Friends and family of legendary Carlsbad surfer/lifeguard Doug Tico will join together for his memorial at 5 PM today (January 3, 2010) at the Kingdom Hall at 1735 McCauley Lane to remember his life. As a friend of his said: “It’s the end of an era. We couldn’t have asked for a better friend, or more classic character than Tico. What a surfer!”
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This year’s $1.7 million bailout of Carlsbad’s three-year-old golf course will bring the total amount of annual subsidies since its opening to $5.1 million. Four of the five council members who voted to tap city coffers again this time voted for each of the previous giveaways. Here’s a small sample of what three of them have said to explain their votes to save a failing enterprise.
The most creative justification came from newly re-elected councilman Mark Packard. “We’re not subsidizing,” he claimed, “we’re ‘fronting’ the money. None of us on the council play golf, so we didn’t do this for our own benefit.” For him, keeping the course on life support amounts to a misnamed and selfless act.
In a variation of I’m-from-the-government- and-I’m-here-to-help, Mayor-elect Matt Hall assured his constituents, “The five of us manage the affairs of the city very well and I feel certain it will pay for itself.”
Holding environmentalists largely responsible for the ballooning cost of construction from its $11 million estimate 18 years ago, Retiring Mayor Lewis sadly predicted, “This will pay, maybe not in my lifetime.”
Each year since its August 2007 opening, the number of budgeted rounds of golf has fallen. The number for 2008 was 52,000. This year’s number of actual rounds is projected to be 42,000. That’s a 20 percent decline. Reaching next year’s budgeted goal of 44,000 seems unlikely, given the course’s track record.
Follow the jump for the rest of the story. . .
[click to continue…]
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Hundreds of volunteers converged on the Pine Avenue Community Park this morning (December 24, 2010) at 10 AM to take part in the Fourth Annual Roses For Our Senior Friends project.
Christmas is a time for family and friends, notoriously for kids. Unfortunately, many of our seniors spend the holidays alone and bored. In an effort to alleviate feelings of loneliness and spread a little holiday cheer, Roses for Our Senior Friends was created. . . What began as a father and daughter delivering roses to seniors on Christmas Eve in 2004, has blossomed into a large-scale volunteer event.
Today, participants will deliver 2,500 roses to senior citizens at more than 20 different facilities from Carlsbad to Escondido. Merry Christmas, indeed. Click the link for more info on facebook.
[Link: Roses For Our Senior Friends]
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The storm clouds may be gone, but Historic 101 North into Oceanside certainly has a little more water on it than normal. Wonder if we can just leave it this way?
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It seems Carlsbadistan made it through the storm of the decade mostly unscathed. Power remained on during the night and aside from a few downed trees everything seemed to be intact. A large branch closed Carlsbad Blvd. at Mountain View Dr. Police had both the North and South lanes blocked off at 10:20 AM as Carlsbad City crews worked amazingly quickly to get it all cleaned up.
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The Westfield Plaza Camino Real seems to be one big pile of problems for nearly everyone lately. If it isn’t empty spaces, or huge department stores that sit empty like hulking relics to a lost form of commerce, it’s the incessant crime that seems to occur around the mall.
Last month, on Black Friday, a Zumiez store employee was robbed at gun point in the parking lot, then on Saturday night (December 18, 2010) a woman had her car stolen at gun point according to a story in the North County Times.
Police said the 20-year-old victim had just left the mall shortly before 9 p.m. when the suspect, described as a black man about 30 years old, asked her for her car keys. He told her he would shoot and brandished a handgun. . . The woman got out of her car, gave the suspect her keys and the man drove away in an unknown direction in her red 2004 Nissan 350Z. . . .her car has a Michigan license plate BXN8034.
Maybe Westfield should just throw in the towel and tear the place down. Just a thought.
[Link: North County Times]
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The black pipe snaking along Tamarack State Beach can only mean one thing—the dredging is back. And, according to a post on DredgingToday engineers will be pumping up the sludge from the bottom of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon and stinking up our beach all winter by blowing it out into the ocean from now until May 2011.
The project consists of pumping 500,000 cubic yards of sand from the mouth of the lagoon to the beach in order to allow more cooling water to reach the Encina Power Plant. Beginning the week of Dec. 6, Cabrillo Power I LLC will position a dredging vessel and begin laying large black pipes adjacent to the seawall along Tamarack Beach. Approximately 100,000 cubic yards will be deposited on beaches north of Tamarack Avenue in January. Another segment of sand will be deposited between the jetties in February; the remainder will be placed south of the warm water jetty in March. The sand placement is expected to be completed by mid-April 2011. The equipment will be removed by the end of May.
To be clear—they are not dredging so we can have a more beautiful beach. We already have more than enough sand. They’re dredging so the Encina Power Station can continue to make power to sell elsewhere.
[Link: Dredging Today]
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Carlsbad’s Adrienne Durso is reportedly suing the TSA after she received a much too vigorous pat down at Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Sunport Airport, according to a story on KOB.com.
“Heavily concentrating on my breast area where I told her I had a mastectomy the year previous and in just seemed to go on and on,” said Durso. . . She says she felt humiliated as the extensive pat-down happened in front of her 17 year old son and hundreds of other travelers. . . “I felt as though I didn’t have any rights other than I had to stand there and let them do what they want to do to my body,” Durso continued.
The last straw was when a supervisor reportedly told Durso’s son that the reason he hadn’t gotten a similar pat down was because “you don’t have boobs.” We’re kind of hoping the TSA loses this one. The craziness must stop.
Click the link for the rest of the story.
[Link: KOB.com]
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On the Monday after Thanksgiving the Carlsbadistan Marie Callender’s apparently closed up shop and packed away the signs according to a story in the San Diego Reader.
Next door at the McDonalds, employees said the Marie Callender’s signs were removed right away on that morning. The restaurant obviously did not tell its regular customers. Two hand-written notes were posted on the front door December 8 advising groups that normally meet at the restaurant to go to other nearby establishments for their meetings.
The restaurant, which was shut down by for a few days in November of 2009 after a Thanksgiving day diner smelled sewage in the kitchen, has had a rough time lately. Wish we could say we were going to miss them.
[Link: San Diego Reader]
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San Diego City Beat has uncovered a rather interesting Wikileak story regarding a wedding thrown by Dagestani ambassador to Moscow Gadzhi Makhachev. The reason it is interesting is that the cable also mentions that Makhachev had homes in San Diego and sent Dagestani youth (including his sons) to “a military type high school near San Diego.”
City Beat says Makhachev denied in published reports that he has homes in San Diego, however, they found that he actually owns four homes in Carlsbad, all of which we know well (one is located next door to Senior Grubby’s see below) and that he has sent 15 boys through Carlsbad’s Army & Navy Academy.
The more interesting news is that, aside from donating $100,000 to the Army & Navy Academy, Makhachev reportedly had connections with a local machinery exporter and Carlsbad developer Bernard Goldstein, a man who was “indicted by a federal grand jury in November for allegedly hiding millions of dollars in overseas bank accounts.”
City Beat says that Goldstein has since “fled the country.”
How’s that for some local intrigue? Click the link for all the details in a well researched piece of investigative journalism from City Beat senior writer Dave Maass.
[Link: San Diego City Beat]
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