Sales taxes only produce revenue when there are taxable things being sold.
The City Council voted unanimously March 5 to put the measure on the June 3 ballot to meet a March 7 filing deadline with the county Registrar of Voters.
Measure U, if approved, would raise the sales tax from 7.25 percent to 8.25 percent, with the additional cent on the dollar going to the city general fund.
It’s a fact. Cell receptions totally stinks in PG business areas.
Thank you, Pacific Grove elders, for allowing me to spend several hundred dollars in your beautiful city, but not allowing me to use my cell phone due to your poor reception.
It’s a shame you are so resistant to any new technology allowing cell towers, but you will gladly take my money.
From now on, I will spend my dollars down the street in Monterey where I can use my cell phone and buy a Starbucks. Your city may be beautiful, but it is the 21st century.
Was anyone thinking about others’ fears? Want to think global or not?
Mexican officials have banned all strawberries from the Central Coast if they are within 1.9 miles of a light brown apple moth meaning strawberries from fields like these off San Andreas Road likely won’t be going to Mexico.
If the ban stays in effect through this year’s strawberry season, it could cost county growers about $1.9 million in lost revenue, according to local estimates. Virtually no Santa Cruz County strawberries — by far the county’s largest crop — would be allowed across the border.
State doctors have decided a mentally ill Monterey man charged with beating a day laborer on Fort Ord is now competent to face trial.
Judge Timothy Roberts said Glenn Blevins would be transported to Monterey County Jail from Atascadero State Mental Hospital. Doctors at Atascadero informed the court Blevins’ competency had been restored through treatment, the judge said this morning.
He is charged with an Aug. 10 attack on Artemio Santiago Garcia, 30. According to Marina police, Blevins chose Garcia from a group of day laborers in Seaside on the pretext that he needed some work done. He then allegedly drove his white pickup to an abandoned area of Fort Ord, where he beat Santiago Garcia to the point of unconsciousness.
“Bug Experts”? Is the Hear-Old taking lessons from David Dilworth? They are Entomologists.
A top state bug expert threw cold water Friday on a report suggesting the light brown apple moth has been kept in check in New Zealand without an aggressive pesticide program.
The report’s shortcomings, in Hoffman’s view, include:
· Overlooking financial and environmental costs of New Zealand’s pest management program.
· Giving short shrift to possible pitfalls of introducing non-native species to prey on the light brown apple moth.It is unlikely the moth’s natural enemies would be allowed in the United States, Hoffman said.
· Ignoring the potential impact if the light brown apple moth becomes established in other parts of California, other states or Mexico and Canada.“The authors display a lack of understanding about the purpose of classifying (the moth) as a regulated pest and the necessity of implementing actions to restrict its movement,” Hoffman wrote.
“The green and sustainable movement is ignored at our own peril,” Cort told chamber members who gathered for a lunch of fillet Mignon or vegetarian lasagna at the Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach. “It’s like taking yourself off the Internet. We’re not going to be left behind.”
Pacific Grove can’t compete with the big box stores of Sand City, the shopping centers of Monterey, or the high-end boutiques of Carmel, he said. So it has to offer its own unique appeal for shopping and tourism.
One proposal by the city’s economic advisory committee is for conversion of the portion of Lighthouse Avenue in the old part of downtown to a pedestrian-only area, making Pacific Grove “the first pedestrian-only city on the Peninsula” he said.
He talking out of two mouths. One says to be sustain, recycle, solar and the other says let’s worship those hydrocarbon emitting cars that are so despised by the likes of Joy Colon-Jello.
The March 5 agenda pitches a once a month gathering of cars, old ones – the most polluting of all:
The City Council will consider adding the “Pacific Grove Old Town Classic Car Show” sponsored by Rats to Riches, Inc. a non-profit to the City’s Special Events Calendar.
Reference: City Manager Colangelo
Recommended Action: Approve addition of “Rats to Riches” Car Show to the City’s Special Events Calendar
In the same agenda is a reconsideration of another auto-worship event taking over the city’s golf course:
The City Council will consider the creation of a Council Subcommittee of Council Members Miller and Nilmeier to negotiate with Concorso Italiano, Inc for an exotic car show at the Pacific Grove Golf Course.
Reference: Council Members Nilmeier and Miller
Recommended Action: Direct Staff to negotiate formal agreement for future Council consideration
Are P.G.’s bank tellers better than Monterey’s?
Pacific Grove police have arrested two men they believe tried to cash stolen checks.
Scott Ednie and Travis Chappell, who police say is on parole, were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of burglary, forgery, possession of stolen property, and theft.
According to police, Ednie and Chappell tried to cash checks they had stolen on March 5 at a Wells Fargo Bank in Pacific Grove. They successfully cashed a check first in Monterey, police said, but their second attempt in Pacific Grove prompted a bank teller to call police.
What about the teachers? I remember one in particular at PG High. Don’t forget Frank Abbruzzetti the PGMS teacher that was arrested for operating a meth lab. Recently another teacher and meth story surfaced in the Bay Area – this one was videotaping the girls in the bathroom next to his classroom.
Forty-four percent of 11th-graders surveyed in the Peninsula’s high schools from fall 2004 to spring 2006 admitted to consuming some alcohol within the 30 days prior to the survey, compared to 37 percent in the county and statewide.
The data were gathered by the California Healthy Kids Resource Center, a state-funded repository of health education materials in Hayward, and analyzed by IMPACT for Youth, a organization in Pacific Grove focused on raising awareness about alcohol and drug abuse among teens.
Reducing alcohol consumption can also reduce some risky behavior among teenagers, such as drunken driving, Myer said.
Politics, sheesh
Assembly member John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, today named “green” restaurateur Cindy Walter of Pacific Grove as Woman of the Year for the 27th Assembly District.
Walter and her husband own Passionfish restaurant, the first officially “green” restaurant in Monterey County.
As the first officially “green” restaurant in Monterey County, Passionfish sets an example with a strict policy of sustainable and environmentally friendly purchasing. The staff is knowledgeable about this issue and how it affects what the restaurant uses and serves. Bon Appetit Magazine recognized the Walters as ‘sustainable seafood experts,’ in the “Best of 2006” cover focus published in January 2007.
Yah, save the dolphins, wash the spinach, sustain the raccoons. But what about the poor humans that live near the restaurant? They get blight and blocked sidewalks in the form of way too much trash generated by the first officially “green” restaurant that sends this much trash to the landfill.
From: http://gallery.mac.com/lsharpe#100020&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=
A “P.G. Remodel” is one of those house modifications where 90% of the house is replaced and then the square footage increases by another 90%. The resulting structure my have a slight resemblance to the original, but there is often only about 5% of the original building there.
Over at 419 Congress Avenue, here’s the original 500 square foot structure, working toward that 10% of original building.
Looks like too much was removed, 9% of house fell into 200% of basement.
Juan The Builder – should he change the name to Juan The Destructor?
Follow up: A hysterical preservation lady spoke at the next city council meeting urging that everything possible be done to restore the damage. If they care so much why did they allow the little salt box be ‘restored’ into a forest chalet in the first place?