Lost and found
It was a beautiful Thanksgiving morning and my wonderful wife was in the process of prepping and stuffing two turkeys to shove into our double oven with the end goal of feeding 25 of our closest friends and family in a few short hours. After my help was declined in no uncertain terms, I decided to take a therapeutic walk around our iconic beach town.
Craving a fresh cup of coffee, I poked my head into Javatinis’ on Main Street to satisfy my desire. After being served a steaming cup of robust brew, I fed the tip jar and proceeded to the cream bar to personalize my Java. A delightful stroll home found the smells of our pending turkey dinner and the wife in a pleasant disposition. Our families arrived and we had an epic Thanksgiving celebration!
Fast forward to Friday when I realized I could not find my money clip that held the cash for my teenaged student’s tutor! I retraced my steps, and the last time I remembered using it was the Javatini’s tip jar! So off I went on a quest to locate it. The sympathetic and helpful barrista looked into the lost and found and suggested that I leave a name and number and he would ask around.
My wife and I searched high and low and found a sign on 10th Street from a woman who had found money! I phoned her, but alas, it was not a match. Later that day, Javatini’s Rob Jankhe (Seal Beach Chamber’s Small Businessman of the Year) called my number and had me describe the engraving on my money clip to claim my lost property! He had put it in his safe to secure our tutor’s fresh ATM acquisitions! Not a dollar bill was out of place!
As a 32-year resident of the smallest town in the LA/LB megalopolis, I am still in awe of the people who live and do business here. Many thanks to Rob and the honest, hardworking crew at Javatini’s!
Thom Dutton
Seal Beach
Wonderful parade
Just a wonderful Christmas Parade once again. At first, as it starts, it looks like total confusion but the people running the parade get everything in order and away it goes. Being part of your parade for so many years, I am always so impressed with the patriotism from the families and children lined along the streets. It makes me so proud to hear the “Thank you for serving” from so many people and children. I look forward to marching down Main Street and hearing those voices. Thank you, Seal Beach. Patriotism is alive and well In Seal Beach. God bless America.
Paul D. Pudenz, Adjutant, American Legion Post 857
Seal Beach
Main Street’s new lights
As a long-time Main Street merchant, I am sincerely encouraged by the installation of the new lights on Main Street proper. This was a long fight for both Jim Klisanin and/or several iterations of City Council, most recently via Ellery Deaton for our district. Improving the lighting downtown is a logical step toward revitalizing local shopping which is after all, the big elephant in the room.
After nearly two decades on Main Street, I can attest to the massive loss of traffic downtown especially in the last decade. The incursion of “big box” stores like Target and WALMART coupled with the increase of cyber-shopping has reduced downtown to a smattering of struggling retailers, surrounded by a wave of coffee shops, restaurants and spas. Don’t get me wrong: I am all for progress and free enterprise; just not at the expense of our “Mayberry by the Sea” atmosphere.
Seal Beach has many long-standing traditions like the Car Show, Christmas parade, Founder’s Day, Red Car and the Rough water swim that are “part and parcel” of the small town environment that attracted me here 40 years ago. It was always my dream to live and work in Seal Beach and it was true for a long time but insufficient local support is going to close many storefronts very soon – if folks in Seal Beach don’t respond to keeping small businesses open by shopping locally.
The call to action is clear – start shopping downtown or there won’t be a downtown to shop in. Keep our little town alive with the eclectic mix of merchants that make Seal Beach the star of the Orange County Beach towns.
Dave Dunton, Managing General Partner
Main Street Cyclery
Parade traffic
I believe that moving forward these special events (Christmas Parade) need to be better organized to accommodate both visitors to our city and the cities residents.
Last night when I arrived home from work, it was like coming home to a lawless, chaotic city. There was no traffic control for vehicles or pedestrians. Cars were backed up in residential areas, pedestrians were jaywalking with no concerns, and there was absolutely no parking to be had.
Last night’s event (Christmas Parade) showed residents once again the city’s poor planning and inability to host an event that appears to get larger every year.
Public parking lots and residential permitted streets need to be a priority with the city in the upcoming year. Events are getting larger every year, (not to mention the Summer months) public parking needs to grow to accommodate patrons and residents. And also public events need to have more police traffic control to help keep Old Town traffic and foot traffic moving smoothly and orderly. Thank you.
William Wilburn
Seal Beach
Ode to Mandela
Nelson Mandela died today
A man of stature, all do say.
Imprisoned for his people’s rights
He was one of World’s brightest lights.
When released from the prison gate
He expressed not one bit of hate.
Prison guard at inauguration
This act was done to heal the nation.
I did my duty, he once said
Mandela’s legacy: ahead.
If we live lives that emulate
The World will have now much less hate.
Truth and reconciliation
We need that in this great nation.
Kenneth Korenthal
Seal Beach
Southern California Edison
Whether it’s preventative maintenance, system upgrades, emergencies, new customer connections, there are many reasons in Southern California why electrical service may be interrupted. At Southern California Edison, our goal is to restore power as safely and as quickly as possible for our customers. We respect and value our customers and work diligently to provide you with the best service.
As SCE works to maintain and invest in our infrastructure, including here in Seal Beach, we must, from time to time turn off customer’s power in order to ensure public and employee safety. Our goal is to perform maintenance of our infrastructure, when possible, in a manner where we provide our customers advance notice and time to prepare. We also strive to minimize any outage in order to impact the smallest number of customers so they can plan and enjoy their day.
There are a number of contributing factors we take into consideration when scheduling planned outages throughout our communities. With the goal of keeping businesses up and running during normal work week hours, we try to schedule planned outages at nights and on the weekends, if possible.
For residential customers, we understand that having power when making dinner or getting ready for your work or school day is important, so we try to schedule planned outages after most customers have begun their day. While these scenarios aren’t always the most ideal for every customer, our goal is to impact the smallest number of customers possible during an outage.
We also must consider factors essential to SCE such as electric demand on the grid so we do not overload surrounding circuits. Sometimes other factors also impact our ability to perform the critical work necessary for us to keep the electrical system functioning properly. Extreme weather conditions or unanticipated electrical emergencies may also affect when these maintenance outages occur.
Much thought and consideration on all these factors are given prior to scheduling any outage. Notably, the maintenance work often is scheduled months or weeks in advance and we cannot always anticipate factors that may lead to rescheduling our work.
Recently, in Seal Beach, we scheduled an outage in November that would impact 3,500 customers. As one might imagine, scheduling an outage of this size can be a challenge. As our crews prepared for this upcoming outage, we ran into challenges and had to subsequently reschedule our work.
Understanding the importance of the Seal Beach Christmas Parade, we chose to reschedule the outage to avoid affecting a much beloved City tradition.
We also chose to reschedule because of high customer usage during the holiday season and we didn’t want to add additional demand to the grid.
Our challenge in this situation is balancing the needs of maintaining our infrastructure while maintaining service during the holiday season. SCE has committed to working with the City of Seal Beach to schedule this work for early 2014 and provide timely communication to our customers.
For information on power outages, please visit our website at www.sce/com/outagecenter or call us at 1-800-611-1911.
We here at SCE wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season.
Jenelle Godges, Region Manager, Local Public Affairs, Southern California Edison
Stayin’ Alive Long Beach
The no-kill advocacy group Stayin’ Alive Long Beach held a public meeting on Monday, Dec. 9 at the First Congregational Church in Long Beach. Stayin’ Alive Long Beach presented the organization’s recent report on the effectiveness of Long Beach Animal Care Services, the city agency charged with the care and control of Long Beach’s stray and homeless animals. The group’s plan is to decrease the city shelter’s 53 percent kill rate by making increased lifesaving at the Long Beach shelter a campaign issue for the 2014 municipal election.
Long Beach is a city of animal lovers who don’t want five thousand or more animals dying at the shelter every year.
What Long Beach needs is for the City to implement proactive, 21st century sheltering practices at Long Beach Animal Care Services. These programs, known as the No Kill Equation, have increased the save rate to upward of 90 percent in animal shelters across the nation.
Such programs include a comprehensive adoption program featuring frequent offsite adoption events, public-friendly adoption hours, ongoing adoption promotions and mobile adoptions, most of which can be implemented by shelter volunteers. Other lifesaving programs desperately needed at the shelter are foster programs for animals at high risk of euthanasia, a high volume-low cost spay/neuter program, outreach to rescue groups, decreased fees for people to redeem their lost animals from the shelter, a telephone help line, and a vibrant volunteer program that recruits community members to help to run these programs at little or no increase in cost to the city.
ACS relies on spcaLA to handle its adoptions, and the operating manual for ACS states that ACS “does not adopt out animals directly to residents of the general public.” As a result, ACS adopts out an extremely low number of animals every year, placing only 324 dogs and cats in homes in 2012. ACS’s stance is problematic. “ACS currently euthanizes 74% of the animals that spcaLA doesn’t take in. ACS definitely needs a comprehensive adoption program, as well as other programs that will bring the city shelter into alignment with the values of the people of Long Beach.”
Patricia Turner, Ph.D.
Long Beach
The opinions expressed in Letters to the Editor are not necessarily those of the Sun. The Sun welcomes Letters to the Editor. Letters should be 300 words maximum. Letters should be e-mailed, signed by the author and include the author’s address and phone number (the latter two are for verification, not publication). The Sun reserves the right to accept, edit, or reject letters for any reason. Unless otherwise indicated, all letters sent to the Sun are understood to be intended for publication. E-mail letters to: dennis@sunnews.org.
