PUBLIC SAFETY A dedicated place to train...

PUBLIC SAFETY

A dedicated place to train for worst-case scenarios

Members of the Costa Mesa Fire Department dedicated a new,

$400,000 training tower at a Wednesday ceremony.

The tower, paid for through a grant, is a two-story metal

structure with exterior balconies that adjoins the department’s

existing five-story training tower.

* Police arrested a knife-wielding man Wednesday night after he

held officers at bay more than 40 minutes, despite being shot with

rubber bullets more than a dozen times, pepper sprayed, shocked with

a stun gun and bitten by a police K-9.

Officers also evacuated the Camp shopping center on Bristol

Street, halting a scuba class and a yoga class, when the man cut

lines on a nearby oxygen tank. Police charged Fernando

Barrios-Jimenez, 23, on suspicion of brandishing a knife, resisting

arrest, arson and being under the influence of a controlled substance

* A Costa Mesa man was in critical condition following a

multi-vehicle accident that closed Adams Avenue for more than five

hours Wednesday morning.

Glenn Morton, a 49-year-old tennis coach at Orange Coast College,

was seriously injured when a crash in eastbound lanes on Adams Avenue

sent a car into his Volkswagen bus. Two other drivers in the four-car

accident received minor injuries.

* Police are still looking for one of two teenage boys suspected

of carjacking a Costa Mesa woman at knifepoint last weekend.

A 24-year-old woman told police that two teenagers had taken her

car as she unloaded it in an apartment complex parking lot Saturday

night. Costa Mesa police followed the car to Santa Ana and arrested a

17-year-old suspect. A second suspect fled the scene.

EDUCATION

Parents riled by rumor of popular leader’s dismissal

On Tuesday, a delegation of TeWinkle Middle School parents, led by

the school’s English Learners Advisory Committee, delivered a

petition to the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of

Education demanding that assistant principal Tony Valenzuela be

retained after this year. Rumors had circulated that the district was

planning to discontinue Valenzuela’s position in June. More than 300

TeWinkle students and parents signed the petition.

District officials said Valenzuela had not been dismissed, only

reassigned.

* The Orange County district attorney’s office held a meeting

Wednesday at the Costa Mesa Community Center to inform Newport-Mesa

parents of their children’s attendance problems. Many parents

protested the fact that the schools had not contacted them before the

district attorney’s letter arrived. Assistant Dist. Atty. Lew

Rosenblum said some letters were not sent, but he said all the

families contacted had children with three or more unexcused

absences.

COSTA MESA

Job Center gets pink slip reprieve at special meeting

In a special meeting held Tuesday, the Costa Mesa City Council

voted, 3-2, to extend operation of the Job Center again -- this time

until Dec. 31.

Council members Katrina Foley and Gary Monahan cast the dissenting

votes.

Three weeks earlier, responding to concern from day laborers and

city residents, the council agreed to delay the center’s closure from

June 30 to the end of September.

But Westside resident Mike Berry called for a rehearing of that

decision, saying its language was unclear and that it lacked a

drop-dead closing date.

He rescinded the request for rehearing after Councilman Eric Bever

introduced the motion to give the center life until the end of the

year.

* The council also voted unanimously to add new definitions to a

city ordinance that prohibits commercial and work solicitation on

sidewalks, streets, parkways and medians. The ordinance, in its

revised form, will help the city avoid future litigation, the city

attorney said.

POLITICS

DeVore pulls El Morro bills, expecting they would fail

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore on Monday announced he has withdrawn two

bills that would have extended residents’ leases on state-owned land

at Crystal Cove State Park. DeVore’s bills earmarked the money from

leases at El Morro Village mobile-home park to help fill the state’s

budget gap or to pay some of the state parks department’s $900

million backlog in maintenance costs.

The assemblyman yanked the bills because he expected them to be

voted down by a committee Tuesday. DeVore will pursue other ways to

keep the mobile-home park open because, he has said, it’s fiscally

irresponsible for the state to develop a new park when it can’t

maintain the ones it has.

For now, he has shifted his focus to cost overruns and schedule

delays on a $12-million historic-cottage renovation at Crystal Cove.

Tuesday, he called for an audit of that project. State officials

recently asked for about $2 million more to finish the first phase of

the renovations.