BHCourier 100915 E-edition

Page 1

Support Breast Cancer Awareness And Research!

VOLUME: L

NUMBER 41

$135 PER YEAR - $1.25 PER COPY

THIS ISSUE

www.bhcourier.com

SINCE 1965

October 9, 2015

2015 Beverly Hills Board Of Education Race

The Courier Endorses Isabel Hacker, Lewis Hall And Noah Margo For Beverly Hills Board Of Education

Beverly Hills’ Post Office problems continue to plague residents. 4

Rita and the late Charlie Brucker received the Embrace Civility Award. 5

By Courier Editors The Courier endorses incumbents Noah Margo and Lewis Hall, as well as Isabel Hacker for the Beverly Hills Board of Education. There is no doubt that this is an important election for the Beverly Hills community, but not for many of the reasons you may have heard about in the back-and-forth propaganda that has been distributed during this election. The election has gotten downright vicious - including an illegal mailer sent out to Beverly Hills homes Thursday, going after the records of candidates Isabel Hacker and Mel Spitz. The door knob mailer included no identification as to the peo-

ple or committee behind the funding of the mailer, violating State Election Code 84305 which states: “No candidate or committee shall send a mass mailing unless the name, street address, and city of the candidate or committee are shown on the outside of each piece of mail in the mass mailing.” In having each of the five candidates in for interviews with The Courier’s Editorial Board, composed of Publisher Marcia Wilson Hobbs, Laura Coleman and Matt Lopez, along with viewing the various public forums and studying candidate-produced election materials, it became clear to The Courier that scare tactics are being heavily used in this election to

12 20 31

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel Arrived In His Armani Tails To Wield His Baton For The LA Phil’s Opening Night At The Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Black-Tie Crowd Explodes As Expectations Run High Editorial from Rabbi Pressman AND MORE

CLASSIFIEDS • Announcements • Real Estate • Rentals • Sales • and More

IT’S YOUR WORLD — Chelsea Clinton paid a surprise visit to Beverly Vista on Wednesday morning, spending an hour with students to discuss her new book, It's Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going! The book aims to give readers, mainly youth, a better understanding of the issues facing them and what they can do to inspire change. Pictured above, Clinton surrounded by Beverly Vista students. For more in Clinton’s visit, see page 4.

City Executive Employees To Have Added Scrutiny For Outside Employment

George Christy, Page 6

25

Lewis Hall

drag the current school board through the mud. These scare tactics include grossly inaccurate numbers on district expenditures, which The Courier will get into later in this column. The Courier endorses incumbents Margo and Hall for

Noah Margo

re-election to the school board because this newspaper strongly believes that things are nowhere near as bleak for the school district as some of the aforementioned stare tactics would have you believe. In Margo and Hall’s four(see ‘ENDORSEMENTS’ page 15)

Beverly Hills City Council Approves First Of Two Water Rate Hikes

BREAKING NEWS The Beverly Hills Planning Commission Thursday unanimously rejected plans for 332-336 Oakhurst. See page 17 for the full story.

•Real Estate •Birthdays •Letters to the Editor

Isabel Hacker

By Victoria Talbot The City Council voted Tuesday to approve changes to the Municipal Code regarding outside employment that would require all upper-level management professionals to receive approval from the City Council before taking on additional employment. The changes are in reaction to an incident last year in which the City Council was not informed that Police Chief Dave Snowden was a salaried consultant to the firm Evidence-Based, Inc., (EBI) when the City approved a contract with BHUSD to help pay for their services to the district. “I don’t want anyone to use their employment at the City to in-

fluence anyone to get something done or passed,” said Councilmember Nancy Krasne. “Council gave an okay to approve this, not knowing that the group had been pressured by a City employee - who got involved in something that he should not have been involved in. There are no circumstances where that is appropriate. When you are in the position that this person is in - everyone does what he says.” Before EBI had even developed a campus security division, then-Chief Snowden, already under contract to the company, introduced CEO John McLaughlin to Beverly Hills Police Det. Lt. Joe (see ‘EMPLOYMENT’ page 18)

By Victoria Talbot Projected budget shortfalls from reduced water consumption and increases in expenses from mandatory water conservation will exceed $5.5 million in FY 15-16, according to a review by City staff and HF&H Consulting LLC prompting a five-percent rate hike for City water users. The rate hike is set to cover fixed operating expenses that do not change with drops in water consumption that must be met for supply, infrastructure and maintenance. An additional $1 million shortfall will be due to projected overall cost increases of 0.35-percent in internal service fund charges and personnel costs with the addition of the Water Resources Manager,

Celebrity Photo Agency/Scott Downie

Beverly Hills introduced a Sun Safey program for local youth. 4

Conservation Administrator and two Project Manager positions. That brings the total shortfall to $6,746,431. The Public Works Commission and Liaison Committee agreed on a progressive approach to covering the shortfall, consisting of two interim water rate increases of five-percent each and use of $4 million of the operating Water Enterprise Fund reserves over a 12month period to cover projected consumption revenue shortfalls. The analysis includes the planned implementation of a new tiered-structure by early 2016 designed to cover the total system costs of providing water. (see ‘WATER RATES’ page 15)

HELLO, LADIES — Naomi Campbell, Lady Gaga and Angela Bassett joined hands during the premiere screening of FX’s American Horror Story: Hotel Season 5 at Regal Cinemas. For more photos, see George Christy’s column on page 6.


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.