City Council in Flames! Hostage-Taking Motorcyclists! Peeping Security Cameras?

NO PENSION TENSION

The big news from Tuesday night’s set, headlined by the City Council Spice Girls and Guy—Mayor Toni Iseman (Scary Spice), Jane Egly (Baby Spice), Verna Rollinger (Ginger Spice) Elizabeth Pearson (Posh Spice) and Kelly Boyd (Sporty Spice)—was the complete screwing-over of future Laguna Beach firefighters.

Or … um, maybe not, since the firefighter’s union seemed to be totally fine with said screwing-over.

What happened was, the Fab Five, after months of negotiating with the Orange County Professional Firefighters Association, voted 5-0 to “ratify a memo of understanding and adapt a resolution of intention to amend ...” blah-blah-blah.

In English, this means that, because of the city’s near million-dollar operating deficit and the continuing crappy economy, if you want to be a freshly-picked brand-new Laguna Beach firefighter, you’ll have to pony up 9 percent of your paycheck towards your retirement pension. Current fire department employees (there are 36 of ‘em) will also have to cough up 4.5 percent of their pay starting next month. Also, if you’re a current LBFD employee? No raises for at least the next two years for you! (Though you did get a nice five percent one a year ago, remember …)

Honestly, we thought there’d be more of a hue-and-cry from the OCPFA, but not a single person, pro or con, spoke out for or against the pension changes in the council chambers Tuesday. There was no manic debate, no red-faced argument, no wild-eyed protest, not even a slight whiff of outraged consternation, which likely had something to do with the fact that the council and the OCPFA have been hashing out the deets of this deal in some dark, smoke-filled backroom for several months, partially we assume to avoid the kind of public management-versus-labor zaniness of the kind that usually only seems to happen anymore when supermarket strikes are imminent. So … kudos to both sides (we guess, if everyone truly is happy with this deal) for behaving like adults and coming to an agreement.

The city hopes to save $148,000 this year and $215,000 each year after that. The council needs to finalize all this in a special October 11 session, and the new rules will go into effect six days after that.

SHARROW AND SHARROW ALIKE

The council also voted for several recommendations from the city’s ever-lovable Parking, Traffic and Circulation committee, best among them being the approval of 25 road sharrows, which are essentially wider, better-marked bicycle lanes, often painted special colors to make them more visible to both bicyclists and motorists. (Because the roads are for sharing—get it? Share the road ... sharrow?) The first phase of sharrows are expected to be painted on the one-way Cypress Drive, with bike lanes added a block north along Monterey Drive. If you’d like to see what these mysterious sharrows will look like (via the magic of Photoshop), we suggest clicking up the excellent Laguna Streets blog right here.

BICYCLES YES, BIKERS NO!

During the opening set by local indie/emo/screamo band Public Comments, one gentleman stood up to voice his general unhappiness with the 3,000 motorcycles that ripped through Laguna Beach on Sept. 11 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11/01. He wasn’t really miffed at the crotch-rocket parade per se, but instead, by the apparent fact that he was, in his words, "held hostage for 40 minutes” in front of the South Coast movie theater as he waited for the pageant to pass. “I couldn’t find any announcement that traffic was going to be disrupted for that amount of time," he protested. "We couldn’t go forward, we couldn’t go backward … it was an inconvenience.” There was no advance warning from the city or the local media, he said (though Laguna Beach Patch—toot, toot!—posted 36 hours before the bikers arrived. We even said "plan accordingly for high traffic levels!"), so could the city in the future please do a better job of publicizing the event next year?

In response, City Manager John Pietig told him "we're definitely going to work to improve that in the future," perhaps by announcing it in his weekly update that's posted on the city website, though "we won't know what time of day (they'll arrive) because they're on a particular route ..." Wrong-o, John-o! Patch correctly reported the bikers' arrival between 2:50 and 3:10 p.m. that day, because we got that info straight from the Remember 9/11 Ride website right here. We suggest bookmarking it for next year ...

ADDENDUM!

• Jack Camp, who’s a member of the advisory committee of the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, stepped up to the mic during public comments and posed a really interesting question—with all the new homes being planned for the Great Park region, has anyone on the council thought of how to deal with the prospect of 40,000 extra people in the not-too-distant future zipping up and down Laguna Canyon on the weekends? No one on the council had an answer ...
• Tim Templeton of the Tech Committee recommended the purchase of video cameras—for security reasons, not, we assume, voyeuristic ones—in light of the recent damage done to the parking permit vending machines in the Glenneyre parking garage ...
• Bruce Hopping the Gadfly said some stuff.
• And Elizabeth Pearson had a hard time pronouncing the word calliope. (Whoops! Actually, that was Jane Egly, not Pearson.)