City, schools land swap deal collapses

A property deal that would have involved a land swap between the city and the school district has fallen apart.

As a result, the district may lose out on lease revenue equal to the salaries of 16 teachers and the city must seek a new location for the police station it hopes to build.

Both sides attribute the collapse, in part, to the district’s properties being substantially devalued because of Measure DD’s passage two years ago, an argument dismissed by the slow growth initiative’s leader.

Teacher gets NASA award and pink-slip


Meadows Elementary fifth-grade teacher Chris Miko is one of 40 educators, chosen from among 2,000 applicants nationwide, to receive a National Aeronautics and Space Administration fellowship this year. He is also one of 19 teachers in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District who was pink-slipped last Wednesday.

Man in car flashes woman then drives away

A man in a pickup truck exposed himself to a lone woman walking near an elementary school last Friday, while a male passenger in his vehicle watched. The two men pulled up to the victim, a nurse at Grand View Elementary School, at 10:30 a.m. on Grandview Ave. near 24th St. The driver remained in […]

About Town


Citizens for Outdoor Recreation and Exercise (CORE) will hold a “Free the Dune” rally Sunday at 2 p.m. to demand the city reopen the controversial sand dune at Sand Dune Park as a workout facility.

State questions permit for worksite

Cal-OSHA officials said a contractor should have gotten a state excavation permit for shoring that was being performed when a worker was buried and killed at a large building under construction near South Park. The contractor said he had city permits, and did not know whether Cal-OSHA’s contention about a state permit was correct.

Ten teaching positions axed for now

The Hermosa Beach City School Board has moved to ax 10 full-time teaching positions at the beginning of the next school year, unless more money is found to save the positions. For several years running, the school board has handed formal layoff notices to teachers in the spring, to meet a state-mandated deadline. Then, each […]

Paul Reveres traverse town

An ambitious effort to prepare the community for emergencies will be launched 10 a.m. Saturday at City Hall, and scads of volunteers will hit the streets from there to spread information door-to-door, like modern Paul Reveres, throughout the town. “The Boy Scouts of America are right. The single most important thing we can do to […]

Bicycle ‘heroes’ are honored

Julian Katz, who spearheaded Hermosa’s Bicycle Master Plan, and Todd Dipaola, founder of the South Bay Bicycle Coalition, will be honored by the VOICE organization as 2010 Environmental Heroes. Katz and Dipaola will be honored at the South Bay’s 18th annual Earth Day Concert and Celebration Saturday, April 17 at Polliwog Park in Manhattan Beach. […]

About Town

Civic development Councilman Howard Fishman announced the formation of the Hermosa Beach Community Alliance, led in part by prominent businesspeople, that hopes to serve as a liaison between the City Council and residents, civic groups and business community. The impetus for the group’s formation was “the excessive negative campaigning” in the 2009 City Council election, […]