This is probably the first of many such

Circulated by Cristle Balvin and attributed to Bob Kneisel, the following email expresses concerns about potential City Manager Michael Beck’s preservation credentials.

As forwarded to me:

From: Christle Balvin [mailto:cbalvin@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 2:24 PM
To: ‘Adam Carter’; ‘bill ellinger’; ‘Bob Oltman’; ‘christine Lazzaretto’; ‘connie holguin’; ‘dale trader’; ‘david Fertig’; ‘diane Kirby’; ‘Diane Peterson More’; ‘Don Nollar’; ‘ed & Delores Rodriguez’; ‘Elizabeth Pomeroy’; ‘Elsa Vasquez’; ‘emily stork’; ‘esteban lizardo’; ‘Fred Zepeda’; ‘fritz Puelicher’; ‘greg apodaca’; ‘helen Rahder’; ‘Irma Strantz’; ‘Jaime Regalado’; ‘Jay Chilin’; ‘jeanette Henderson’; ‘Jody Donnelly’; ‘juanita Espino’; ‘juliana Delgado’; ‘kelly kimball’; ‘linda Handelman’; ‘lyla White’; ‘Madhu Kumar’; ‘mark goldschmidt’; ‘mark nay’; ‘Martha Hernandez’; ‘marvin schachter’; ‘mary barrie’; ‘mary sullivan’; ‘mary wilson’; ‘meredith McKenzie’; ‘merrilee fellows’; ‘michelle White’; ‘miriam Nakamura-Quan’; ‘oscar Manzanares’; ‘patricia Herrera’; ‘paul jacoy’; ‘raheen’; ‘roberta marti’; ‘roberta Martinez’; ‘rudy Carrasco’; ‘Sandra Greenstein’; ’stac cahan’; ‘Tim Wendler’; ‘vatche’; ‘Arnold Siegel’; Carolyn_Meredithoo@yahoo.com; ‘Cesar Portillo’; ‘David Czamanske’; ‘David Nazaryk’; ‘Diane Zaptal’; ‘Dick Roether’; ‘Dorothy Lindsey’; ‘Edith Grady’; ‘Erlinda Romo’; ‘Irma Strantz’; ‘James Maddox’; ‘jill Fosselman’; ‘Joan Hearst’; ‘Joan Palmer’; ‘Kelly Sutherlin McLoud’; ‘LorettaMockler’; ‘Mariam Quan’; ‘Marvin Schachter’; ‘Maureen Carlson’; ‘Mic Hansen’; ‘Monica Hubbard’; ‘Pepi Feinblatt’; ‘Richard Janisch’; ‘Richard Norton’; ‘Sam Gennewey’; ‘Stacy L. Cahan’; Steven Marcussen; ’steve mulheim’; ‘Steve Preston’; ‘Teresa Baxter’; ‘Virginia Oltman’; ‘Wendy Cobleigh’; ‘Weston Embree’; ‘Wilma Tayor’
Subject: FW: Michael Beck is Not a Good Choice for Pasadena City Manager

Dear Concerned residents:

Bob Kneisel lived in Riverside for many years and actively worked with preservationists in that city just as he has here. For those of you who do not know him, he helped to form Bungalow Heaven and the Neighborhood Coalition as well as save the Charles Francis Sander’s home. He has sent us the following information about Michael Beck, a candidate for Pasadena City Manager.

If you are concerned about Mr. Beck’s selection as City Manager, please call or e-mail your council member immediately. Time is of the essence. As you know, your council member can be reached by e-mail by simply writing the first letter of his or her first name plus the full last name followed by writing @cityofpasadena.net. To phone, the following field representative numbers might be helpful:

Mayor Bill Bogaard Assistant is Judy Kent 744-7147

District 1 Jacque Robinson Field Rep is Tina Williams 744-4444

District 2 Margaret McAustin FR is Margo Morales-Fuller 744-4742

District 3 Chris Holden FR is Jacqueline McIntyre 577-2066

District 4 Steve Haderlein FR is Rhonda Stone 791-8011

District 5 Victor Gordo FR is Vanya DeLa Cuba 744-4741

District 6 Steve Madison FR is Taka Suzuki 744-4739

District 7 Sid Tyler FR is Pam Thyret 441-1802

Christle

---

From: Bob Kneisel [mailto:bkinpas@charter.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 12:42 PM
To: cbalvin@sbcglobal.net
Subject: Michael Beck is Not a Good Choice for Pasadena City Manager

Michael Beck, Assistant City Manager of Riverside, is being considered by the City Council to be the next City Manager of Pasadena. Mr. Beck has a very poor reputation among the historic preservation community in Riverside. The proposed Fox Plaza Project, which he has been a prime advocate for, would destroy seven historic buildings in Riverside’s historic downtown. The Environmental Impact Report for the project was so deficient in assessing impacts on historic resources that the City has been sued for a California Environmental Quality Act violation. And the Request for Proposals sent to attract developers for the project failed to mention that there are historic buildings that would be in the way of the project. With this track record, Michael Beck would be a bad fit for Pasadena, where we save our historic buildings, and use them to enhance our economy. Pasadena needs a city manager who is on the side of preservation, not demolition.

——————

I’ve known Bob for years and know him to be sincere. Preservation issues are paramount for him, so I have no doubt that his concerns are real to him.

It would also be fair to point out that being sued over an EIR does not automatically mean there was a problem with the document. It just means someone with money and a lawyer didn’t like the decision. Judgement on the merits must be left to the court.

I also expect this is the first (or at least the first that’s surfaced) of these “mobilize the troops” missives that will be circulating as the Council nears a decision and as interest groups weigh in on potential candidates for the City Manager position. Many, many interest groups in Pasadena will be weighing in on the selection. Whether they merit attention in the local paper remains to be seen.

Interesting that the story in the Star-News this morning referenced the email but didn’t quote from it.

Paul

I love this headline

It’s so completely wrong (and not even substantiated by the story that follows).

I’m sure more than one graying Pasadenan panicked when they saw this one:

Kurtz may be on inside track

Article Launched: 07/27/2008 10:56:55 PM PDT

The field of 60 applicants who met the minimum requirements for the Pasadena city manager job has been winnowed down again – from three to two, we hear.

“Site visits” (one to Riverside) are in the cards for the finalists, so it sounds unlikely that the permanent replacement for Cynthia Kurtz is someone already at City Hall. (Kurtz, who replaced budget-

cuttin’ Philip “Phil Scissorhands” Hawkey, was promoted from public works director.)

Interim City Manager – and soon-to-be-back as police chief – Bernard Melekian earlier took himself out of the running. After rising through the California Police Chief Association ranks for four years – about three decades less than it takes to become Tournament of Roses chief, Barney has decided that, come March, he’d rather be the association president.

Maybe after answering to eight bosses for the past several months, being the boss just sounded better.

Ok. It’s totally wrong, misleading and erroneous, but you really do have to love a local paper that makes such humongous mistakes. And worse things could happen than having Cynthia Kurtz return as CM.

Or maybe, just maybe, she’s BACK!

Paul

If there’s no money to expand

Our economy isn’t going to be growing anytime soon.

News gets worse and worse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/business/economy/28credit.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Worried Banks Sharply Reduce Business Loans

By PETER S. GOODMAN

Published: July 28, 2008

Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring.

Drew Greenblatt of Marlin Steel Wire Products is having trouble getting a $300,000 loan to buy a robot for his Baltimore factory. “This is what a bank is supposed to do,” he said.

Graphic

Two vital forms of credit used by companies — commercial and industrial loans from banks, and short-term “commercial paper” not backed by collateral — collectively dropped almost 3 percent over the last year, to $3.27 trillion from $3.36 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. That is the largest annual decline since the credit tightening that began with the last recession, in 2001.

The scarcity of credit has intensified the strains on the economy by withholding capital from many companies, just as joblessness grows and consumers pull back from spending in the face of high gas prices, plummeting home values and mounting debt.

“The second half of the year is shot,” said Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the trading firm MKM Partners in Greenwich, Conn., who was until recently optimistic that the economy would continue expanding. “Access to capital and credit is essential to growth. If that access is restrained or blocked, the economic system takes a hit.”

No money for businesses. No money for new employees. No money for increasing output. No money for investing in future growth.

Not unexpected, but not good, either.

Paul

Interesting stuff in the LA Times today

Opinion section had two gems:

One from the always challenging D.J. Waldie about L.A.’s population and where the growth has been going for the past decade. Some interesting implications for Pasadena and other cities ringing L.A.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-waldie27-2008jul27,0,401428.story

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For L.A., does size matter?

Now that the city’s population has nearly stopped growing, how do we define ourselves?

By D.J. Waldie
July 27, 2008

Los Angeles was sold to 20th century America as the city of sunshine, health and happiness — the favored place of suburbs, swimming pools, tans and movie stars. But if you needed one number to encapsulate the extravagant promise of L.A., you cited the city’s population and marveled at its phenomenal rate of growth. That number was the measure of what we wanted to be and how much this place was desired. It was the one number that defined us.

The number of Angelenos was everywhere in boomtown Los Angeles — on postcards to send back to “the folks” in Wichita and Buffalo, in brochures from the Chamber of Commerce and, most prominently, in the pages of the Los Angeles Times. Cartoons in newspapers showed the shapely figure of a prodigiously growing señorita, in each decade from the 1880s doubling or tripling in size. Like a prize heifer at the county fair, the city was obsessively measured by its many booster organizations because size mattered to builders; to suppliers of water, electricity and natural gas; and to the industries that located plants here to make tires, automobiles and steel.

If with increases in population in smaller cities, does that mean people are looking for a smaller urban environment, that people are looking for space in our smaller cities or that planning in smaller cities is giving people what they want in a living environment?

Waldie has a good knowledge of local history and combines it with insightful analysis of current political and social situations.

and another one about our driving knowledge and where it leads us:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-vanderbilt-sub27-2008jul27,0,942914.story

Think you know the rules of the road?

Most people, especially in L.A., think they know how to drive. But do they really know what drives traffic?

By Tom Vanderbilt
July 27, 2008

The streets and freeways of California are rife with a particular species: The “traffic expert.” These people are not researchers at UCLA or analysts at Caltrans, but normal drivers who, possessed with the small diploma known as a driver’s license, tend to consider themselves sage observers of all that goes on through the windshield. They’ll tell you they know the “cures” for congestion, who the “best” and “worst” drivers are and which traffic laws don’t happen to apply to them (e.g., cellphones should be prohibited, but only when used by other drivers).

But given that most of us have about as much knowledge of the actual traffic code as we do of the laws of algebra (which we also last studied when we were teens), and given that humans are prone to gaps in their perceptual systems and a dizzying array of cognitive biases in their decision-making processes, and given that traffic is a large, fast and dynamic system, of which we can only observe a small part at any one time, we should take the self-styled traffic experts with a bit of amber-tinted caution.

Even though it’s true that the average American in 2005 spent 38 hours annually stuck in traffic, we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do. Try to picture, for instance, the white stripes that divide the lanes on a major highway. How long would you guess they are? How much space would you say lies between each stripe? When I was asked this question, I guessed 5 feet, with maybe 15 feet between. But in fact, while the exact length varies, the U.S. standard calls for 10 feet, though depending on the speed limit of the road, the stripes might be as long as 12 to 14 feet. Seen from above, in most cases, it is clear that the stripe is as long as the cars themselves. Their ratio to the space between them is generally 3 to 1 — meaning that for a 10-foot stripe, there’s 30 feet of space.

I like that idea of driving slower so everyone gets home sooner. It makes sense, but how does anyone get drivers to go along?

Paul

Are New Yorkers more clever than us

Or does it just seem that way sometimes.

Another referral from my wife:

http://www.vanityfair.com/

Vanity Fair Covers The New Yorker

by Vanity Fair

July 22, 2008, 12:10 PM

We here at Vanity Fair maintain a kind of affectionate rivalry with our downstairs neighbors at The New Yorker. We play softball every year, compete for some of the same stories, and share an elevator bank. (You can tell the ones who are headed to the 20th floor by their Brooklyn pallor and dog-eared paperbacks.)

And heaven knows we’ve published our share of scandalous images, on the cover and otherwise. So we’ve been watching the kerfuffle over last week’s New Yorker cover with a mixture of empathy and better-you-than-us relief.

We had our own presidential campaign cover in the works, which explored a different facet of the Politics of Fear, but we shelved it when The New Yorker’s became the “It Girl” of the blogosphere. Now, however, in a selfless act of solidarity with our downstairs neighbors here at the Condé Nast building, we’d like to share it with you. Confidentially, of course.

Funny stuff from the sister mag.

Paul

PWP Strategic Plan

At Monday’s Council meeting, Margaret McAustin talked about the strategic resources plan that Pasadena Water and Power is putting together to identify future electricity resources.  She said there will be a process that includes a citizen panel to provide input.

The plan she was talking about will include renewable resources (green power) and traditional sources of electricity.  This will also include a cost to ratepayers. It certainly bears watching and warrants active participation.

Paul

My wife showed me this

Leave it to the New Yorker to put it all out there.

close window

Kinda speaks for itself.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Obama camp responds/reacts.

If I were an Obama advisor, I’d be saying “Thank you New Yorker. You took all the ludicrous, back-biting, ridiculous rumors that are floating over the internet, in conservative blogs and even on the airwaves and put it into a proper perspective. Putting it all together in one cartoon really makes it clear how stupid those silly criticisms are. “

I think the New Yorker did Obama a valuable service by putting all that silly internet innuendo into one image that makes it clear how ludicrous each and every one of those “he doesn’t say the pledge, won’t wear a flag pin, doesn’t love America; she’s a radical who hates whites…” is.

My advice to Obama: laugh it off and thank the New Yorker.

Paul

Judith Zitter’s Memorial Service/Celebration

was heartfelt and very moving.  To have five hundred people show up on the street to remember a real gem of a person, to talk about her contributions, her passion for helping others and her giggly laugh really brought to the fore what a tremendously influential person we lost, and what a commanding legacy some who just wants to do good things for others can leave behind.

I’m saddened at her loss, it’s true, but I can also count myself lucky to be someone Judith thought it was worth helping with advice, a warm smile and her charming brand of wisdom.

There’s a very long list of decisions Judith had an influence on during my tenure on the Council. Whether you think that tenure on the Council was positive or not, I was a better public servant as a result of her advice (and would have been better had I listened more.)

Thanks Judith.

Paul

Council starts General Plan discussion

I don’t know if there was an outcome, but Saturday morning at the Convention Center the Pasadena City Council held a workshop on the General Plan update. (They’re calling it an update, not a revision.)

I’m not sure if there was ever intended to be a work product resulting from the meeting. There was a facilitator who seemed to keep things moving (even though she couldn’t get Barney Melekian’s name right until reminded). It looked as if the Council and staff are trying to build a shared starting point before beginning whatever process they decide is required for the update.

There was some public in attendance: including myself, all familiar faces: there was the wealthy arts advocate, a senior advocate, a very small cohort of (again wealthy) people who were involved in steering the 1994 general plan but now complain about development, the city manager selection (and other decisions that have left them behind), and a WPRA representative. The only public comment was from the senior advocate who warned the Council to be mindful of state budget cuts and the impact on Pasadena citizens.

The Council was asked to list the things they felt were positive about Pasadena. They came up with quite a few: everything from City Hall and great public buildings, to parks and trees, to diversity, to cultural institutions, involved citizens.

Richard Bruckner (who added a diverse economic base to the list of good things in Pasadena) presented some information on land use and where there are parcels that probably will deserve study in the GPU (General Plan Update). There aren’t that many scattered about Pasadena and very few that aren’t in the Central District. Bruckner also talked about stats on downtown residents. (Single or married with no kids, high incomes, etc.).

Barney Melekian gave some info on a survey that was done of Pasadena citizens a few months back and said the entire results will be available sometime in the next few weeks. Said crime concerns were fairly low on the list but education issues pretty high and concern for development and traffic up there, too.

I left (along with pretty much the entire public) when they were starting the workshop part. The council was divided into groups and asked to draft a preamble to the General Plan.

I was told there would be information available about the outcome of the workshop, but I’m more interested to see how the Council decides to involve the public in the discussion this time around. Last time, a request for an aggressive public outreach was rejected by the majority of the Council at staff’s recommendation. This time, perhaps there will be a process that encourages participation by citizens from throughout Pasadena.

We’ll see.

Paul

Loss of one of Pasadena’s best

Today (Thursday, 7/3) at lunch, Ann Erdman told me that Judith Zitter passed away yesterday.

With Judith’s death, Pasadena lost one of its best citizens. Judith never won elected office here (only because she never wanted it), never wielded a gavel (that I know of) and yet she had a profound impact on Pasadena and each of its citizens. She delighted in being part of something positive and loved almost nothing more than being helpful.

When I met her, Judith worked as field rep for District 2. She was perfectly suited to that impossible job. She liked people, enjoyed helping others and was amazingly patient with everyone. She genuinely wanted to make people’s live better and worked very hard to make that happen. She also really liked people, all people.

Judith was also someone who always had a smile and the time to say, “hello” when she ran into someone on the street or in the grocery store. She asked about the kids, really wanted to know what everyone was doing and loved sharing what her family was up to. (She was appropriately proud of her very deserving kids and cherished her family.)

Judith also gave generously of her time. She sat on the Board of the Pasadena Center, Community Health Alliance of Pasadena, Day One and advised, supported and promoted many other important institutions in Pasadena.

Mostly though, I think Judith was an inspiration because, no matter how daunting the task, not matter how difficult the job and no matter how impossible the odds, she faced the challenge with a smile and brightly dancing eyes. Judith was a helpful soul who loved being able to have a positive impact, always had a kind word and was genuinely interested in other people. Oh yeah, she had a great sense of humor, too, and a wonderful little laugh.

I can’t imagine the loss her family is feeling. I know she loved Max, Erica and Neal without reservation.

Judith always greeted people with a smile. It’s that smile, and the light in her eyes when she talked, that I’ll always remember.

Her impact on Pasadena was subtle. It was built on a quiet determination to do good for others, and it has become part of the foundation of our community. What Judith touched turned inevitably into an asset for Pasadena and a benefit for those living in our community.

Thanks, Judith for your cheerfulness, your patience, your strength, your optimism, your faith in others and your dedication to improving the lives of all of us.

You’ll be sorely missed. Rest well.

Deepest sympathies to Neal, Erica and Max.

Paul