Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/21708
Monday, December 20, 2010 – Daily News – 5A STUDY Continued from page 1A looks like a 25 mph,” Anderson said. The council voted to adopt the mitigated nega- tive declaration filed for the general plan amend- ment of the rezoning of the Corning Community Park land. A public hearing was previously held at the planning commission in addition to Tuesday’s meeting and neighbors have been notified. The survey for sensitive plants has been completed and results included in the plan. One elderberry bush was found, which requires a 100-foot non-distur- bance area around it. “If we do have to move them, there is a procedure already in place,” Planning Director John Stoufer said. Other things included were the need for deten- tion basins to be planned, which has been done on both sides of the creek, including the use of soccer fields as detention basins, Stoufer said. The initial meeting with the state has been held and things are very favorable, he said. “The state’s attitude is they want to see these parks built ASAP,” Stoufer said. “We’re hoping to proceed as rapidly as pos- sible.” committees. Both Mayor Gary Strack and Councilwoman Toni Parkins commended Stoufer and staff on their thoroughness in preparing the staff report. A public hearing has been set for Feb. 22 for the proposed annual Con- sumer Price Index rate increase of the Corning Disposal Service. If approved following the public hearing, rates would increase by 1.19 percent with existing resi- dential rates going from $19.50 to $19.73 or a total increase of 23 cents per month. The increase is a part of the franchise agree- ment. “It’s the simplest and cheapest way to control the rates,” said City Man- ager Steve Kimbrough. The council voted to contribute $200 to the Tehama County exhibit at the State Fair with money coming from the council’s supplies and material fund. A cancellation of the Dec. 28 meeting was approved with the next meeting being scheduled for Jan. 11. Meetings are normally the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at City Hall, 794 Third St. Minutes and agendas are available at www.corning.org. ——— Julie Zeeb can be reached at 527-2153, extension 115 or jzeeb@redbluffdailynews. com. Nielsen named vice-chairman of Budget Committee Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R- Daily News photo by Andrea Wagner Josiah Thompson, 4, of Red Bluff tries out his new bicycle. Thompson won one of two bicycles given away in a drawing Saturday in front of the Cone & Kimball Clock Tower. SANTA Continued from page 1A Tehama County, spent the afternoon painting faces. The first alternate to Miss Tehama County, Linda Jo Bennett, 17, of Red Bluff, helped out as needed. Sonja Akers, calling herself the “official Santa coordinator” of downtown, helped set up the event. Next year, she has even bigger plans, including a Santa’s workshop, she said. ——— Andrea Wagner can be reached at 527-2153, extension 114 or awagner@redbluffdailynews.com. Rainstorm prompts worries of mudslides LOS ANGELES (AP) — A wet pre-winter storm dumped as much as 7 inches of rain on parts of Southern California over the weekend, triggering scores of accidents, a few minor mudslides and forcing the cancellation of Sun- day’s final seven horse races at Hollywood Park. Rainfall that began Saturday morning continued relent- lessly throughout Sunday and wasn’t expected to let up until sometime Monday. It was expected to resume again Tues- day, continue through Wednesday and then, after a brief break, return on Christmas Day, said Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service. A flash-flood warning was in effect for parts of Southern California, particularly mountain areas burned in recent years by wildfires. Residents of La Canada Flintridge were among those keeping a wary eye on the rain. More than 40 homes in the hillside city just north of Los Angeles were damaged or destroyed by a mudslide in February. ‘‘We are holding up,’’ said Lien Yang, who measures rainfall totals in his backyard and reported about 3 inches had fallen by noon Sunday. ‘‘It’s coming down steady but not pouring. Therefore it doesn’t cause a mud flow or flood- ing or anything like that. Hopefully it’s winding down and we’ll have no threat this time.’’ In Northern California, the San Francisco Bay area caught only a portion of a powerful storm system, the National Weather Service said, although the weather was blamed for a series of scattered power outages in the area. Moderate to heavy rainfall fell on San Francisco early Sunday, but by late morning most of the precipitation had moved east. A spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric said about 3,300 homes and businesses in the San Jose and Gilroy area were without power early Sunday afternoon. Despite light weekend traffic, the rain triggered more than 60 accidents throughout the Los Angeles area, accord- ing to the California Highway Patrol. Many were fender-benders but in the city of Industry, east of Los Angeles, a car carrying four members of a fam- ily hit a tree. A 6-year-old girl was hospitalized in critical condition and her father, mother and 15-month-old sister suffered lesser injuries, according to the Los Angeles Coun- ty Sheriff’s Department. Hollywood Park canceled it final seven races of the day Sunday after rain made a section of turf leading to the main track too dangerous to navigate. In San Luis Obispo County, along California’s central coast, a hiker was swept into a creek. He was able to get out on his own before rescuers arrived. The real impact of the storm could come later in the week, Seto said, when hillsides are saturated with rain and the possibility of mudslides and flash floods seriously increases. Rainfall throughout the region ranged from 2 to 4 inch- es in the Los Angeles area, including downtown, Holly- wood and the San Fernando Valley, to as much as 7 inches in some mountain areas. As many as 3 more inches could fall before the storm departs on Monday, Seto said. The one that follows it on Tuesday could be even stronger, he said. Soaked hillsides gave way to some minor mudslides in canyon areas and flooding in a few low-lying streets, but nothing serious, Seto said. The system hit the state after a large storm front moving out of the Gulf of Alaska met with warm, moist air coming across the Pacific Ocean. The result was heavy rain and hardly any snow, even at higher elevations. No one had been asked to evacuate any areas, but Yang said he and his neighbors had been warned to be prepared just in case. One of his neighbors, Tom Smith, spent part of the afternoon putting sandbags in front of his house. Yang’s home escaped damage in February but his next- door neighbor had to dig 24 feet of mud out of his backyard and a house just around the block was destroyed. Most of the homes have been rebuilt or repaired since then. Meanwhile, county flood control workers have kept the neighborhood’s streets lined with barricades designed to direct mud flows away from homes. Residents recently added a holiday touch, festooning the barricades with Christmas lights. Daily News photo by Andrea Wagner Red Bluff Police Officer Matt Coker and Red Bluff Dollar Tree store manager Brian Castro present bins of donated toys to Roy Fansler and Anthony Aiello of the Marine Corps League. Toys 4 Tehama Tots is a program of the Marine Corps League that has collected toys for Tehama County charities to distribute to needy children. The Dollar Tree store has been collecting toys purchased by customers since Dec. 6. Some 1,000 toys a week have been coming in through the store, Castro said. Those were given to The Police Officers Association, which combined them with other toys collected to give to Toys 4 Tehama Tots. All toys will be distributed locally. To donate, drop unwrapped toys into bins marked Toys 4 Tehama Tots. LOS ANGELES (AP) — Emboldened by months of phone calls to lawmakers, hunger strikes and sit-ins, a group of col- lege students and gradu- ates in Los Angeles say they plan to take their fight for immigrant rights to the states and the 2012 election after Senate Republicans blocked a key piece of legislation. But it won’t be easy. The Senate vote Satur- day to toss the proposal that would have granted young illegal immigrants a route to legal status dealt a harsh blow to stu- dent activists who will face an even steeper uphill battle in the next Congress. Immigrants see rough times ahead in the next two years, with many Republicans vowing to push for tougher immi- gration enforcement, but they also say Latino vot- ers are getting fed up with lawmakers at a time when they are accruing greater political clout. ‘‘This is a movement,’’ said Nancy Meza, a 23- year-old illegal immigrant and college graduate who wore a University of Cali- fornia, Los Angeles sweatshirt as she watched the televised vote. ‘‘We don’t have lobbyists and paid staff. It’s a move- ment by students.’’ Students look to 2012 after immigration bill fails In the hours after the vote, Meza and about 50 other student activists who had gathered at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center said they would remind Latinos who stood by them — and those who did not — in the next election cycle. They will push for access to finan- cial aid and drivers’ licenses in states more friendly to immigrants like California. Few said the legisla- tion, many called the Dream Act, had a chance in the next two years with Republicans taking con- trol of the House of Rep- resentatives and a shrink- ing Democratic majority in the Senate. But they said that wouldn’t derail the networks they had set up across the country to support illegal immigrant students and help them reveal their status and learn to live unafraid. Some at the UCLA center, including universi- ty student Leslie Perez, 22, wept as they watched the vote on a big screen. Minutes after it was over, many donned jack- ets and umbrellas to take to the rainy streets of Los Angeles, chanting ‘‘undocumented and unafraid.’’ Republicans might consider some kind of measure to help the stu- dents, but it would proba- bly be much narrower, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter limits on immigra- tion. ‘‘This has a real demoralizing effect,’’ Krikorian said of the stu- dent activists. ‘‘There’s only so long you can keep up these hunger strikes and all this political the- ater they’ve been engag- ing in, especially if there’s no specific target.’’ Another challenge is students could wind up feeling excluded when they can’t work after graduation, despite their political activism. ‘‘It may alienate the group we most want to incorporate,’’ said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science at Uni- versity of California, Irvine. Immigrant rights groups said they planned to turn up the pressure on the Obama administration to slow deportations, end local police enforcement of immigration laws and look out for the students, many of whom publicly revealed their immigra- tion status over the last few months. Students also said they planned to fight for immi- grant benefits — though it’s not legalization — locally as they’ve seen anti-illegal immigration activists do to pass tougher enforcement measures in states like Arizona. ‘‘They’re winning by state, they’re winning by region,’’ said Cyndi Ben- dezu, a 25-year-old Uni- versity of California, Los Angeles graduate who was brought to the United States from Peru when she was 4 years old. ‘‘We have to win smaller victo- ries.’’ Gerber, was re-appointed Wednes- day to the Republican Leadership post of vice-chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, a position he has held since 2009. Speaker John Perez also re- appointed Nielsen to the Appro- priations and Rules committees, as well as naming him to the Veteran Affairs Committee. Nielsen, dur- ing his first term in the Assembly, served as vice-chairman of both the Budget and Appropriations “I am honored to be given the opportunity to sit on these very impor- tant committees,” Nielsen said. “Califor- nia enters the new year with a current budget deficit of $6 billion and a projected $25 billion budget deficit in the next fiscal year, which starts in July. While we have made great strides the last 2 years by cut- ting $40 billion of spending out of the state budget, there clearly is much more to be done.” Nielsen Nielsen represents the Second Assembly District, which includes: Tehama, Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiy- ou, Sutter and Yolo counties. RB Police partner in Toys 4 Tehama Tots campaign