A heated 5th GOP debate in Las Vegas followed a day of disruption in Los Angeles. Authorities cancelled instruction at 900 LA public schools after receiving an email – ultimately judged a hoax – that threatened a school attack with explosives, assault rifles and machine pistols. Hailey Branson-Ptts, Stephen Ceasar and Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times:
“L.A. Unified School District Supt. Ramon Cortines said he made the decision to order the school closures because he couldn’t take a chance with the system’s 640,000 students.
“By evening, school officials said they had inspected all campuses and that the FBI had discredited the threat.
“’We believe that our schools are safe and we can reopen schools in Los Angeles Unified School District tomorrow morning,’ school board President Steve Zimmer said in an evening news conference.
“L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Chief Charlie Beck defended the decision to close the schools, saying investigators did not know at the time whether the threat was legitimate.
“’I think it’s irresponsible … to criticize that decision at that point,’ Beck said. ‘Southern California has been through a lot in the past few weeks. Should we put our children through the same thing?’”
Facing strong opposition from farmers and cities, state water regulators have dropped plans to hold extra water in Lake Shasta to help protect the endangered Chinook salmon. Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee:
“The State Water Resources Control Board, after a four-hour meeting, voted 4-0 to require that regulators work to ensure Sacramento River temperatures don’t exceed 56 degrees next year, the maximum at which juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon can survive. But the board decided to give the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation considerable leeway in determining how best to meet that temperature threshold.
“The board was contemplating a plan that would have required the bureau to hold back an additional 200,000 acre-feet of water at Lake Shasta through next October. That would help ensure that the water released into the Sacramento River would be cool enough to keep the juvenile salmon alive during next year’s run. The plan would have kept 1.6 million acre-feet in Shasta much of next year, up from 1.4 million acre-feet this year.
“Farmers and groups representing downstream cities complained that the plan was too rigid and would deprive them of badly needed supplies. Environmentalists, conversely, complained it didn’t go far enough to guarantee the species’ survival.”
California’s solar industry notched a win yesterday, with regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission rejecting a proposed fee increase for new solar customers. Louis Hansen, San Jose Mercury News:
“The proposal keeps in place an existing retail credit for solar customers who sell excess energy back to utilities. But it was not a complete win for the solar industry. The decision imposes two new charges: a one-time fee of $75 to $150 for new users of solar to connect to the grid, and additional charges of 2 to 3 cents per kilowatt hour of energy used to fund low-income and energy-efficiency programs.
“It would also require new solar users in 2018 to adopt a more complicated rate structure known as time-of-use, which can vary rates by time of day, week and month. [Bernadette] Del Chiaro said the policy would not affect the bills of existing solar customers, and may have only a modest effect on future customers.”
Data nerds rejoice: State Controller Betty Yee has flipped the switch on a new searchable database that contains local government salaries for 602,377 positions. Dan Walters at the Sacramento Bee:
“The compilation, based on 2014 data reported by 54 of the state’s 58 counties (San Francisco filed as a city) and 468 cities, revealed that average wages in cities fell by more than 3 percent from 2013 levels to $59,614 while those in counties increased by almost 3 percent to $60,993.
“Santa Clara County had the highest average among counties, $78,808, while Vernon, an industrial city with few residents in Los Angeles County, topped cities at $103,601.
“Yee said the survey also found that average retirement and health care costs per employee declined by about 1 percent in cities to $17,810 while increasing in counties by nearly 11 percent to $25,130.”
In case you missed it this weekend (we did), here’s a link Rich Ehisen’s great Q&A with the dean of California reporting (42 years at the Times!), George Skelton. Well worth a read.
And between school bomb threats and memorial services for terror victims it’s nice to hear some good news: Darwin the IKEA monkey is doing great.
“It's been three whole years since a tiny monkey, resplendent in a shearling coat, was found wandering around an IKEA parking lot in Canada and changed the internet forever. On December 9, 2012, Darwin the macaque became an instant celebrity as the IKEA Monkey: a primate who launched a million memes and reminded us, however momentarily, what it is to feel joy in this otherwise miserable world.
“Incredible as it was to see a minuscule monkey exploring a place usually reserved for legions of pissed-off humans in search of say, a nice fork or a reasonably-priced side table, everyone knew deep down a monkey wearing a jacket—a pretty nice jacket, as it would happen—just wasn't right.
“Turns out, an agitated Darwin, who was only a few months old at the time, had escaped from his owner's car only to be found—and photographed—running amok on the Ontario branch of the store's parking lot. Yasmin Nadhuka, an exotic animal ‘enthusiast,’ had been rumbled, not only for dressing him up in a shearling coat AND a diaper, but for having an illegal exotic pet….
“Darwin was taken to the Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary in Ontario, despite a lengthy court case which saw Nadhuka try to win him back (she failed, unsurprisingly). Darwin's getting another happy ending, as the sanctuary plans to introduce him to a new 'family' of two rescued macaques in January.”
Awwwww....
