prevent suicide bombers from getting a running start.  The musicians gaped as they passed the guard towers and razor wire of Camp Delta, where detainees are held on a bluff overlooking the Caribbean Sea, then played and sang their hearts out at the amphitheater a stone’s throw away. The next day they joined the fairly few civilian Americans to have seen the sun-baked, tower-guarded line between American Cuba and Cuban Cuba.

Eye of disaster - Hurricane Katrina touched the lives of Hermosans and former Hermosans including local native Jill Gottesman and her husband who fled their drowned New Orleans home to the twilit “hell” of a Louisiana Superdome that rang with the eerie screams of unseen evacuees.  “It was like being in a military zone,” said Gottesman, 45, of her days and nights in the Superdome when Katrina ripped sections of the roof off of the indoor stadium, knocked out lighting and threw portions of the stadium into a semi-lawless dark.  “We were living in our own little hell in the Superdome,” she said.  When the couple returned home they found it choked with toxic mold and mud and Gottesman’s beloved garden dead.  But the couple counted themselves fortunate, and planned to move back into New Orleans where their hearts remained.  “We’re way better off than 90 or 95 percent of the people who were left with nothing and have no way to rebuild their lives,” Gottesman said. “Everything we lost in our house we can buy again.”

Savings the victims - Hermosa native Kevin Crecy spent four nights in the thick of the hurricane rescue effort in New Orleans helping to hoist about 100 survivors to safety from his pilot’s seat aboard a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter.  “I’m from California, I don’t see a lot of hurricanes,” the 27-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant said in a telephone interview at the time. “There are RVs and cars pushed up on top of roofs. You can’t believe water can have that much force.”  Copilot Crecy and the rest of the crew had to maneuver their orange HH65 Dauphine chopper between cell towers, trees and power lines to make their rescues.  Peering through night vision goggles the flight engineer told the pilots where to position the chopper, and then lowered a 180-foot long rescue line – usually with the rescue swimmer attached – to people waving flashlights from their rooftop islands.  “We’re taking them to safety but we’re also taking them away from their homes and everything they know,” he said.  Crecy said his training in New Orleans prepared him for the “worst case scenario” of a severe hurricane. “Everything they said would happen came true.”

Students mourn Marine - Hermosa Valley School students were among the many residents raising money and donating supplies to the victims of Katrina. They donated school supplies to rebuilding efforts in Iraq as well, and about summertime they received the news that their official pen pal Major Ricardo “Rick” Crocker of Redondo Beach, a reserve U.S. Marine, was felled in a rocket propelled grenade attack in the province of Al-Anbar.  In a schoolyard ceremony under dark clouds, the kids said a formal goodbye to their 39-yar-old friend and presented a $3,400 check to officers of the Santa Monica Police Department who worked with the Marine in his civilian life.  Crocker’s partner described the Marine as an unconventional police officer, serving on the SWAT team but preferring Police Activities League duty, serving fulltime at a community center visited each day by about 200 kids.  “He was his own man,” Officer Matt Rice said.

Top of the world - Ten home-schooled students with Hope Chapel Academy in Hermosa Beach piloted a robot called Beach Bot to a world championship in March, sharing a prestigious robotics title with Michigan students that were part of their competing “alliance.”  The Hope Chapel students and their Michigan partners bested almost 1,000 other teams made up of more than 24,000 students from 49 states and seven nations in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology) tournament.  Hot Bot proved best at the tic-tac-toe-like competition, scooting around the floor and using its arms to pick up objects laid out in rows and columns.

The Easy Reader – December 29, 2005

A bitter land-use battle, a hulking emptiness and the police, Part III

2005 in Hermosa: the year of the punch line

by Robb Fulcher

Murder - Most years pass in Hermosa without a murder but in March a worker was shot to death and another was wounded at a residential construction site on 10th Street just west of Pacific Coast Highway.  Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant accusing a 26-year-old man who, sources said, shot the construction workers because his wife allegedly slept with one of them.  Investigators believed that the man fled to Guadalajara, Mexico, joining his wife, whom he had taken there prior to the shooting.  The next-to-last murder took place in March 2003 when a 25-year-old man was shot late at night as he sat behind the wheel of a car at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Pier Avenue. That crime remained unsolved.

Sirens and pedals - On the lighter side of the law, Hermosa’s finest began ticketing speeding bicyclists on The Strand, at the behest of the City Council. A Redondo bicyclist fought his $351 citation in court but a judge told him to pay up for exceeding the Strand’s 8 mph limit. However, the judge did cut the fine down to $114.

Sunset at seaside - Police Chief Mike Lavin announced that he would retire in April 2006, fulfilling a personal pledge when he took the job to call it quits after five years.  The 49-year-old Lavin, a Hermosa native and three-decade veteran of the police force, was elevated from captain to chief to replace his mentor, Val Straser.  In turn Lavin has groomed a potential successor, Capt. Tom Eckert.  Lavin said he expects City Manager Steve Burrell to look at applicants from within and without the force before hiring the next chief, as he did before he promoted Lavin to the post. 

Kris Basua, who spearheaded decades of musical theater productions at Hermosa Valley School, announced her retirement after 37 years as a music teacher in the city’s public schools.  “I’ll miss the children the most,” she said during a rehearsal for her final musical, Way Out West in a Dress. “When I look at the little kindergarten faces, I know I won’t see those faces grow up.”  “I’ve been teaching the children of children I taught before,” Basua said.

School cuts - As the city schools continued to reel from state budget cuts, Basua’s position was axed over the summer of 2005 along with those of an assistant principal, two teachers and three teachers’ aides. The cuts totaled $344,000.

Not forgotten - In September Hermosa lost its foremost historical chronicler, John Thompson Hales, at age 88. Civic leaders crowded into the Hermosa Playhouse theater to honor Hales, the community’s definitive amateur historian and an avid runner who died of prostate cancer.

Hermosa Beach Historical Society President Rick Koenig eulogized Hales as a “shining star” and announced that one of his exhaustive projects, a chronology of significant events throughout the community’s century-plus history, would be housed in an honored place within the Historical Society’s museum.  “John has run the good race, as the Scriptures tell us, and now he rests in the everlasting grace of God’s embrace,” said Chaplain Charlie Lopez of Little Company of Mary Hospital’s Trinity Hospice.

Hales’ legacy can be seen in the city seal he created, which stands on the walls of City Hall, appears on official city letterhead and stands etched in granite 14 feet across at the foot of the city pier.

Betty Evans, author of nearly a dozen cookbooks and an Easy Reader staff writer for nearly three decades, died of cancer at age 78. She was named Chamber of Commerce Woman of the Year in 1981 for community activities including work with the Hermosa Garden Club and the nonprofit Friends of the Library.

Jean Margarette Lick, the first female desk officer of the Hermosa Beach Police Department, has passed away in Orange County four days short of her 87th birthday.  “She was just a lovely lady. We used to lovingly refer to her as Mama Jean. She used to sort of baby everyone, especially the younger officers,” said retired HBPD Sgt. Wally Moore.

Beloved restaurant figure Hanneh “Mama” Habash passed away at age 81. She was cook and mother confessor at the former Habash Café on Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa for three decades.  “That was her ministry. Being in the restaurant was her way of being of service to people. She cooked for them and she heard their stories,” daughter Fatina Johnston said in a 2000 interview.

Triumph to tragedy - Toward the end of the year the contentious pleasure of a municipal election turned to shock and sadness when longtime civic leader Howard Fishman won a seat on the City Council only to learn the next day that his wife had been diagnosed with a “serious medical condition.”  Voters also had reelected JR Reviczky and Michael Keegan. Fishman, 52, resigned before he could be sworn in.

As 2005 came to a close the remaining council members deadlocked over whether to appoint or elect Fishman’s replacement, moving ever closer to the legal default of a fresh citywide vote.  While they disagreed on how to replace Fishman, the remaining council members were united in praising his decision to place wife and family first.  “I commend you for this decision,” Mayor Pete Tucker told Fishman from the council dais. “God bless you.” ER

The Easy Reader - May 12, 2005

Documents show gymnasium ballot lapse

HB Valley School Gym project moving forward

by Robb Fulcher

A mistake that omitted a proposed gymnasium from a 2002 citywide ballot measure can be traced to a resolution approved by the Hermosa Beach City School Board, according to documents on file at the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office.  Two School Board members said the mistake was not caused by the board, however.

The mistake has been seized on by residents who are suing to halt construction of the gym at Hermosa Valley School. The residents claim that the gym cannot legally be built because it was not among the construction projects listed on the Measure J ballot in 2002, when Hermosa voters approved $13.6 million in school bonds.

In the resolution, adopted in July 2002, the school board directed the Registrar’s Office to include only a brief summary of the construction projects – with no mention of the gym – on the November 2002 ballot.

The School Board’s resolution, received by county election officials July 25, 2002, did include an itemized list of construction projects – including the gym – that the board labeled “Exhibit B.” However, the resolution did not direct the Registrar to include the “Exhibit B” list on the ballot. The resolution did direct the Registrar to include “Exhibit A,” which was the shorter summary without the gym.

The resolution, signed by the board’s then-President Cathy McCurdy and then-Superintendent Robert “Duffy” Clark, is on file at the Registrar’s Office in Norwalk.

School board members contend that despite questions over the ballot, voters knowingly approved a gym. They point out that the gym was mentioned in the ballot’s arguments in favor of the bond measure – signed by McCurdy and others – and the gym was mentioned in ballot arguments against the bond measure. Board members also point out that the gym project was frequently discussed at school board meetings, in the pages of local newspapers and in the election campaign for Measure J.

Mix-up - Current School Board President Lance Widman has blamed the mistake on a mix-up between the school district’s former bond attorney and the Registrar’s Office. This week Widman said his view of the mix-up came from a “comment” made to the School Board.  “Some time ago that comment was made, and frankly I can’t recollect who said it,” Widman said.

But Widman and McCurdy said they believe the bond attorney, the firm of Stradling, Yocca, Carlson and Rauth, was responsible for seeing that the resolution was proper before it was passed along to the Registrar.  “We hire people to do that work, we hire consultants,” Widman said. “The [school] district did what it was supposed to do.”

Neither Widman nor McCurdy had reviewed the resolution after questions were raised about the wording of the ballot measure. McCurdy said the resolution was among documents that the School Board has requested from the Registrar, to help answer questions about the ballot.

An attorney for Stradling, Yocca who worked on Measure J was not available early this week.

Full steam ahead - Despite the lawsuit by the roughly 30-member Committee for Responsible School Expansion, Widman said the school board plans to seek a construction contractor and stay on course with the gym project.

The lawsuit seeks to block the project and force the school board to consider changes in the gym’s size and location, but the lawsuit does not ask for a temporary halt to the project while those issues are thrashed out in court, Widman said.  “That’s right from the lawsuit itself. There’s nothing in there that says we can’t pass go,” Widman said. “…We are proceeding with what we’ve got to do.”

Gym ‘not important’ - A pre-election survey by a school district consultant found that the gym was “not viewed as important” by residents.

The consultant, Evans/McDonough Incorporated, suggested that the district split Measure J in two, asking voters to approve new classrooms and the gym separately. The consultant also advised that “possible opposition to a gymnasium could cause problems with the passage of a bond measure,” according to official minutes from a June 26, 2002, meeting of the school board.

Enough money? - Meanwhile, a construction consultant has estimated that the school district has fallen about $1.3 million short in revenues needed to build the $6.3 million gym building, said Sam Abrams, chairman of a committee that oversees how the bond money is spent.  That estimate, released in late March, followed an estimate three months earlier by the same consultant that the gym project was falling about $1 million short.

The school district started out with $15.6 million in local and state bonds for new school buildings and for an overhaul of plumbing, electricity, safety features, handicapped access, heating, air conditioning and technology-lab features at the 3-8 Valley School and the K-2 Hermosa View School. The upgrades cost nearly $10 million, leaving the district with $5.8 remaining for the new buildings at Valley School.

The gym building, as planned, would be placed near the southwest corner of the campus on Valley Drive. The 34-foot-tall, 26,000 square-foot building also would include a new science lab, library and classrooms. ER

Legal action from the above news story:

Lawsuit filed by - Committee For Responsible School Expansion

The Easy Reader - May 12, 2005

HB Police Beat

House robbed - Somebody came in through an open bathroom window May 2 and swiped more than $16,000 worth of stuff from a house on Bayview Drive.  Taken in the daytime caper were a 50-inch plasma TV set that had been mounted to a living room wall, a 42-inch liquid crystal display TV set, designer clothes, a computer, camera, camcorder and paintings.  A second Bayview home also appeared to be targeted, as police found signs that someone had tried to get in through a window there as well.

Strand fight - A Hawthorne man was taken to an area hospital following a fight at the beach about 5 p.m. Saturday, April 30, police said. Despite the trip to the hospital, no serious injuries were reported.  According to witness accounts, a bicyclist pedaling by on The Strand brushed the 21-year-old Hawthorne man with one of his handlebars, words were exchanged and the Hawthorne man challenged the other to fight, police said.  The cyclist, along with at least one fellow cyclist, beat up the Hawthorne man, police said.  The cyclists, described as heavily tattooed men between ages 20 and 30, pedaled away, police said.

Retiree ripped off - A retired Manhattan Beach woman lost $160 while shopping in a Hermosa grocery store April 30, police said. The woman believes it happened when a person engaged her in conversation, distracting her as her purse sat in her shopping cart. She believes a second person lifted the money from her purse during the conversation, police said.  Before shopping, she had withdrawn the money in $10 bills from a bank. ER

The Easy Reader – April 21, 2005

HB School gym suit may target bond money

by Kevin Cody

Valley School neighbors who have filed a lawsuit to block construction of a gymnasium at the school are contemplating an amendment to their suit that calls into question the district’s plans for a host of other bond-funded, school construction projects.  “We didn’t mean to, but we’ve opened a bees’ nest and the bees are coming out,” said Gerry Compton, one of the neighbors behind the lawsuit.

The school construction projects are slated to be paid from a $13.2 million bond measure approved by voters in November 2002.  The suit, filed two weeks ago, challenges the adequacy of the gymnasium’s environmental impact report. The contemplated amendment, Compton said, would challenge the district’s authority to spend bond money on the gym.  “State law restricts the spending of bond money to projects listed on the ballot and the 2002 ballot didn’t mention a gymnasium,” Compton said.

Nor did the ballot mention many other bond projects that are underway, or contemplated, including new restrooms, new computers, and upgrades to the cafeteria. Compton said that he and his fellow plaintiffs support bond project improvements, with the exception of the gym, and if their suit interfered with projects other than the gym it would be an unintended consequence.

Board member Lance Widman said this week that it had been the board’s intention to list the gym as well as all other proposed bond projects on the ballot. But a mix up between the school district’s former bond counsel and the Los Angeles County Registrar/Recorder resulted in only an abbreviated description of the proposed bond projects appearing on the ballot.

Widman said the district has been assured by its current bond counsel that despite the ballot mix-up, expenditures of bond money on the gym, as well as other projects listed in the bond resolution attachment, were legal.

The school district’s attorney Rob Anslow, of Bowie, Arneson, Wiles and Giannone, said this week, “If voters needed every scrap of data to make an informed decisions, ballot pamphlets would look like telephone books.” He added that the law regulating bond expenditures cannot be understood solely by reference to the single section of the State Constitution on which Compton and other plaintiffs are basing their challenge to the gym expenditures.

The plaintiffs’ attorney Douglas Carstens of Chatten-Brown and Associates said this week that he is still doing research on a suit amendment that would seek to block expenditure of funds on a gym, and potentially on other bond projects. ER

Read the lawsuit referred to in the above news story:

The Committee For Responsible School Expansion v. The Hermosa Beach School District

The Easy Reader – April 14, 2005

Lawsuit filed against Valley School gym

 by Robb Fulcher

Neighbors of Hermosa Valley School have filed a lawsuit seeking to halt construction of a gymnasium on the campus. The lawsuit seeks a fuller review of alternative sites for the gym building – which also would include classrooms and teachers’ offices, and possibly subject the project to a fresh public vote.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in Superior Court by the Committee for Responsible School Expansion, claims that the city school board did not take adequate measures to ease excess noise, traffic and parking congestion in the surrounding neighborhood.

Health District angle - Two elements of the lawsuit – a claim that the gym project would eat up too much of the campus’ open space and a claim that the gym would be too tall – hinge upon a joint use agreement the city school district signed with the Beach Cities Health District. Under the agreement, the Health District would be allowed to use the gym after school hours for yoga classes and the like, and the school district would be able to seek about $1 million in state funds that are set aside for joint-use projects.

School construction is generally exempt from city requirements for height and open space. But if the gym is used for “non-instructional purposes” by an agency such as the Health District, it would not be exempt from those requirements, said Douglas Carstens of Chatten-Brown and Associates, lead attorney for the citizens group.

If subject to city codes, the lawsuit claims, the 34-foot tall gym building on the Valley Drive campus would stand nine feet too tall, and the 26,000 square-foot building could not be erected without a vote of the public on the open space question.

Carstens said the city school board could “possibly” resolve the height and open space questions if it can back out of the joint agreement with the Health District. But, he said, questions of parking, noise and alternative gym sites would remain.

The neighbors - Carstens declined to say who had retained his legal services for the lawsuit, citing “freedom of association” of people seeking legal representation.

He said he did not know how many people belonged to the citizens group.

“We don’t have a membership list,” he said. “At the meetings I’ve attended there have sometimes been dozens of people.”

Carstens said some members want the gym project halted entirely, but a “large contingent” of the membership simply wants the school board to make the project “less burdensome” on the neighbors.

School neighbor Douglas Robins said he believes an “overwhelming” majority of the neighbors want the gym project modified, not halted. He said the neighbors filed the lawsuit to make sure their concerns would be addressed, adding that the statue of limitations for such a lawsuit would have soon expired.

Robins, who also is an attorney, said he envisions an agreement in which the school district would be required to address noise and traffic concerns, and the neighbors would drop the lawsuit.

For the defense - The day before the lawsuit was formally filed, school district Superintendent Sharon McClain said she feared that further delays in construction could doom the project, as building costs continue to skyrocket. She said costs have tripled over the course of an overall school construction project – set to include the gym – that is funded mostly by a $13.6 million school bond approved by Hermosa voters in November 2002.

She said she was saddened by what she sees as continued opposition to a construction project that voters long ago approved.

Ballot snafu - The 2002 citywide election also has been called into question. School board members last week acknowledged that the ballots in the polling places did not contain the full text of Measure J, which asked the public for the school bonds.

School district officials and the district’s current bond counsel were trying to determine how that happened, McClain said.

Some critics of the gym project have claimed the election should be considered invalid, but the district’s bond counsel – its legal representative in the matter – shrugged off that contention. Rob Anslow, a partner in the firm of Bowie, Arneson, Wiles and Giannone, said the statute of limitations to challenge such election results runs only days or weeks, and any challengers would be years too late.

Some critics have also said that because the ballot’s official analysis and summary did not mention a gym, the building of the gym might not be legal. McClain said Anslow was looking into that, and Anslow declined to comment in detail, saying he would not share advice he might give his client in fighting a potential lawsuit.

Struggle continues - Some neighbors and other residents have long insisted that proper steps have not been taken to mitigate the effects of noise and traffic. In February residents put their comments in writing as the school board sought state approval for the gym project.

The district had predicted that noise from the gym would have a “less than significant” impact on neighbors, and that traffic congestion would not significantly worsen. A district report did predict that parking problems in the neighborhood would be significantly worsened, and stated that the school district can offer no relief from those problems.

Resident Jerry Compton, an architect whose home stands near the school, urged the school board to consider building the gym next to Valley Drive instead of on the Southwest corner of the campus.

Compton complained that the board’s current plan would result in “catastrophic” parking congestion.

School neighbors Earl and Kristine Keegan wrote that “the noise and activity level in the surrounding residential neighborhood will be substantial” once the gym is in use…Currently there is no nighttime use of the school facility.”

The Keegans urged that the gym doors remain closed whenever it is being used, to muffle excessive noise, and asked how the district plans to protect adjoining classrooms from gym noises such as bouncing basketballs and referees’ whistles. The Keegans also urged the school board to study ways to ease traffic on an “overburdened” Valley Drive when after-school games are played from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. ER

The Daily Breeze - April 9, 2005

The Daily Breeze - April 8, 2005

The Daily Breeze - April 8, 2005

Hermosa Beach – Police seek help in finding suspect

Police in Hermosa Beach sought the public’s help Thursday to find a transient suspected of stalking and threatening to kill his former wife.

Michael Rhodes, 43, is wanted on a $170,000 warrant seeking his arrest on felony charges of stalking and making criminal threats, Hermosa Beach police Sgt. Paul Wolcutt said.

Rhodes frequents hotels and bars in the beach cities.  “Rhodes is considered to be violent and dangerous,” Wolcutt said.  “Do not approach him.  Call the police.”

Rhodes’ former wife, who obtained a restraining order to keep him away from her, told police he approached her in March while she was on a date and threatened to kill her, Wolcutt said.

Anyone with information about Rhodes’ whereabouts is asked to call Detective Dean Garkow at 310-318-0348.

Anyone who sees him should call 911, Wolcutt said.