The Arcadia Redevelopment Agency voted unanimously to begin condemnation proceedings of a property at 156 Santa Clara Street. The agency wants to claim the land for retail stores and office buildings. Eminent domain proceedings were begun since the city and the owners of the property have not been able to agree on the value of the property.
Arcadia police arrested two Arcadia High School students 16, and 15, in connection with a December 11 racial incident in which a cross was burned and anti-Asian epithets were scrawled on the front yard of a home in the 200 block of Arbolada Drive. The two boys were booked for damaging property based on ethnic origin and were released to the custody of their parents.
Joseph I, 15, a 9th-grader at Foothills Junior High School has been named one of 15 semifinalists in the instrumental music category for the Music Center's Second Annual Spotlight Award. The Spotlight Award Ceremony and Dinner will be held March 5 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Mr. I has also been invited to attend master classes given by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Jef Wheeler, 26, a jazz dance teacher at Arcadia Dance Arts for two years, is currently touring with "Heart Strings" an AIDS benefit sponsored by the Design Alliance to Combat AIDS and the Design Industries Foundation for AIDS. After the Los Angeles show, the troupe will move on to Houston, Miami, New York, Boston and Washington, D. C. Organizers hope to raise $4 million for AIDS research, community education programs and care and services for AIDS patients.
23 Arcadia High School students capped third-place honors in the California State Finals of the National Bicentennial Competition. The students, in Ron Morris' advanced placement government class, last month won first place in the 22nd Congressional District contest, which included five local schools. Photo.
The Arcadia City Council will be asked to pass a resolution calling for an immediate halt to the recent malathion-laden helicopter assaults on the medfly. Many have expressed concerns about the repeated spraying, but health and agricultural officials insist that malathion is harmless to humans in the quantities being used.
The Arcadia Rotary Club awarded grants totaling $4,990 to 17 teachers at the February 13 Arcadia Board of Education meeting. Grants ranging from $175 to $300 were given to individual teachers to help with special classroom projects. The teachers represented 5 of the 6 Arcadia elementary schools, all 3 junior high schools and both Arcadia and Huntington high schools.
The Arcadia Unified School District Board of Education backed the idea of a resolution calling for an immediate halt to aerial spraying of malathion. The board's actions came less than a week after the Arcadia City Council unanimously passed a resolution asking for a halt to the spraying.
Ten Arcadia High School students have been selected as National Merit finalists, placing them among 14,000 competing for the 6100 available Merit Scholarships. The seniors are Kenneth Branson, Sidney Chung, Enrique Colayco, Bonnie Flinn, Norbert Hsu, Jacqueline Luk, Douglas McCreary, Regina Momblanco, David Park and Henry Tseng.
Kiewit Pacific Company, a construction firm formerly based in Arcadia and now located in Santa Fe Springs was fined $50,000 for burying 50 industrial drums, of which 2 contained hazardous liquid, on its Arcadia property between 1982 and 1985.
Jason Koh, 13, a student at First Avenue Junior High School, was named Los Angeles Theater Organ Society Organist of the Year for his performance at the Sexson Auditorium at Pasadena City College.
Rebecca Switzer, a math instructor at Arcadia High School, was one of 10 Los Angeles County teachers selected as a finalist in the Jaime Escalante Mathematics Teacher Awards program.
Mayor Roger Chandler lost his bid for re-election as challengers George Fasching and Joseph Ciraulo and incumbent Robert Harbicht were elected to the Arcadia City Council. Fasching led with 27.2% of the vote, followed by Ciraulo with 22.1% and Harbicht with 19.8%.
First Avenue Junior High was one of 3 area schools to receive the state Dept. of Education's Distinguished High School and Middle School Awards. Arcadia's Foothill Jr. High received the award in 1988. The other winners included San Marino High School and the L. A. County High School for the Arts at Cal State Los Angeles.
Mary Young, the only woman in Arcadia's history to serve 2 terms as mayor and only the second on the city council, was unanimously elected as mayor while Charles Gilb was elected mayor pro-tem by the newly formed city council.
Test scores of Arcadia Unified School District's seniors rose this year. The reading score was 294 (up 19 points) while math score was 333 (up 20 points). Since 1987-88, students moved from the 77th to the 85th percentile in reading and from the 89th to the 96th percentile in math statewide.
Arcadia police are using SMART, or Speed Monitoring Awareness Radar Trailer, to educate residents into "voluntary compliance" with posted speeds. Placed at various locations, the trailers have a changeable sign for legal speed limits and an electronic readout of the actual speed of each car that whizzes by. The device can read speeds from about 1/4 mile away.
Charles "Chip" Sturniolo, owner of the Derby restaurant, announced that he is withdrawing from the downtown redevelopment project because the proposed parking structure "just wasn't feasible." The City Council will now reconsider previous plans.
Kenneth Branson, 18, a senior at Arcadia High School, is one of only 6 San Gabriel Valley students to receive a $200 National Merit Scholarship. He is one of 1800 nationwide winners.