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Volume 8 Issue 276
Santa Monica Daily Press WORK OF ART SEE PAGE 15
We have you covered
THE NEW DIGS ISSUE
BBB maintenance facility opens doors BY MELODY HANATANI Daily Press Staff Writer
COLORADO AVENUE On time and under budget.
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com
OPENING DAY: City officials take part in the ribbon cutting ceremony Wednesday for the new Big Blue Bus maintenance facility.
Declawing law may be clipped BY MELODY HANATANI Daily Press Staff Writer
CITY HALL A controversial surgical procedure that animal lovers have dubbed as an amputation on cats could face restrictions in Santa Monica. The City Council on Tuesday directed its staff to draft an ordinance that would ban the veterinary practice of declawing cats, limiting the procedure only to cases in which it would be in the direct therapeutic interest of the animal. With just a few months left before a new state law prohibiting cities from banning declawing goes into effect on Jan. 1, the local ordinance faces a tight deadline, needing to be enacted by the end of the year to be grandfathered.
Those were the words that city officials proudly repeated multiple times in celebrating the new Big Blue Bus maintenance facility during its grand opening on Wednesday, praising a project team that managed to bring the 66,000square-foot, state-of-the-art structure to completion at $60 million. The project cost has fluctuated at times, originally estimated to be $80 million, a figure that would have covered the maintenance facility, a new administration building and underground parking for employees. It was also at one point estimated to cost approximately $140.2 million, including $95 million for construction. The finished product is a maintenance facility that includes 21 service bays, which can handle maintenance and repair for a maximum of 20 buses every day. The new facility also allows the Big Blue Bus to later expand its fleet to include articulated — accordian-like — buses that the old structure could not accommodate. Officials decided to cut the administration office out of the project because of cost issues, opting instead to use about $4 million to redesign the interior of the building that it occupied during construction, one that they thought would be a temporary space. The interior design work is expected to be completed in June 2010. SEE BBB PAGE 11
A similar ordinance was considered in 2004. “We’re not talking here about pampering your pet with a manicurist,” said Councilman Kevin McKeown, who made the request to staff with Councilwoman Gleam Davis. “So-called declawing is 10 separate painful amputations of the first joint of each toe on both front paws, 20 amputations if the front and hind paws are done.” Declawing opponents call the procedure inhumane, causing behavioral problems in cats that can lead them to abandonment at the shelter where they can subsequently be put down. Dr. Armaiti May, a Santa Monica veterinarian who makes house calls, said she has witnessed the complications from the procedure, including one cat that ended up
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becoming crippled because the bandages were placed so tightly that it was unable to use its legs properly. She notes that some of the other effects include increased biting and litter box aversion. “These behavioral problems are greater cause for relinquishment to shelters than scratching behaviors,” she said. Dr. Ken Jones, a veterinarian in Santa Monica, said he has never in the past 24 years of practice ever saw the need to declaw a cat. “I feel it’s amputation of the toes and it verges on mistreatment, which verges on abuse,” he said. Such bans have been opposed by the California Veterinary Medical Association,
Skaggs lives it up in pro baseball BY DANIEL ARCHULETA Managing Editor
TEMPE, Ariz. It didn’t take long for Tyler Skaggs to win a championship. The former Santa Monica High School star hurler — in his first year of professional baseball — helped the single-A Orem Owlz win the Pioneer league title last week giving the highly-
SEE DECLAWING PAGE 10
SEE SKAGGS PAGE 11
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