PW OPINION PW NEWS PW LIFE PW ARTS BRIEFS TUNNEL CLOSED BILL WOULD AID NONPROFIT TENANTS IN BUYING CALTRANS SURPLUS PROPERTIES BY ANDRÉ COLEMAN Decades in the making, the last remnant of an extension of the 710 freeway is finally on its deathbed. Anthony J. Portantino The Assembly Transportation Committee recently passed Senate Bill 7, which allows the purchase of surplus properties occupied at their current use value and prohibits Caltrans from implementing a tunnel or surface freeway option to extend the freeway. The bill was authored by state Sen. Anthony J. Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, who said in a written statement that the bill is also a potential legislative fix for the state to return surplus freeway stubs back to cities located in the freeway corridor, namely Pasadena, South Pasadena and Los Angeles. “The formal end of the 710 has been 60 years in the making and I am very excited to see it one step closer to happening,” Portantino said. “I am particularly pleased to be following through on the commitment I made two years ago when negotiating the end to the 710 tunnel threat. The hope then was that the EIR (environment impact report) certification would move us all in a new and collaborative direction that would take the freeway off the table and protect the nonprofits in the corridor. Today, that reality is within reach.” The possibility of a 710 extension into Pasadena has been on the table for decades, but has been opposed for generations by people living in Pasadena, South Pasadena and the LA neighborhood of El Sereno. In the 1950s and 1960s Caltrans began buying empty lots, houses and apartments along the proposed route. In 2012, after the surface option for the freeway extension was taken off the table, LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and Caltrans officials announced they wanted to build either a six-lane highway along portions of West Pasadena or a 6.3-mile tunnel from the end of the 710 Freeway in Alhambra to Pasadena, but those ideas were also eventually nixed. Now tenants in those homes are expecting deals on the purchase of those properties, many of which need massive amounts of work. The Ronald McDonald House and Arlington Gardens are Caltrans-owned properties. “The Pasadena Ronald McDonald House and Arlington Gardens are two nonprofits that are very interested in seeing SB 7 pass. We are grateful to Senator Portantino for his support of our mission and those of the other nonprofits in our community. SB 7 is critical to the future success of all of us in Caltrans-owned properties,” said Megan Foker, board co-chair of the Pasadena Ronald McDonald House and Michelle Matthews, executive director of the Arlington Garden in a joint prepared statement. n SHAKING THINGS UP EARTHQUAKE APP WARNING THRESHOLDS TO BE LOWERED AFTER RECENT TREMORS BY ANDRÉ COLEMAN Developers of ShakeAlertLA, a phone app connected to the US Geological Survey’s (USGS) earthquake early warning system sensors, said they would lower the app’s alert threshold. “Our goal is to alert people who might experience potentially damaging shaking, not just feel the shaking,” said Robert de Groot, a spokesman for the USGS’s ShakeAlert system, which is being developed for California, Oregon and Washington. The announcement came in the wake of two major earthquakes registering magnitude 6.4 and magnitude 7.1 that struck Southern California last week near Ridgecrest in San Bernardino County, about 154 miles northeast of Los Angeles, according to the USGS. The app is designed to warn residents of an earthquake registering magnitude 5.0 or above, or one that could cause potentially damaging shaking in Los Angeles County. Despite the size of the earthquakes, the tremors registered beneath the warning threshold in Los Angeles County. “The tremors were well above magnitude 5,” de Groot told the Pasadena Weekly on Monday. “But the expected shaking for the Los Angeles area was level three,” he said, referring to a different scale used to assess damage. A revision of the magnitude threshold down to 4.5 was already under way, but the shaking intensity level threshold would remain at four, which means even under the change Los Angeles County residents would not have received an alert. De Groot said he fears that if there are too many alerts, people become desensitized to them. “If people get saturated with these messages, it’s going to make people not care as much,” he said. ShakeAlert would eventually cover the entire west coast and is about 70 percent complete, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Eventually the system will send out alerts over television and cellphones, the same system used by amber alerts, to areas prior to earthquakes. The state is partnering with the federal government to build the statewide earthquake warning system, with the goal of turning it on by June 2021. The state has already spent at least $25 million building it, including installing hundreds of seismic stations throughout the state, according to the USGS. President Donald Trump has twice threatened to pull the funding to the project which is sponsored by one of his fiercest critics Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank). This year, Newsom requested $16.3 million to finish the project, which included money for stations to monitor seismic activity, and $7 million for education. The state Legislature approved the funding last month, and Newsom signed it into law. n ON GUARD CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7 of the American people. Most American people support abortion. They don’t want Roe overturned,” she continued, apparently referring to national polls like one on CBS News citing 69 percent support for Roe in the US. “Our number one concern is the safety of our patients,” Hines said. “We will continue to fight for them in the courts, in the legislatures and in the courts of public opinion.” In addition, Hines said, both staff and patients at the two Planned Parenthood buildings on Lake Avenue will be undergoing safety training and beefing up security measures. Hines noted she has been particularly concerned about safety at Planned Parenthood of Pasadena ever since after “Colorado Springs.” She was alluding to a 2015 shootout in which a 57-year-old man with an assault rifle murdered three people and injured nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs during a five-hour gun battle with police. Thus far, most of the pro-life protests at Planned Parenthood of Pasadena have largely been peaceful, among them a recent “vigil” during the Lenten season by a religiously inspired anti-abortion group called 40 Days for Life, which is based in Texas. Hines recalled only a “handful” of activists arriving on any given day and said there were no serious disruptions. “But some of our patients have complained,” she said. “They want health care, not people yelling at them. Our patients are smart and they knew these people are there to judge them and to try and prevent them from coming to Planned Parenthood. They know they’re trying to shame them.” Jill Davis, 68, a Pasadena anti-abortion activist who claims Planned Parenthood fosters a sexually permissive lifestyle, acknowledged undergoing “a couple of abortions” in her younger days before “being saved by Jesus” at a church. She acted as a leader of a second 40 Days vigil in front of the Planned Parenthood affiliate which ended on April 14. She said about 45 to 50 people in total showed up over the 40 days, setting up tables with literature on family issues and promotional material on the film, “Unplanned,” a box office hit based on a book by Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood employee turned anti-abortion activist. Many of Davis’ counterparts at the vigil were older women like herself, she said: “Our whole thing being there was (as) mothers, older women who have more experience and can teach younger women how to love their husbands and children. Whenever I’d see a young boy or young woman going in there (to Planned Parenthood), I’d just say hi and try to get their eye and find out what’s going on in their lives.” She believes her group “influenced” many Planned Parenthood patients but noted that others resisted overtures and “they threw condoms at us because it’s a controversial life and death issue.” Davis said her group did not file a report with the Pasadena Police THE COUNT As of Monday, 4,149 days after the war in Afghanistan ended … 2,248 American military service members (0 more than last week) were reported killed in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001, according to The Associated Press. 3 ISIS militants were killed in Baghdad on Sunday in US airstrikes, according to FOX News, which reported the US-led airstrike was conducted on an ISIS hideout. Department, but “we did file a report of a gal in a VW who came up and shoved our table over. We have her license plate and picture, but we’re not vindictive. We want to bless her.” Pasadena police Lt. Art Chute, who’s in charge of the department’s events/counterterrorism unit, said he hadn’t heard anything about the incidents that Davis described and noted there had been “no problems” reported to him at the vigil by Sgt. Anthony Burgess, who was in contact with both sides of the abortion debate at Planned Parenthood of Pasadena. California decriminalized abortion several years before Roe V. Wade and is considered by some prochoice advocates as one of the most progressive states in the country on reproductive rights for women. “California’s law is very strong — most other states are not nearly as comprehensive,” said Elizabeth Booth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute in Washington, DC, a research organization that supports abortion. “Under California’s Medicaid program, abortion is provided in health insurance. Abortion has to be covered. That is a huge financial advantage,” she observed, noting that a “typical abortion” costs $500. Nationally, abortion rates have been declining in recent years. By 2014, Nash said, there were 926,000 abortions nationwide, a drop from about 1 million in 2011. She attributes the decline to increased “access to contraceptives,” including abortion medications, people delaying marriage and the “closing of (abortion) clinics” — the latter often due to hundreds of restrictive state laws passed since 1973. In contrast, California may be getting a bold new law that will require health centers at state public universities and colleges to offer female students abortion pills to end unwanted pregnancies for up to the first 10 weeks and to do so by Jan. 1, 2023. But first the College Student Right to Access Act, or Senate Bill 24, introduced by State Sen. Connie Leyva and passed in the senate, has to get approved by the state Assembly and then signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill last year. Leyva has been working on the bill for three years. A spokesman, Sergio Reyes, said it does not require any campus health center to provide free abortion pills, though they are allowed to if they choose to. Each campus health center currently decides what care is offered at no cost, what care is provided for cash pay, and what insurance or government program they bill. A private funders consortium has already raised the $10,290,000 for the cost of readiness for the CSU and UC student health centers. Leyva said in a telephone interview that she felt a sense of urgency about the bill because “women’s rights are under attack and right wing legislators across the country are emboldened by a president who wants to take women back 100 years.” n 2 residents were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad on Saturday, according to FOX News. Despite repeated military operations in some areas, ISIS militants are still hiding rugged areas near the border with Iran. 0 interest is what Iran says it has in talks with the US. Iran has begun mining uranium used to build a nuclear weapon as tensions continue to ramp up, according to FOX. — Compiled by André Coleman 8 PASADENA WEEKLY | <strong>07.11.19</strong>
<strong>07.11.19</strong> | PASADENA WEEKLY 9