Los Angeles City Council

NORTH LOS ANGELES — Speeding motorists have crashed into Fritz Friedman’s home two times in the past six months. No one was in front of his home during the crashes, but he wants something to be done to cut down on speeding. “I know there is no immediate solution,” he said. Assemblyman Paul Krekorian on Thursday made a public push for his Safe Streets Bill in a bid to solve the very speeding problem that Friedman — who joined the assemblyman at the event — has been confronted with twice already.

Recent articles, letters and editorial cartoons present a distorted view of the Crescenta Valley Community Assn. I have attended half a dozen of the meetings, and I can vouch that it is not a “coffee club.” Anyone who would label it such knows very little about this organization. Bringing together the various jurisdictions of our expanded Crescenta Valley — Sunland-Tujunga/city of Los Angeles, La Crescenta (both the city of Glendale and the unincorporated county)

CITY HALL — All five City Council members on Tuesday said they would vote next week to approve one of the county’s most comprehensive citywide smoking bans, effectively ending four months of intense public debate over the government’s role in regulating public health. The ordinance would ban smoking on all city property and publicly accessible private land, including parking lots and shopping centers, such as the Marketplace and Americana at Brand. A required 10-foot separation between smokers and nonsmokers in outdoor dining areas was left unchanged, a provision that business leaders acknowledged would wipe second-hand smoke from all but the largest restaurants given the strict requirements.

GLENDALE — The days of the plastic bag option at checkout stands in Glendale could be numbered, or at least significantly reduced, as city officials consider following in the footsteps of a growing number of cities that have banned the bags. San Francisco County, in a trailblazing move last year, banned nonbiodegradable plastic bags for supermarkets and other large retailers with annual revenue of more than $2 million. Since then, a growing number of cities and counties have been adopting their own restrictions, bans and voluntary measures to reduce the amount of plastic bags generated mostly at grocery store chains.

GLENDALE — The author of a controversial bill in the state Assembly that could have paved the way for a developer to build more than 220 homes on the Verdugo Hills Golf Course pulled it from consideration Monday, after a firestorm of controversy and questions about its alleged impropriety. Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes’ proposed bill, which does not specifically name the Tujunga golf course but was narrowly tailored to apply to the city of Los Angeles, would have required the city to approve developments according to the standards of the general plan at the time the development application was filed.

My, oh my. Regarding “Mayor Drayman faces first salvo,” on Thursday: You can already see the conspiracy mongers busy at work, spinning away — from the “lefties” like Dick Seeley (“Public comment change was not a big surprise,” Letter to the Editor, Friday), who just know that the mayor’s shift of oral communications to the end of the council meeting is a long-in-the-works, right-wing government plot, to Herbert Molano’s blunt-faced, and typically misplaced, fury (“Speaking move is what officials wanted,” Mailbag, Friday)

Verdugo Hills Golf Course, whose fate is uncertain, has the potential to become a regional park, a community activist told a receptive audience at the March meeting of the Crescenta Valley Community Assn. Richard ?Rich? Toyon, president of Glendale-Crescenta Volunteers Organized in Conserving the Environment (V.O.I.C.E.), addressed the association, giving an in-depth presentation of options that included saving the course and adding hiking trails, restored habitat and opportunities for additional active recreation, especially in areas that are currently under-utilized.

CITY HALL — Glendale is preparing to join the green building movement that has cropped up all around it over the past few years as city officials and commissioners begin to mull a Feb. 12 City Council request to come back with how to introduce green building standards. Members on the Glendale Water & Power and Planning commissions — the two bodies that would have the bulk of input into a new set of proposed green building standards — say they are anxious to begin work on whatever direction comes out of a report that was requested by the City Council three weeks ago. On Monday, city officials updated the Glendale Water & Power Commission on the preliminary form the effort was taking, announcing a committee made up of representatives from the Public Works, Planning, Community Development and Housing departments and the utility that has already begun to scope out what will be included in the report.