Monrovia Trike Police

How did we miss this? It's a couple weeks old, but thanks to Living in Monrovia, we know to laugh at the police on Myrtle.

Monrovia Murder During Relay for Life

I did a double take when I saw the headline too. 23 year old George Rostran died as a result of sustaining gunshot wounds in Monrovia's Library Park? Unfortunately, the tragedy is all too real.

See the Mary Frances Gurton SGVT article; see also the Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou SM Weekly article. As the Weekly says:

Participants in the Relay For Life, a 24-hour cancer walk-a-thon, were doing the circuit at Library Park at the time of the shooting.

A reader emailed to say a friend of theirs was at the Relay for Life, and "it was a terrifying experience with everyone hitting the ground" when the shots were fired. The incident may or may not have been gang related; we hear that gang activity in Monrovia is under-reported. Could this be true? In Monrovia?

There are plenty of comments (some from people claiming to have been there) concerning the shooting here—including a few comments about media coverage of the event in the local papers.

Healthy Choices at Local Eats

Trainer Lynda Linforth-Moran writes the aptly titled "Trainer Tips By Lynda" column in the Arcadia Weekly. This week's column was about how to eat out locally in a healthy sort of way. I've added links to the restaurants in question:


The Derby, Arcadia: I choose the steak brochette, prepared with half rice and half grilled vegetables with no oil. Their fish of the day is also wonderful, however, request no sauce and be careful about your side dishes.
Mediterranean Garden Grill, Monrovia: Their meat is grilled, therefore less fat. I have the chicken kebab with grilled vegetables.

I'll add that you could also try the Canteloupe flavored tobaccy from their hookah. See also:

Macaroni Grill, Monrovia: Request the build your own pasta menu. I order the whole-wheat pasta, no sauce, grilled chicken, sun-dried tomatoes and broccoli.
Mountain View Sushi, Sierra Madre: One of the only sushi places I have found that will make sushi with brown rice. Try the brown rice vegetable roll or the tuna roll.

Glendora, Monrovia Reps Advise Presidential Candidate UPDATED

You heard that right. State Senator Bob Margett of Glendora and Assemblyman Anthony Adams of Monrovia are among those named to Mitt Romney's California leadership team. Just as we were about to beat the local booster drum, Boi from Troy took a swipe at Margett and the rest of the "leaders."

Okay, well maybe Buck McKeon has accomplished something in the past decade worth noting, but if these are the Californians that Romney thinks will get him over the top, he had better think again, unless his only goal is winning delegates in the Primary.

[via Boi from Troy]

See also the LAT blog on the subject: Romney has managed to raise a lot of money in California thus far.

More Smug Angelenos Snub FC

You think that Mayor Sam's commentator calling the FC "captive and indentured" to LA was bad? There's plenty more where that came from in the attitude emanating from our neighbors to the west.

Actor and writer Don Cummings recently said:

If the Hollywood Sign had burned down, we would have become as indiscernible as our neighbors to the East. Another Monrovia or San Dimas.

In the next sentence he admits that "Without the Hollywood Sign, Los Angeles would appear only as what it is: a cement town of car washes and 99 cent stores of pure, unplanned function." That's true. But that fact is also why, with or without the Hollywood sign, LA is nothing like Monrovia or San Dimas.

But hey, our Eavesdropping the FC category of posts lets you in on the unvarnished thoughts of your friends, neighbors, and enemies around you. Ever wonder what that person is yelling in the car next to you? Well, if it is "Motor Wilson," he might be calling you a sheep for living in the SGV!

CAN YOU SAY SHEEP? SAY IT LOUD. I did. I yelled it for the last 20 minutes of my torturous drive on the 605 north as I headed East on the 210 towards San Bernardino. Everyone lives out here. I mean, EVERYONE, but NO ONE I know. What are these people like? What do these people do?

But these are all rhetorical questions, as Wilson's all seeing eye seems to know what all these people in the SGV, and all those in "middle America" for that matter, are like:

Can I just say I hate the BURBS? For my day job I have to drive all over Los Angeles county, including the San Gabriel Valley. CAN YOU SAY COOKIE CUTTER? SAY IT LOUD TWENTY MILLION TIMES. Ok, this kind of goes back to the previous tirade about religion. The people out here are so very different from the world in which I live (read: West Hollywood, exactly one block from where the transvestite prostitutes sell their platforms for crack, and two blocks from Marc Jacobs). It's so diverse (where I live) the pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next in seconds, not to mention there is life, activity, color. Not in San Dimas, made popular by the infamous Beavis and Butthead, (read: BUTTHEAD). We could be in the middle of America, no one would ever be the wiser. Who would guess we are only 40 miles from Los Angeles. The San Gabriel Valley is the Bible Belt of Los Angeles.

I have no comment. But if you do, go right ahead. "Motor" may be an extreme example, but I'd bet these thoughts are not entirely unlike those held by many an arrogant Angeleno.

Monrovia Wakes in Quake

In case you slept through it, in the wee hours of the morning a tremblor weighing in at 3.4 on the Richter scale shook up our region last night, striking some five miles north of Monrovia.

Happily, the Associated Press says no one was hurt.

Property Owners Hopping in Monrovia

Hopping mad that is. Or at least somewhat discomfited anyway. It seems that local property owners are worried about the numbers of folks who will be moving into the urban village to be built around the Gold Line station at Myrtle.

As the Sierra Madre Weekly notes:

A few of the issues that were brought up during the meeting [last Monday night] include the congestion on Myrtle Avenue near the 210 freeway, traffic safety around the city including at Santa Fe Middle School, and the bike friendliness of the roads.

But lest you think these concerns are trivial, take a step back and consider the size of the project we are talking about. Recall that the largest development in Pasadena history is around 1,000 units. By comparison, the homey little village down by the freeway could have as many as 3,800 units. And roughly 1 million sqaure feet of office and retail space. Still not convinced this is a big deal? The plans call for up to 10,000 new parking spaces. I'm not even sure there are 10,000 people living in Monrovia (okay, the population is almost 37,000, but you get my point).

So, the concerns raised by those "local property owners?" They're starting to sound a lot more reasonable. Factor in growing traffic on the 210, the fact that the SGV got the shaft in transportation funding, and the limitations of light rail to substantively impact traffic volume, and you could create a local traffic monster. No one's arguing that development should be halted across the board, but the wisdom of adding nearly 4,000 units to Monrovia should be called into question.

UPDATE:

Forgot to mention that you can find the new General Plan for Monrovia
here (Beware! PDF!), thanks to Living in Monrovia.

The Gold Line and Monrovia

Pasadena isn't the only city to face questions of how to handle new development. In fact, with the Gold Line extension, the debate over high-density, public transit-linked growth is running out to communities throughout the Foothill Cities. Monrovia is no exception.

On Monday, the city held the first of a series of public meetings to give Joe Citizen a chance to comment on the city's General Plan (Emmanuel Parker, SGVT). The laundry list of issues the city faces should be familiar by now: future traffic growth, high-density developments, proximity to public transportation, among others. Like Pasadena, the archetype Foothill City for high-density development, plans are afoot to create a "transit-oriented urban village."

The Station Square Transit Village will consist of an 80-acre transit-oriented urban village designed around the proposed Gold Line light rail station in Monrovia.

The village will be south of the Foothill (210) Freeway and north of Duarte Road, and could include as many as 3,000 new homes and businesses. No specific development projects within the transit village are currently proposed.

Not to rain on any parades, but "south of the 210 Freeway" is a serious hike from Old Town for the casual pedestrian. To put an urban village down there is one thing, but to make to use the Gold Line, as the route is currently planned, to get to Old Town sounds like a time-hungry enterprise. Also, consider the marked difference in Pasadena between the two areas on either side of the 210 Freeway (focusing, for the sake of illustration, on the area near Old Town Pasadena). It's an updated version of living on the wrong side of the tracks as the rental prices demonstrate.

While Monrovia south of the 210 isn't a wasteland, I'd be surprised to hear a resident tell me it's reasonable to expect to walk from below the freeway into Old Town (I agree with Claremont Insider on this one). Of course, this could just be short-sightedness on my part. One could imagine a future with South Myrtle built up attractively, with a half-mile or so jaunt up to Old Town be no more tedious or taxing than strolling along the Colorado strip.

Even as the Gold Line edges eastward, it's still hardly clear that it will be the messianic cure-all that some are touting it to be. And those planning 3,000 new homes and businesses should consider how heavily they're relying on the promise and premise of light rail.

Affordable Housing Bunny to Visit ...Bradbury?!?

The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is working on its Regional Housing Needs Assessment plan (RHNA), which is why the affordable housing bunny has been popping up in the news lately. The bureaucrats that be have a strong belief in the existence of the affordable housing bunny, and they want various foothill cities to celebrate the affable—but mysterious and seldom seen—rabbit as they do.

According to a Charles Cooper article in the Sierra Madre Weekly:

Arcadia, for example, will be asked to provide potential for 2,130 dwelling units, 881 of them low and very low income.

Monrovia has been assigned a goal of 562 additional units, 228 of them very low and low, and Pasadena 2,844 units, 1,153 of them low and very low income.

Sierra Madre is facing a call for 138 units, 58 of them low and very low income. Even Bradbury has an assigned a number, 35 units, 15 of them low and very low.

Bradbury?!? What are they supposed to do—build some "affordable" mansions? Build some cheap ugly duplexes and put them out of sight at the end of a long, gated driveway? Once again, I ask: does any one actually think that mandating "affordable" housing as we are now will do a damn thing in the grand scheme of things to help poor Californians buy a house? This is sheer economic stupidity.

Be sure to go to visit SCAG's RHNA page and peruse the acronym laden website of the thickly layered bureaucracy your tax dollars support. Tax dollars, ironically enough, that often come from the copious fees developers must pay in order to build a woodshed around these parts, which in turn causes the cost of housing to stay nice and high. In the meantime, be sure to support your bureaucracy's love of adding to the millions of pages of ink that regulate development in this state, often penned in the name of the environment, that also might be related to the high cost of housing in these parts. But who am I to question the bountiful goodness of the housing bunny?

Local Celebs in Monrovia?

Know any? Comment here. While there, check out the great design and all the pictures on that blog.

Foothill Pages

Azusa, Duarte, Glendora, Monrovia, are [were?] all covered by Foothill Pages, yet another attempt at a local website.

Foothill Cities Balance

I've been meaning to correct this one for a while now. Regarding the entire Congressman Miller scandal and the city of Monrovia, in an old post I picked up on an La-La Times article claiming that Mayor Hammond asked for a nice, national political appointment from the Congressman. I've never seen anything wrong with what the City of Monrovia did, and I wouldn't even be that upset [more bemused] if Hammond had asked for a sweet appointment [this is politics, people].

But, all that being said, the city of Monrovia addressed this specific issue on their website:

Was there was some kind of "trade off between with the Mayor and Congressman Miller for a seat on the National Park System Advisory Board.

Absolutely not.

This comes directly from the Los Angeles Times, and it's wrong.

"...while Miller was urging the city of Monrovia to buy his property he tried to secure an appointment for one of Monrovia's city council members, Robert Hammond, to the National Park System Advisory Board, a prestigious advisory panel that makes policy recommendations. But there were no open positions on the board at the time."

Several years ago, Mayor Rob Hammond asked a simple question while in conversation with Rep. Miller and his staff: Is there a federal parks and recreation organization, similar to such departments in local communities, that is involved with National Forest land? The Mayor's interest stemmed from the proximity of the Angeles National Forest to Monrovia's northern boundary and the threat of fire from that direction. Rep. Miller's office, in response, sent Mayor Hammond information on the National Park System Advisory Board. Mayor Hammond reports that he read the document, determined that the Board was not a parks and recreation group and, further, that neither he nor anyone he knew was qualified for a post on that board. He tossed the information and forgot about it.

If it comes to believing Monrovia or the La-La Times, I think I'm leaning with Monrovia and the very patient Mayor Hammond. Watch his interview with Ralph Walker, as well as Walker's other interviews with Monrovia candidates.

More Saturday Diversions

Interesting article in the Arcadia Weekly by Phyllis Chapman, Sierra Madre Historian, calling health seeker Nathaniel Carter the "town founder" of Sierra Madre. I'm wondering how he got along with the founder of Monrovia and Arcadia, Elias "Lucky" Baldwin. See this post for a rundown of his straight-from-the-tabloids life.

MVN.TV

I'm not going to lie about how I found out about the San Gabriel Valley's Mountain Views News Magazine website, home of MVN TV, at www.mvn.tv. They cover Arcadia, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, even Bradbury [my personal fav] and—wait for it . . . wait for it—DUARTE. (Duarte, unfortunately, never gets mentioned by anyone in the media.)

There is currently a [video!] interview with Nick Conway of SGVCOG fame [OK, so fame is not the right word], on which I'll have more to say later on. If you live in the San Gabriel Valley, you should watch it.

Only downside is that as the MVN says:
Contrary to most media sources which push negative and sensational headlines, we keep our news positive. With so many good things happening in our community, we find no reason to obsess over the bad.

There are a lot of good things going on here, as Foothill Cities often recognizes. There are lots of local electeds who do a great job, our economy is excellente, and so forth and so on. But this sounds like they simply flatter local lawmakers, although the Conway interview does take some good rips at the way LA ignores the SGV.

The whole deal was really started by Steve Tobia. Click on that link to read his story, and go here for more info on MVN.

And as I said, I'm not going to lie that I found their website only because I was reading about how Sierra Madre is a melting pot of white people.

VFW Needs Artifacts of War

A Robert Parry emailed and ask me to post this a week ago; sorry it took me so long to get around to it.

VFW Post 2070 Asks Veterans to Contribute Artifacts
For “Mobile Museum” Project
Local Combat Veterans of All Wars And Their Families Are Asked to Lend Photographs, Uniform Items and Other Artifacts of Service to Educate Community About the Price of Freedom

Monrovia, February 7- Monrovia-Arcadia Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2070 is gathering pictures and artifacts from local combat veterans and their family members in order to create a traveling exhibit about the area’s history of military service. While the post is focusing its efforts on its own members – each of whom has served in combat – it is especially interested in receiving pictures and artifacts from family members of area service members from many years ago, such as World War I and II.

“This community has a long history of service, you can see this inthe memorials in Library Park. It is important that we, as veterans, preserve this history and tell others about the price of freedom,” said Wally Berg, Commander of Post 2070 and a Korean War veteran.

Items that have been loaned to the exhibit so far are from veterans of more recent conflicts, and include pictures of service men in Iraq, a fragment of an Improvised Explosive Device, a copy of an email home, an Iraq Campaign medal, a camouflaged Bible and field-worn cards regarding rules of engagement and casualty evacuation.

Entitled “Monrovians At The Front… Your History of Service” The display will offer exhibits from each conflict that the U.S. has been in since World War I, and will feature photographs, documents and artifacts of individual local residents’ combat experiences as well as the community’s experiences as a whole.

“We are seeking photographs and artifacts that people may have documenting things that happened here in Monrovia in support of World War I, WWII, and Korea,” said Robert Parry, the Post’s Junior Vice Commander, and a veteran of the war in Iraq. “Anything anybody has that they think would help tell the story of local veterans’ service will be appreciated.”

He added that all area veterans are invited to participate, whether they grew up in the area, or if they moved to town many years after their service. Siblings and children of veterans who have since passed away might have old photographs and artifacts, and they are encouraged to join in the project.

All artifacts will be considered to be loaned, and photographs, letters and other documents will be displayed only as photocopies, if the donor so desires. All artifacts will be considered loans, unless specifically donated. Each section will also include a list of are residents who have been killed in action.

When completed, the Post intends to display the exhibits in a mobile case that can be shown at area schools, loaned to local libraries or featured at appropriate gatherings. When not on loan, the exhibit will be on display at Post 2070 for the public to peruse. If possible, the post would like to have the display’s first exhibition by Memorial Day.

Anyone who is interested in loaning an artifact or photograph is encouraged to email Mr. Parry at rcjparry@gmail.com, or visit Post 2070 on Magnolia Avenue just north of Huntington Drive to speak to an officer.

ABOUT VFW POST 2070
Founded in 1931, Arcadia-Monrovia VFW Post 2070, located at the corner of Magnolia Ave. & Chestnut St. in Monrovia , offers comradeship and support to veterans of all the Nation’s wars. The Post’s programs support tomorrow’s citizens through school programs about the price of freedom, while it honors the warriors of years past and offers them a unique place to gather with those who have also paid that price. Founded in 1899 by veterans of the Spanish-American war, VFW today counts more than 2.4 million members, including the 250 comrades of Post 2070.

For Additional Information:
Robert Parry
Jr. Vice Commander
310-651-0231

Monrovia TV: Unplugged

Speaking of grainy video, you don't have an excuse for living in Monrovia and avoiding your city council's meetings. You can watch all manner of video related to city politics online at KGEM's website here. The city of Monrovia posts such video on its website as well. (For schedules of more content available to you on TV if you live in Monrovia, check here.)

For our purposes, go to the video of the last city council meeting as posted on Google Video:



Get as close as you can to 12 minutes and 30 seconds in and enjoy the perpetual challenger to Mayor Rob Hammond, Stephen Grollneck, at his diatribal best. I'll provide you with a transcript of his grand finale, in which he disgracefully refers to Hammond's campaign manager, Gloria Crudgington, who recently revealed Mr. Grollneck's 1999 grand theft misdemeanor conviction:

Mr. Grollneck:
And I think there's an old phrase in high school, and in college too, and this refers to Mrs. Crotchington [sic]:
She's not a one-bagger, she's a two-bagger.
Thank You. [Walks off]

[Stunned silence]

Mayor Hammond: Ain't America great?

[Silence]

Welcome, folks, to San Gabriel Valley politics.

But Monrovia's Already Pretty Green...

Monnrovia’s City Council has asked for a comprehensive set of administrative policies to help reduce the community’s contribution to global warming.

Mayor Rob Hammond led the city council in asking for the policies...

Local solutions, he said, could involve such diverse actions as adopting new land-use policies to preserve more open space and create more compact, walkable communities; offering and promoting new modes of public transportation, increasing the rate of residential and business recycling; planting more trees or increasing the fuel efficiency of the city’s vehicle fleet. Green building, educational programs and alternative energy sources are all part of the strategies being discussed.

From the Burbank Weekly?

Monrovia Incumbents Endorsed by Star

The Pasadena Star endorses incumbents Tom Adams, Mary Ann Lutz, and Rob Hammond in the upcoming city council election over challengers Tony Alexandrovich, Mario Duron, and Stephen Grollnek.

Props

Thanks to Living in Monrovia and 2020 Hindsight for helping spread the word about this blog.

Monrovia's Measure L

Measure L, alluded to in my last post, would institute "a parcel tax on residential property" in Monrovia. "Single-family homes would be assessed $62 a year, vacant lots $17 a year and multifamily buildings $46 per unit,” all in order to “raise $15.5 million over 30 years for a state-of-the-art 28,000-square-foot library,” as Mike Lucas’ article in the San Marino Tribune makes clear. Official ballot info is here; info from the city on what the money will buy is here.

The Monrovia city council developed and unanimously approved the measure last year. Getting it passed “will require approval by 67 percent of voters . . . The city paid for a telephone survey that found 51 percent of voters definitely support the tax; 16 percent would probably support it; 4 percent are undecided but learning toward support; while 18 percent definitely oppose it,” according to a December 6 Emanuel Parker article (offline) in the Pasadena Star.

Monrovia's Mayor, Rob Hammond, highlighted the measure at the end of his recent state of the city address. The Emanuel Parker article on the speech, and its warm reception, is offline.