Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Sorted by date Results 126 - 150 of 456
May 19, 2022 - Covid-19 vaccines were relatively more efficacious in preventing transmission and death seven months ago than they are today although they were never very effective at preventing transmission of disease. Using publicly available data from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health it is possible to compare how the vaccines performed over the summer, when they were first widely available to how they have performed this past winter. Over the span of time between June 1,...
May 12, 2022 - The 2022 Homeless Count was released by the City of Santa Monica on May 5, approximately two-and-a-half months after it was conducted on February 23. While the absolute number of homeless was 807, or 100 less than the last count of 907 homeless individuals in 2020, this was due to a decrease in available shelter beds under Covid-19 restrictions. More homeless were found outside, unsheltered, than in 2020. The number of people living in vehicles, tents, and makeshift shelters grew...
May 11, 2022 - Covid-19 cases have slowly been increasing across Los Angeles County. Due to the number of home tests available and free, there are perhaps even more cases than public officials know. And yet hospitalizations and deaths have remained very low. The relaxing of a correlation between the number of infections and the number of severe cases is probably attributable to the fact that the SARS-CoV-1 virus, like most other viruses, has grown less deadly with each mutation. A comparison...
May 9, 2022 - Renters in Santa Monica may believe themselves exempt from the ramifications of a proposed ballot measure to increase the tax rate on the sale of certain buildings by 833%. After all, rent increases are strictly controlled and landlords are severely hampered in their ability to take rented units off the market. It might seem as though renters would be largely immune from the proposed increase to 5.6% from 0.6% on on sales of property over $8 million. That would be the landlord's...
May 2, 2022 - Santa Monica City Councilmember Phil Brock says he "got triggered" when he discovered that the dumpster rooms in downtown's public garages are left open at night for the homeless. They are used as bedrooms, bathrooms, drug dens, and have served as initiation points for numerous fires. Brock claimed in an interview he had been promised the dumpster rooms would be closed at night months ago. This clearly had not happened. In response to this information, Brock wrote the below email...
May 5, 2022 - Santa Monica Mayor Sue Himmelrich has printed a significant inaccuracy in her campaign handout literature regarding her proposed "Homelessness Prevention and Affordable Housing" initiative. Some, who are less charitable than ourselves, might call it a bold-faced lie. On her flyer, titled "Standing Firm with Santa Monica," Himmelrich claims the proposed initiative to provide her estimate of an additional $50 million in revenue will come from "a 5% increase in the real estate...
April 28, 2022 - A push poll interview company is calling Santa Monica voters to gauge their response to Sue Himmelrich's ballot proposal to establish an increase over the current tax on sales of property over $8 million. Push polls are billed as surveys of opinion to the respondent but actually give information in an attempt to sway the voter. Himmelrich, who happens to be the mayor of Santa Monica, is allegedly spending her and her husband's own personal money to pay signature gatherers who...
May 3, 2022 - Santa Monica Police Chief Ramon Batista met members of the public at an event sponsored by the Santa Monica Protective Association on Sunday and Monday evenings. The event, held at a private home north of Montana Avenue, was well attended both evenings, with 60-70 people in the large backyard beside a swimming pool. The SMPA is a non-profit started in 1981 that collects dues from residents north of Montana in order to hire armed private security patrols. Most attendees were...
19: A man with a pipe broke a window in the alley between Lincoln and 7th Street at Arizona and then assaulted a resident who tried to stop him from breaking additional windows. Arthur Jeon, Santa Monica resident, was walking home from his gym on the Promenade when he witnessed the original vandalism. He wrote in an email addressed to Downtown Santa Monica Inc, "I saw a man throw a two-foot heavy pipe and break a window in a building on the alley between Lincoln and 7th at Arizona, a block...
April 27, 2022 - Carey Upton, Chief Operations Officer for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, held a community meeting yesterday afternoon to solicit input regarding proposed designs to modify the Roosevelt Elementary School campus. Difficult questions accosted him as soon as concerned community members arrived on campus for the tour and presentation. Impetus for the campus revisions come from a desire to improve the learning experience, according to Upton. In addition, the State...
April 28, 2022 - A Nextdoor user posted this morning that his friend was robbed at gunpoint at Ocean Avenue and Washington Avenue in Santa Monica at approximately 1:00 am yesterday morning. According to the posting individual, the male victim was standing outside his car talking on his cell phone when the assailants rolled up in a car, jumped out, and pulled a gun on him. Cash and his cell phone were taken in the armed robbery. Comments on Nextdoor regarding the armed assault were dismayed and a...
The City Council of Calabasas has published an open letter to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, spurning his requiest to meet and discuss his "vision" of law enforcement. Citing a spiraling increase in crime in Calabasas and the continued presence on the street of an accused serial child predator, Councilmember James Bozajian, a past president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, posted the below letter to Gascon, outlining the reasons a meeting with Calabasas would...
11: The Santa Monica Police Department have identified a suspect responsible for the halting of mail carrier service in the 1300 block of 14th Street. Davon Ray Morgan, age undisclosed, is the suspect of an Assault with a Deadly Weapon (broomstick) on a United States Postal Service mail carrier on January 19, 2022. SMPD says Morgan is "known to our officers" and was also familiar to the mail carrier he attacked. He was described as someone who "lived in the area." The victim received a mino...
April 12, 2022 - The National Weather Service says they have been forced to cut back on the number of their weather balloon launches because of global supply chain issues and an allegedly temporary problem with one hydrogen supplier. Normally, the NWS launches the weather diagnostic balloons from 101 "upper-air" sites, 92 in the United States and 9 in the Caribbean. The balloons carry radiosondes. Battery-powered radiosondes, instruments slightly bigger than a cell phone, can measure altitude,...
April 12, 2022 - City officials at all levels are struggling to respond to the recent news reports ranking Santa Monica as one of the least safe cities in California. In an open letter, City Manager David White and Police Chief Ramon Batista - both relatively new hires - claimed they have heard residents' fears and dismay and are taking aggressive action to restore the city's safety. Meanwhile, Barry Snell, the Interim Chief Executive Officer of Downtown Santa Monica, Inc., wrote a letter to...
April 7, 2022 - The LA County Department of Public Health relies on data disseminated to them from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and direct voluntary reports from hospitals, care providers, and the public in assessing Covid vaccine safety. No active surveillance is performed. This information comes from Dr. Paul Simon, MD, MPH, Chief Science Officer for the LADPH. County health officials do not actively follow up with patients who receive injections nor request and assess...
April 6, 2022 - The Adidas store on the Third Street Promenade was robbed at around 2:30 am this morning by an individual who smashed the storefront window with a cinderblock, used a fire extinguisher to hide his tracks after he took merchandise, and then exited through the rear door of the building. Six police squad cars responded within 5 minutes of an initial call made by John Alle, a nearby property and business owner, who initially saw and heard the suspects inside the Adidas building. Alle...
April 6, 2022 - A new analysis of state standardized testing reveals that the 2021 math scores of California's eighth graders were on the level expected of fifth graders. According to the analysis by David Wakelyn, founder of Union Square Learning, published in Edsource Commentary, the drop in test scores began even before the pandemic, starting in third grade when the tests were first given. Rick Miller, CEO of the CORE Districts, a multidistrict data and improvement collaborative, said the ana...
April 5, 2022 - This morning Santa Monica Police arrested and detained a homeless man who attacked a city maintenance worker on the Third Street Promenade. A witness says a homeless male confronted a long-time city employee, Jose, who was driving the street cleaning service truck. He physically attacked Jose, who later claimed to be unhurt. Police arrived and were able to detain the attacker. He was handcuffed and driven away. Since no serious bodily harm occurred in the assault, it is unlikely...
April 1, 2022 - At a media briefing yesterday, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer, PhD, MPH, MEd, grasped wildly for all available evidence she should maintain a stranglehold on the lives and livelihoods of area residents despite the continuing decline in hospitalizations and deaths. Having devised an "Early Alert signal" System that makes certain some "signal," no matter how irrelevant, will be triggered, Ferrer yesterday triumphantly pointed to the increasing rise in...
18: Thanks to a sharp-eyed neighbor, Santa Monica Police officers were able to apprehend a man who'd broken into a home and confronted the returning homeowner with a stick in his hand. On Thursday, March 24 around 6:20 pm, a woman came to her home in the 1800 block of Warwick Avenue to find an unknown male individual standing in her living room, holding a stick. She called SMPD, who came and searched her house, finding it had been ransacked. They also found the window by which the suspect...
March 24, 2022 - Last week, 100 additional people died of the Covid virus, as such deaths are calculated by the LA County Department of Public Health. 80 of those deaths were of vaccinated individuals. Currently, 72.5% of the county is fully vaccinated. If the vaccine had no effect, then one would expect roughly 72.5% of deaths to occur in vaccinated people. Instead 7.5% more deaths than expected occurred among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated last week. The vaccines have long ago proven...
March 25, 2022 - The BA2 variant of the Omicron version of Covid-19 now comprises 14.7% of samples sequenced, and that has Dr. Barbara Ferrer, PhD, MPH, MEd, Director of Public Health worried. In the same press release yesterday in which she admits that by every metric the Centers for Disease Control measures, the county is in a very low spot regarding danger from Covid-19, she warns that new "community prevention strategies" may be triggered by the growing number of cases found of the BA2...
March 18, 2022 - Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, PhD, MPH, MEd, Director of Public Health did her best to angle toward continued fear of Covid-19 and the importance of public readiness to get vaccinated and wear masks even as she noted the county had reached a "low risk level" per guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control. Yesterday there were on 36 Covid deaths and 495 people hospitalized. This is compared to deaths counts in the 80s and hospitalizations topping 4,800 during the...
March 18, 2022 - The City of Santa Monica prevailed against local business owners in its goal to demolish Parking Structure 3 on 4th Street downtown, but the site remains embroiled in litigation. The Santa Monica Bayside Owners Association still has a lawsuit pending against the transformation of the site from parking into supportive housing. Originally, Superior Court Judge Michael Beckloff granted an injunction against demolition, on grounds that the California Environmental Quality Act had...
