MAY/JUNE 2004

IN THIS ISSUE:

Lead Your Neighborhood to a Great Future

As Seen on TV!

The Big News on City Hall

Tough New Laws Snuff out Cigarettes

Doggone it!

Help Keep Pasadena Green

Choose to Reuse Your Shoes

Avoid West Nile Virus

From Mozart to Mars

Buy a Sign of Old Times

Prevent Gun Accidents

Grillin' and Chillin'

Stop the Grease

Free Summer Concerts

PWP to the Rescue: Helping Our Customers in Need

The Gift of Conservation

Warm Weather Conservation Tips

Etcetera...Etcetera

Noticias en Breve

Lead Your Neighborhood to a Great Future

HILDREN PLAYING, birds singing, friendly faces and tidy streets: Take the lead and you can make your neighborhood an even better place!

The city’s Neighborhood Connections Office is recruiting visionaries for its next Pasadena Neighborhood Leadership Institute. For eight weeks you’ll learn how to improve cross-cultural relations, boost your public speaking skills, run effective meetings, build a neighborhood team and recruit volunteers. During a final project, you’ll put your new skills to use, working with other class members to make Pasadena an even better place to live. The goal is to build a team of diverse leaders who can help improve the quality of life throughout Pasadena.

The class will meet every Tuesday evening from Sept. 14 to Nov. 2 at a variety of locations citywide; graduation is set for Nov. 9.

Just 20 participants 18 years or older will be enrolled in the free classes. You’ll improve your chances of being selected if you already participate in community service and civic activities, demonstrate a commitment to action and are interested in developing your team-building skills.

For more information and an application, visit www.cityofpasadena.net/humanservices/neighborhood_connections.asp or call 744-7290. Applications are due Aug. 5.

As Seen on TV!

Hundreds of residents and dozens of organizations work daily to make Pasadena a great place to live. Learn all about them by watching “Your Neighborhood Connections” on 55 KPAS Thursdays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 4:30 p.m. and Sundays at 10 a.m.

Recent shows have featured National Night Out, the Day One Parent Resource Fair, Lookin’ Good Pasadena and Lights On Afterschool. Groups in the spotlight have included Neighbors Acting Together Helping All (NATHA), Pasadena Neighborhood Housing Services (PNHS) and Day One.

For more information, call 795-5556.

The Big News on City Hall 

BY LATE JULY, all offices and staff at Pasadena City Hall will move to other locations in anticipation of the three-year restoration and seismic retrofit. Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about the project.

What is the cost of the project?
The budget is $93.3 million. Every effort is being made to keep costs from exceeding the budget.

How will the project be funded?
Through a combination of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding, grants from the state of California, local tax revenues, the sale of bonds and an increase in the percentage of electricity revenues that are transferred from the city's light and power fund to the general fund annually. No new or increased taxes are required to finance the project.

What is included in the project?
The move-out and move-in of employees and offices; the protection of the seven lovely oaks in the courtyard and the majority of the stately magnolias that surround City Hall; the seismic retrofit; the historic restoration of the building; the repair or replacement of infrastructure; the addition of new safety systems, including fire sprinklers; and improvements to meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

What is the move schedule?
Offices and employees will move out during the months of May, June and July and will move back in June 2007.

Where will the offices be located in the interim?

• Most offices will relocate to the Chamber Building at 117 E. Colorado Blvd. in Old Pasadena. 

• Municipal Services (payments of utility bills, parking tickets, business licenses, animal licenses, water and electricity turn-on and turn-off) will move to a modular building that will be placed near the southwest corner of Garfield Avenue and Ramona Street. Once the modular complex is in place, the address will be 280 Ramona St. 

• The Housing Office will move to 665 N. Fair Oaks Ave. (Fair Oaks Renaissance Plaza).

• Transportation offices will move to Transportation Department headquarters at 221 E. Walnut St., suites 199 and 210. 

• The City Attorney's Office will move to the first floor at 215 N. Marengo Ave. 

• City Hall's mail room, records management, storage and most of printing services will move to 965 N. Fair Oaks Ave.

Will phone numbers change?
All phone numbers will stay the same.

Will roads be closed?
Not ordinarily. One-half of Garfield Avenue will be closed to through traffic between Union and Ramona streets throughout the project. Occasionally, certain streets surrounding City Hall will be closed so new utility connections can be made.

Why does City Hall need a seismic retrofit?
Extensive study conducted over the past 15 years revealed that City Hall will not be able to withstand an earthquake of 7.0 on the Sierra Madre fault or 8.0 or higher on the San Andreas fault without destruction of the building and possible loss of life. An earthquake of that magnitude is predicted by Caltech scientists within the next 30 years. In 2003, the City Council approved a plan for the seismic retrofit, historic restoration and infrastructure upgrade that will ensure that City Hall will continue to stand proud and serve the community for the next 100 years. During the retrofit, base isolators will be installed.

What is a base isolator?
The most common type consists of alternate layers of rubber and steel bonded together with a cylinder of lead tightly inserted through a hole in the middle. There are several other types of base isolators; a bid process in the next few months will determine which type will be used at Pasadena City Hall. During an earthquake, base isolators allow the ground to move independently from the building. The rubber layers allow base isolators to move sideways easily, reducing the tremors that are experienced by a building and its occupants. 

Where will the City Council meet?
The City Council will meet Monday evenings in the multipurpose room of the Pasadena Senior Center, 85 E. Holly St., beginning Monday, July 19. Meetings will begin at 6:30 p.m. Getting there is simple: take the Metro Gold Line to the Memorial Park Station next door to the Senior Center and bring your ticket with you to receive a free Metro token for the ride home; or park in one of many parking garages close to the center. The City Council’s last meeting at City Hall before the building re-opens in 2007 will be on Monday, June 28.

Will updates be provided during the project?
We'll let you know the latest developments in every issue of Pasadena In Focus. Visit www.cityofpasadena.net for periodic updates (click on City Hall Project) or call 744-7073.

Tough New Laws Snuff out Cigarettes

THE PASADENA PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT REMINDS US that more than 300 children start smoking in California every day. Two out of three become addicted and of that group, half die early.

To keep Pasadena children out of harm’s way, the City Council recently adopted stronger no-smoking laws that will take effect this spring: City parks will be 100% smoke-free and violators will be fined up to $250; all shops that sell tobacco products will need a special license; tobacco-only stores will have to apply for a special permit to make sure they aren’t within 1,000 feet of schools, parks or other areas frequented by little ones and teens; and merchants who sell cigarettes and other tobacco products without a license or sell them to minors may lose their business license. Notices will go out to business owners this spring and new signs will be posted to alert the public.

For more information on the new tobacco control laws or to report a violation, call 744-6014.

Ready to quit smoking? A free program sponsored by the Pasadena Public Health Department meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. in room 1120 at 1845 N. Fair Oaks Ave. Call 744-6057 to enroll.

Doggone it!

IS A NEIGHBORHOOD DOG ANNOYING YOU OR, even worse, intimidating you? Technically, a dog is a public nuisance if it “unreasonably annoys, endangers the life or health of people and other animals or substantially interferes with the rights of citizens in the enjoyment of life or property” (Pasadena Municipal Code 6.18.020). This includes dogs that repeatedly run loose, damage property and threaten to attack you or your pet without provocation (unless they’re inside a home or fenced-in yard) and dogs that bark non-stop or make unsanitary messes of their yards or enclosures.

The Pasadena Humane Society & SPCA can help by citing a dog’s owner or requiring the owner to attend a hearing on the matter. The city’s Code Enforcement Commission can decide to have the animal impounded, humanely destroyed or returned to the owner under new conditions. For more information, visit www.phsspca.org/animalcontrol/barking_dog.htm or call 792-7151.

Help Keep Pasadena Green

DID YOU KNOW THAT PASADENA IS ONE OF ONLY A HANDFUL of U.S. cities whose lush cover of trees can be seen by satellite? Help protect our stately beauties with these tips:

• First, learn how to trim your trees properly. Drastically cutting back a tree, called “topping,” threatens its health, weakens its limbs and promotes unsightly, brushy regrowth. For best results, hire a certified arborist or licensed tree pruning company. (Call Pasadena Beautiful Foundation at 795-9704 for a local list.) You can also learn the latest pruning standards by calling the city’s Parks and Natural Resources Division at 744-4321 or visiting the International Society of Arboriculture web site at www.isa-arbor.com (click on Tree Care Consumer Guides in the publication section).
  

• If you own property, remember that you’re responsible for keeping up your parkway – the area between the curb and the sidewalk. That includes watering trees, weeding and picking up trash. City staff will trim your parkway trees at no cost on a regular schedule. If you have questions or want to report a problem, call 744-4321.
  

• Clip any ivy or groundcover away from parkway trees to make sure they have enough room and won’t have to compete for water.
  

• Occasionally new trees are planted in parkways. City staff will water these small trees for the first three years to make sure they grow quickly and vigorously. You can help by supplementing water every five to seven days and keeping a two-foot area around the tree free of plants and debris.
  

• Private property owners are responsible for trimming their trees properly. If you spot a privately owned tree that may be in violation of the city’s Tree Protection Ordinance, call 744-4633.

Choose to Reuse Your Shoes

GIVE YOUR SOLES A NEW LIFE! Pasadena has teamed up with a host of other cities to collect old athletic shoes through June 2004 through Nike's Reuse a Shoe program. Donate your old tennis, walking and running shoes of any brand and Nike will make sure they're transformed into new surfacing for playgrounds, tracks, athletic fields and tennis courts. (No metal spikes because they'll damage the grinding equipment.) 

Drop off your shoes at Villa Parke Community Center, Robinson Park Center or Victory Park Center before June 15. 

For more information or to set up a collection container at your organization, school or business, visit www.cityofpasadena.net/publicworks or call 744-4721.