Hawthorne Press Tribune The Weekly Newspaper of Hawthorne Herald Publications - Inglewood, Hawthorne, Lawndale, El Segundo, Torrance & Manhattan Beach Community Newspapers Since 1911 - Circulation 30,000 - Readership 60,000 (310) 322-1830 - October 27, 2016 Navy Sailors Serve Aboard USS Comstock Inside This Issue Certified & Licensed Professionals.......................2 Classifieds............................3 Entertainment......................4 Hawthorne Happenings....3 Legals................................ 6-7 Pets........................................8 Police Reports.....................2 Sports....................................5 Seniors..................................5 Weekend Forecast Friday Partly Cloudy 67˚/59˚ Saturday Partly Cloudy 66˚/59˚ Sunday AM Clouds/ PM Sun 65˚/56˚ Petty Officer 1st Class Vincent Cannon, left, from Los Angeles, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Scott Ferrer, from Buffalo, N.Y., load a chaff round aboard amphibious dock landing ship USS Comstock (LSD 45). Comstock, part of the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group, is deployed with the embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) in support of the Navy’s maritime strategy in the U.S. 3rd Fleet areas of responsibility. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Abby Rader Divergent Views on Measure M By Derrick Deane 450 million rides a year on their buses and While the Hawthorne City Council voted train lines and opened two new rail lines this to officially endorse Measure M, a heavily year. MTA will be adding three additional debated half cent tax increase and extension rail line extensions in the near future as of the current existing Measure R tax, well as “several highway improvements.” Councilman Nilo Michelin took a staunch The long range part of Measure M position against it. includes a potential $17 billion project in “It’s a forever tax,” Michelin said in his the Sepulveda Basin which proved to be a opposition to the Measure. “There’s no sunset, main part of Michelin’s argument against it’s not forty years and it is discriminatory the measure. The councilman sought to against poor people because they’re the ones see more of the Measure M money being that are buying items and have to pay the spent locally in the South Bay, rather than sales tax. I understand that we get bond what he believed would help fund massive funds for our city, but we need to have a projects outside of the region. reasonable plan. We need to have priority for the freeways and for the South Bay.” Mayor Alex Vargas responded in support of the Measure saying that the city of Hawthorne relied heavily on the funding that currently comes from Measure R. “Our city depends heavily on this,” Vargas said. “If we want to continue beautifying “The region has many more unmet critical our roads, we have an immediate benefit transportation needs than there is money to from this. We’ve been benefiting from it. meet them,” Dierking said. “Los Angeles We need this diversified money to continue County is projected to grow by 2.3 million to do what we do for the city.” people in the next 40 years and Metro is Measure M would add a half cent tax planning now for that growth with a proposed increase to purchases and increase to a plan to raise money to meet current and full cent in 2039. Meanwhile, the ballot future transportation needs.” measure would also extend Measure R to “Built in to Measure M is an independent what Michelin referred to as a “forever oversight process to take a look at local tax,” although residents would be able to sales tax revenues and then an assessment repeal it if there was enough support to do every ten years to make sure the funds are,” so in the future. Dierking said. “ “It’s a long range plan to address mobility Measure M, which has been in development needs in the county over the long term,” Mark for more than a year, but City Manager Dierking, community relations manager for Arnie Shadbehr explained that some of the MTA in the South Bay area said of the the South Bay cities that are against the measure. “It’s a funding plan with a mix of a measure are opposing it because “it’s in lot of local, state, and federal funding sources their own interest.” including local voter approved sales taxes.” “Torrance and Carson are fighting this Dierking says that Metro annually provides because the Green Line extension to the Del Amo Mall and the Carson Mall is not going to happen until the next fifteen years,” Shadbehr said. “They have a direct interest in this. The fight that we have here is that our General Fund is not able to fund our street maintenance.” Shadbehr, who formerly worked for the City of Torrance, says the city has excess funds every year. “With all due respect for my colleagues in Torrance, we’re using the General Fund to do public improvement projects, something that is unheard of in Hawthorne in its whole history,” Shadbehr said. “When Hawthorne cannot have a General Fund to use for patching streets, and we’re using restricted funds and MTA funds, this is what is important for us.” Vargas added that the reason the other cities are opposed against the Measure is because, “they don’t have the transitory pathways through their cities like we do that depend on this money.” Shadbehr also touched on the delay is improvements to the 405 Freeway, another issue that Michelin pointed out as a reason he opposed the measure. Shadbehr said there reason there aren’t any plans to work on the freeway in the next 20 years is because the MTA is putting a lot of focus on rail. “In the next twenty years, we don’t only have 405 or 105 improvements, we have complete infrastructure expansion and improvement to rail transit that is going to be accessible to everyone,” Shadbehr said. “ Councilwoman Olivia Valentine added that one of the reasons that the South Bay Cities Council of Governments (COG) is voting against the Measure is, “because they believe we should get a higher return.” Valentine says that it looks like the region would 16 percent of the funds whereas the South Bay COG sought 25 percent. • “Our city depends heavily on this ... We’ve been benefiting from it. We need this diversified money to continue to do what we do for the city.”
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