March 13, 2010 Meeting Summary

Agenda Items:
Preparation
Acknowledgments
Attendees
Meeting

Preparation

E-mail reminder was sent and reminder phone calls made.

Acknowledgments

Susan brought shortbread cookies.

Attendees

11 members

Meeting

Agenda Items:

The meeting began at 11:20 am

  • Annual Election of Officers
    • There were no new volunteers to run for office, so this was effectively an affirmation vote to keep the association going.
    • 9 ballots were cast into the voting box during the meeting and all nine were marked for
    • Laura Ellersieck continuing as President, Kathy Vacio continuing as Vice President, and Rosalie Gonzales continuing as Treasurer.
  • Annual newsletter distributed
    • The annual newsletter was distributed throughout the neighborhood by volunteers during the first week of March.  Distribution was complicated by predicted and mis-predicted sprinkles and winds.
    • Thank you to volunteers Susan, Desiree, Vinnie, Kristy, Gail, Albert, Amelia, and Laura.
    • Also thanks to Neighborhood Connections and Jeff for printing it for us.
  • Pasadena Police Dept E-policing
    • The Pasadena Police Department has a new initiative they call “E-Policing”.   Access via the police home page , look on the right side for “Crime Stats / e-policing”.
    • The Nixle notification system described here previously is one part.
    • Another is a weekly e-mail to “community leaders”.
    • The third is making crime statistics readily available.
      • ncluded on the e-policing page are links to the uniform crime report statistics the police department is required to send to the FBI each month.
      • There is also a link to a crime mapping page.   www.crimemapping.com  This allows you to get information about what crimes have been reported in an area in a given time frame.  The crimes are shown as icons on a map.  A different icon for each type of crime. You can click on an icon to get more detail such as the date and time, the specific block, sometimes more detail about the type of crime.  You can zoom into a small area or out to view the whole city.  You can specify a date range, by default it shows about a week.  The same service is used by an increasing number of police agencies country wide.
      • There is also a link to the California Attorney General’s Megan’s Law web site which shows where there are registered sex offenders.
      • There is also a link to the online crime reporting system which you can use to make a police report for non-emergency crimes, with unknown suspects, committed within city limits.
  • Vons to close mid-year
    • Closure of the Vons at Colorado and Sierra Madre Blvd for rebuilding has been put off until sometime mid-year according to its management.  The delay was attributed to the lengthy city permitting process.
  • A Noise Within Theater ground breaking
    • This is the live performance theater that has been working on plans for several years to locate in the historic former Stuart Pharmaceutical building.
    • It will be north of the Gold Line Station in and behind the west side of the building.  West and north of the new apartment buildings there, but not all the way to Sierra Madre Villa – that street adjacent parcel is still planned to be condos someday.
    • According to a Pasadena Star news article from February 27-28
      • The Noise Within Theater company announced it has raised the $10 million dollars it needs to go forward with building.
      • It plans to “break ground” in April.
      • The original cost estimate was $16 million but they have managed to reduce the cost to $13.3 million.
      • The theater is to have 350 seats and 35,000 square feet.
      • It is expected to be complete in the spring of 2011.
      • They produce classic dramas including Shakespeare and “modern masters as Ibsen, Shaw and Tennessee Williams, and some lighter fare”.  They plan to double their student programs which currently serve about 10,000 kids a year.
    • They will use the Gold Line structure for show patron parking.  There is supposed to be room because the shows take place in the evenings.
  • Urgent Care center ground breaking
    • On March 3, there was to be a ground breaking ceremony for the new urgent care center being built on the south side of Del Mar where Kinneloa ends.   This is a city owned parcel which previously was child care and before that the Girls Club.
    • The urgent care center will be operated by Huntington Medical Foundation.  Planned hours of operation are 7 am to 10 pm daily.
    • Also using the building will be a second medical clinic operated by Pasadena’s CHAP, providing “primary and preventive care for patients on a sliding fee basis”.
    • It is expected to be finished by fall.
    • It is a five year pilot project.
  • PHS new synthetic track open to public each morning
    • Pasadena High School now has a synthetic track and it is open to the public each weekday morning from 6:30 to 8 am for walking or jogging.
    • There are strict rules to prevent the track from being damaged.  If the public fails to follow them the track will be closed to the public.  Synthetic tracks are very expensive.
    • Rules are posted at the track but they include:  absolutely no dogs or other animals, no food, snacks, or drink except plain water, no alcohol, no tobacco, no smoking, nothing with wheels, no metal cleats, no baseball, no golf.  “Recreational” users are limited to the outer 3 lanes of the track.
  • Pasadena applying for Google Fiber
    • Google has put out a Request for Information soliciting cities to tell Google why they should be chosen for its test of a new ultra high speed internet experiment.
    • According to the Pasadena press release:
      • Google calls it “Fiber for Communities”.  The fiber conduit would go all the way to houses and would have a capacity of 1 gigabit per second.  The highest speed currently available to most Americans (willing to pay for it) is 10 megabit, so this would be 100 times faster.
      • Test communities selected by Google will help demonstrate new capabilities enabled by faster and better broadband access.
      • Google will pay for construction and operation costs of the networks; customers who sign up to subscribe to the service will be charged competitive rates.
      • Pasadena intends to apply to be one of these cities.  The deadline is March 26.
      • Residents, businesses, institutions, schools and others are encouraged to show their support by visiting [decommissioned website], a special website that has been established as part of Pasadena’s application.
      • For more information e-mail Lori Sandoval of the Pasadena Department of Information Technology at [email protected].
  • anything else attendees wish to discuss
    • Traffic counts taken on southern streets
      • Attendees reported recently seeing traffic counting wires across Mataro, La Tierra, Estado, and Alameda. (What about Santa Paula?)
      • Presumably this was the city promised traffic count to be done prior to Kinneloa being opened between Walnut and Foothill.
      • One issue noted was that the counting wire was too deep into the block to catch people using Mataro or La Tierra to u-turn from Sierra Madre Villa. There was probably no intention to try to count that activity. Will mention the observation to the city engineer.

Next meeting is April 10, 2010, 11:15 am, at Hastings Branch Library

Adjourned about 12:10 pm