Anyone else notice the crosswalk sting they had set up on Fair Oaks today? The results should be evident in next week’s report. Why would someone think the Orange Grove off-ramp to the 110 would be a prime spot to hawk shirts? And a little good news: koi kidnapping foiled. Full report after the jump. Read more »

This has nothing to do with South Pas, but as a giddy new cabin owner I’m sure it won’t be the last time Big Santa Anita Canyon news trickles onto this blog. The Pack Station at Chantry Flat was originally built in 1936, and a general store was added in 1953. Deb and Sue Burgess purchased the operation in 2006. Now the L.A. County Health Department is saying they need to make oodles of changes if they want to stay in business. In this case, oodles is between $5K and $10K. Here’s the Pack Station’s plea.

The South Pas Chamber of Commerce posted on their blog today that they’ve “made the first cut in the contest to run the local Farmers’ Market.” I asked Scott Feldmann a few questions about the Chamber’s interest in the market, and he was kind enough to humor me. Q&A after the jump. Read more »

This is part of the statewide “Day of Action” to protest cuts to education. District Superintendent Joel Shapiro was sending out the robocalls yesterday. From the South Pasadena High School PTSA:

South Pasadena Council PTA Invites You to a Rally for Our Children

Thursday, March 4, from 3-4 p.m., in front of the SPUSD Administration Building: 1020 El Centro Street

The governor’s budget proposal makes devastating cuts to schools, in the amount of $2.4 billion over the next two years, despite his pledge to protect education. The budget will also decimate children’s healthcare and family services.

For SPUSD these cuts translate to an additional $1,100,000 cut, or 5% of our total budget. This is on top of a $2,000,000 cut in 2009-10 and $3,500,000 that was cut over the last 2 years!

Our children have already lost  instructional assistants and other support positions.  If this proposal goes through, our children stand to lose even more teachers, counselors, arts specialists, and additional support staff!

The System is Broken!

Budget Reform is Crucial!

The Time to Act is NOW!

Letters to our legislators demanding a change in the number of votes necessary to pass a budget and a demand for a stable funding stream for education will be on hand.

Busy week for the SPPD. There was a hot pursuit that ended with the suspect ditching his stolen car at Avenue 58; and there was an armed robbery at Radio Shack. Full police report after the jump. Read more »

The headline says it all. District Superintendent Joel Shapiro insists cuts would be greater if not for the parcel tax passed by voters last year. Here’s the Pasadena Star-News story.

Not quite South Pasadena, but without the Rialto we have to venture outside city limits every once in a while. When it comes to movies, I gave up on the Alhambra Daycare & Texting Center a long time ago. Gold Class Cinemas at One Colorado sounds promising, but they still sell out really quick. So it’s worth a post that there are plans to convert the theaters at Paseo into an ArcLight and be open by summer.

It was previously mentioned that the “Cuss Free Week” bill had been passed by the state Assembly. Now it seems the Senate has indefinitely postponed the action. They cited things like, say, the looming budget crisis as being more deserving of our lawmakers’ attention. South Pas resident Brent Hatch, father of No Cussing Club founder McKay Hatch, is none too thrilled: ”This is basically saying to people, especially kids, ‘We don’t care what you do.’”

A few South Pas-centric stories floating around:

• Sometimes there’s a fine line between news and advertising. Sometimes that line gets trampled.
• The death of SPHS student Aydin Salek prompts a bill proposal from Assemblyman Anthony Portantino that would “grant immunity from criminal prosecution to teenagers who seek emergency medical attention for someone possibly suffering from alcohol poisoning.”
• State Assemblyman Mike Eng pushes Caltrans to sell all the homes along the aboveground 710 route. It’s an odd about-face from the guy who opposed Portantino’s bill last year, which kinda would of done the same thing.
• iamnotastalker.com, well, stalks Kaldi’s.
• Via The Source: “Full-time students attending Pasadena City College (PCC) will soon be eligible to receive heavily discounted Metro passes – $30 for unlimited travel on all Metro bus and rail lines for an entire semester. Part of Metro’s I-Pass program, this new partnership will bring affordable transit to 8,800 community college students.”

The ambiguously titled blog Friends for Fullerton’s Future reports that Fullerton School District Superintendent Mitch Hovey played this video at a recent school board meeting. The blog suggests it might have been used to float the idea of a parcel tax. One gem from the post: “Enjoy the manipulation of children by the same mindless fools who put our current legislature in office.” Not exactly sure what that means.

Related: I’m really, really tired of bringing up No Cuss Kid, but yeah, thanks to Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, the first week of March is now possibly at some time in the future Cuss Free Week in the state of California. And yes, McKay Hatch is now the national youth spokesperson for the Parent Television Council, which is the org that protests pretty much anything on television.