Fliers

Gretchen Hoffman GLENDALE -- Fliers posted around Glendale and La Crescenta accusing a Little League official of molesting children appear to be a smear campaign by someone with a grudge, according to police reports. Little League District Administrator Dave Ritchie flatly denies the allegations, which aren't backed up by any police records. "It's nothing more than a vicious smear campaign of a disgruntled Little League parent who can't operate [with]

Janine Marnien For some La Crescenta residents who already felt as if county officials were trying to sneak a proposed parking ordinance by them, not receiving mailing notifications of a public hearing on the subject didn't help resolve the problem. Robert Dye was one resident who said he didn't receive his flier. Dye had never even heard of the proposed ordinance until he found a homemade flier, not the one mailed by the county, on the windshield of his truck.

SOUTHWEST GLENDALE ? A group of representatives from the Glendale Police Department took to the streets Saturday with an important safety message for the city?s pedestrians. And no more than two minutes into their shift, Lusine Akopian, office services supervisor for the office of the police chief, and Sherri Servillo, who works in media relations for the department, spotted a man diagonally crossing Central Avenue near Windsor Road, well outside a crosswalk. The two wasted no time in approaching him, informational fliers in hand.

Amber Willard TOLL MIDDLE SCHOOL -- The bright yellow fire truck, with its ladder raised 80 feet, was hard to miss on the outside lunch area Tuesday afternoon, and that was the idea. Glendale firefighters visited Toll Middle School during lunch time to talk to students about fire safety for NationalFire Prevention Week. Officials will go to two other middle schools later this week. The truck and ladder attracted students' attention, which was enough to get them started asking questions, like how to use certain tools and how firefighters use their breathing equipment.

It's one thing to an make an honest mistake. It's another thing entirely to compound that mistake with a succession of denials and an inability to face the truth. That's precisely what's going in Burbank now. On Aug. 11, the Fair Political Practices Commission agreed with an administrative law judge's ruling that six past and current Burbank City Council members violated the law by sending roughly 45,000 fliers on the airport expansion issue to residents of Glendale and Pasadena in 1997.

Robert Chacon Patricia Rabe set out a year ago to rally La Crescenta's churches. She felt more people needed to belong to a church group and that the various denominations in La Crescenta should unite to spread the message. The task was so large, she said, that she limited her efforts to just La Crescenta. More than 20 churches -- Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Protestant, Nazarene and independents -- agreed to participate in Rabe's "Come to Church Month" project.

Paul M. Anderson GLENDALE -- It felt more like April 1. All the hype over the so-called Y2K computer bug felt like a big April Fool's joke. And that's appropriate since April 1 used to be the beginning of the New Year before the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1564. You know how I know that? I got that nugget of information off the Encyclopedia Britannica's Web site just after midnight Jan. 1. I didn't turn off my personal computer before the countdown, and the Y2K bug didn't bite me. Just weeks before we all said goodbye to the 1900s, some enterprising computer geek evidently trying to cash in on the hysteria, left fliers on everyone's windshield in Frank's Garage on Orange Street.

Marshall Allen LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE -- Children in La Canada Flintridge public and private schools will go home with "Drive 25" stickers and fliers this week. The "Drive 25" program, which officially kicks off today, is a partnership between the La Canada Unified School District PTA Council, the Crescenta Valley Sheriff's Department and the Noon and A.M. Kiwanis clubs. Its goal is reducing speed around the city's schools. Kiwanis members have been active in the campaign, soliciting almost every school in the city to participate, said A.M. Kiwanis Drive Chairman Vince Feehan.

KATHERINE YAMADA The private landing strip and airplane hangar built by L.C. Brand, directly below his estate in what is now northwest Glendale, attracted a lot of attention from aviation buffs in the 1920s. Fliers such as Eddie Rickenbacker, Frank Hawks and Jimmy Doolittle, along with celebrities Mary Pickford, Tom Mix and Cecil B. DeMille flocked to Brand's estate to sign the guest book and enjoy the well-stocked saloon in the club house, according to Judy Brand, who published a Brand family history in 1992.

Recent campaign literature for state Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Silver Lake) contained a mistake in its endorsements. The flier, part of Gatto's reelection materials for his race in the 43rd District, correctly lists Caro Avanessian, president of the California Armenian American Democrats, as an individual endorser. However, it incorrectly states that Avanessian is a member of the Southern California Armenian Democrats, a regional organization. The California Armenian American Democrats, an organization ratified by the state Democratic Party earlier this year, is expected to make its endorsement in the 43rd District race on Monday, Avanessian said.

Haight-Ashbury, rock ’n’ roll and mind-altering drugs gave rise to an unusual burst of creativity that married type designs, images and explosive color on esoteric psychedelic posters. Artists embedded in the San Francisco hippie culture designed pulsating patterns and animated text to promote integrated music, free love and LSD. David Edward Byrd jumped into this scene in Manhattan around 1968 and was catalyzed by the West Coast movement. He designed graphic art posters for rock ’n’ roll icons and events, Broadway plays, movies and TV. He shadowed the entertainment industry for decades as its link to the public with images that reached out and grabbed the viewer by the eyeballs to drag them in and ignite imaginations.

BURBANK — The number of passengers who used Bob Hope Airport continued to drop last year, but the rate of decline was less sharp than in 2009, when the economy was tanking. From January 2010 through November, about 4.1 million passengers traveled through Bob Hope Airport — a 2.6% drop from 2009, according to a report to the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority. With one calendar month left uncounted, airport officials on Monday said the silver lining was that 2010 did not see the double-digit drops in passenger counts that dominated 2009.

GLENDALE — Teachers have had their school mailboxes full lately. In them are the ballots and envelopes required for the vote Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to approve or reject the tentative agreement with the Glendale Unified School District and the Glendale Teachers Assn. And then there are the fliers at some campuses, made by a group of Crescenta Valley High School teachers, that encourage a "no" vote. At stake is a three-year labor agreement that would take a bite out of the district's budget deficit, while forcing teachers to take 15 furlough days and make payments toward health-care plans.

CITY HALL — Officials are investigating whether a mailer sent by school board incumbents violated campaign rules because it did not clearly state who paid for and sent out the materials. City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian received multiple inquiries about the mailer, which was labeled with a return address for an organization that had not registered as a campaign contributor. The identification numbers of campaign groups for the three Glendale Unified School District Board of Education incumbents — Greg Krikorian, Chuck Sambar and Joylene Wagner — were listed as the entities who paid for the materials.

GLENDALE — The Police Department will listen to residents’ concerns in a public forum in response to requests for an outlet to address public safety issues. Quarterly meetings of the Community Police Partnership Advisory Committee — run by the Glendale Police Department — will now be open for residents’ comments at the end of each meeting. A meeting schedule will be posted for the public, Glendale Police Chief Randy Adams said Tuesday during the second special meeting in the City Council Chambers to discuss the potential creation of a city-run police commission.

GLENDALE — Police are investigating the actions of a department employee who reportedly created a false memo and a doctored image of a patrol car covered in Armenian flags, city officials said. The employee was disciplined for creating the “simulated” memo, which appeared to be from the office of Police Chief Randy Adams. The employee created the image of a patrol car that also had the word “Vostikan,” which means police in Armenian, placed over it, City Manager Jim Starbird said at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.

GLENDALE — Heroin and marijuana are the most commonly used drugs in Glendale and are primarily being sold to teens, according to police. The teens are confronted by the allure of drugs at parties, in the vicinity of their schools and even on their car windshields, police said. Police brought attention to the seriousness of the drug issue on Thursday at a business safety and security meeting at the Glendale Chamber of Commerce building. “Heroin is a large problem within the communities of Glendale,” Glendale police Vice Narcotics Lt. Bruce Fox said.

SOUTHWEST GLENDALE ? A group of representatives from the Glendale Police Department took to the streets Saturday with an important safety message for the city?s pedestrians. And no more than two minutes into their shift, Lusine Akopian, office services supervisor for the office of the police chief, and Sherri Servillo, who works in media relations for the department, spotted a man diagonally crossing Central Avenue near Windsor Road, well outside a crosswalk. The two wasted no time in approaching him, informational fliers in hand.