WEEK IN REVIEW

NEWPORT BEACH

Project funds trickling; costs expected only to increase

No more funding is lined up to continue dredging Upper Newport Bay after the first phase of the project wraps in late April, officials said last week. The project is short about $13.8 million, according to the city’s latest estimate.

Set-up and tear-down costs for the dredging equipment could cost an additional $2 million if the project runs out of money, Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff said. Dredging costs will increase in the next phase due in part to rising fuel prices, Kiff said.

Surf instructors, lifeguards rescue 2 children and man

Witnesses described a dramatic rescue Wednesday morning when two kids were saved from drowning after 4-foot waves and a rip tide pushed them perilously close to the toothed jetty off of 28th Street in Newport.

The kids had been playing in the water with their boogie boards when they somehow lost their grip and began to drift out to sea.

Summer Watson and Amy Dichiro were giving surfing lessons nearby when they saw the kids in trouble. The two women swam to the kids and struggled to keep them afloat until lifeguards John Moore and George Leeper made it out there to swim them back to shore. No one was injured.

The next day, lifeguards rescued a man who drifted too far out. Rescue workers tried to get a flotation device to him from a helicopter, but the man wasn’t able to grab it. Lifeguards got to him in time and swam him to shore.

COSTA MESA

TV companies contacted for Time Warner alternatives

In response to residents’ complaints about Time Warner cable’s service, Mayor Eric Bever asked city staff to draft a letter inviting telecommunications companies to do business.

Bever said that many, including himself, stay with Time Warner for its city programming, including the broadcasting of town meetings.

A Time Warner spokeswoman said the company welcomed competition.

POLITICS

Cook slated for victory; Dem. files incident report

The Democratic race to challenge Rep. Dana Rohrabacher heated up this week with a series of drop-outs, endorsements and even alleged threats.

OCC professor Richard Lara and conservative Democratic activist Alan Schlar said they left the race to attend to familial illnesses. Both men said that they supported small-business owner Dan Kalmick over Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook.

Cook, meanwhile, lined up support from Reps. Jane Harman (D-Venice), Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) and state Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach). She also won 96% of the Democratic Party’s regional endorsement caucus Thursday, making it all but certain she will win the party’s nod at the annual convention later this month.

Lara said he had filed an incident report with Huntington Beach Police, alleging Cook volunteer Vern Nelson called him to say he would “make a lot of enemies” and that “bad things would happen” if he didn’t drop out.

According to the incident report, Nelson’s behavior did not qualify as making threatening telephone calls. Police will not pursue the case.

Nelson said the call was friendly in nature and that Cook’s campaign was not trying to intimidate Lara.

The Cook campaign said it would be advantageous to keep as many candidates in the primary as it could.

BUSINESS

Gas prices hit new high, but not all is bad around town

For car owners around Newport-Mesa — and California in general — it was one of the toughest weeks in memory, as gasoline prices hit record highs throughout the state.

The average price of a gallon of regular gas in Orange County rose to $3.55 Friday. The Automobile Club of Southern California attributed the increases to the rising cost of crude oil, the weakening value of the dollar and people’s investing in wholesale gasoline.

Marie Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the Automobile Club, said the numbers might indefinitely keep climbing.

“It’s been doing this for over a week in many places and slightly less than a week in Orange County,” she said. “You expect it to keep going up until it stops, but we don’t know when that is.”

To some in Newport-Mesa, though, the surging gas prices brought at least some good news. Tom Smalley, the president of the Costa Mesa Conference and Visitor Bureau, said when a road trip got more expensive, more people frequented the attractions around town.

“A lot of folks don’t know the Ferris wheel that’s on Balboa Island, the Fun Zone,” he said. “There’s so many little pockets we take for granted.”

RELIGION

King Fish, local politicos gather for prayer at event

Former Angels star Tim Salmon served as the featured speaker Tuesday at the 44th annual Orange Coast Mayors Prayer Breakfast in Irvine, in which Newport-Mesa officials gathered to make speeches and join in prayers.

Salmon, who owns a home in Newport Beach, talked about how his religious faith steeled him during some of the down times of his playing career. He described his last at-bat with the Angels in 2006, when he hoped to bow out with a massive home run and instead popped out to the shortstop.

When the fans cheered him anyway, Salmon said, he figured there was a greater truth in that.

“The fans were bestowing on me the same grace God does to us,” he said.

PUBLIC SAFETY

Probe: Group swung chair at officer who killed 1 attacker

Riverside sheriff’s investigators released more information regarding the melee outside of a Temecula area Mexican restaurant that involved an off-duty Costa Mesa police officer and left one man dead.

Investigator Jerry Franchville said the officer, whom authorities decline to identify, was attacked by Shaun Vilan, Taylor Willis and a few friends outside Bank of Mexican Food last week.

One of the men slammed a chair into the back of the officer’s head, sending him to the ground bleeding, police said. There was a confrontation earlier inside the restaurant, Franchville said.

The officer showed his badge and verbally identified himself as a police officer while the men attacked him, Franchville said witnesses recalled. When they didn’t stop, the officer fired five shots, with two each hitting Vilan and Willis, police said. Vilan died later at the hospital.