Natalie,
I have posted 2 comments regarding the school, and here they are:

First posting:
There were flyers passed out for the barbecue early in the summer. My wife and I both attended. I was clear when I spoke with the owners of the school about Palm being such a narrow street and that people love to speed on our street (Captain Blow is well aware of this. I have sent him several e-mails regarding this problem).

Second posting:
As far as this statment goes “last week we had the sheriff observing traffic, and they didn’t see anything wrong,”–the reason they didn’t see anything wrong is that from either direction of Palm, you could see the police cars (about 4) parked in front of the school. Who is going to speed or break any laws when they are right in front of you?

Both of my statements were regarding speeding on our streets. Neither statement says anything about the parents of the school speeding. Do they?

Yes, we do have a speeding problem on our street. And to use your OWN QUOTE:
“it isn’t just certain parents that are speeding it is your own neighbors”

So by your own admission, you are saying that ‘certain parents’ (from Sahag Mesrob) are adding to the problem?
So if my own neighbors are speeding, it makes it OK for everyone else to speed?

Thank you for your comments

Don’t you people like children? What’s wrong with everyone?

I am sorry to read the news about the situation which the Sahag Mesrob school finds itself up on Palm Street. There is a reason for zoning codes and regulations on the use of property. Rules are ment to be followed and the consequence for breaking rules also needs to be enforced.

To Natalie-
I’m very sorry that the parents of children at Sahag Mesrob have been placed in this situation, but you’re directing your anger and frustration at the wrong group of people. Your school board and principal have put your children in this precarious and unfortunate situation, not the residents of this neighborhood.

As you must know by now, for a school to exist in a residential neighborhood it must meet certain requirements, one of the most important and obvious is obtaining a “conditional use permit”. During this process, the Planning and Zoning departments take many things under consideration to determine what is allowed at a particular site- for example: noise, traffic, and the number of proposed occupants. This is ESPECIALLY important in a residential neighborhood. It might be quite possible that a school your size with 240 kids (not including the 800 proposed) would require that Palm St. be widened to accomodate all the traffic. This might mean cutting down trees, etc. and that would drastically change the character of our neighborhood. It’s not as simple as moving into an existing set of buildings and doing what you want. The former occupant’s CUP only allowed up to 80 residential children. There was a reason for this!!!
It seems to me, you need a much, much bigger site.

Try putting yourself in OUR shoes. We LIVE here. When I bought my house it wasn’t next to a school, but it is now. This is wrong. No one considered the residents and how our lives might be distrupted by this intrusion. Your assumptions about what we do or how we spend our time is really not part of the equation. But I will tell you that I’m a full-time professor and I’ve been teaching for close to 25 years.

Again, you’re directing your anger at the wrong party. Your school board and principal should be held accountable for the circumstances you now face, not us. You put your faith and trust in them and they misled you. The residents asked County officials to uphold the law and they did. That we should take the blame for your situation and be accused of “disliking children” is both unfortunate and ludicrous.

Dear Ms. Natalie,

You are directing your anger and frustration at the wrong people..you have deceived by your own school administrators. They are the ones that placed your child in this predicament by ignoring the laws of this city. I firmly beleive that as citizens of this GREAT counrty civil respect and obedience to its laws is IMPERATIVE.

Sincerely,
DJ

P.S. Highview Street is quite close to your school; hopefully, your child’s school will do a better job in teaching map reading then you received. I recieved a PUBLIC education and at least I am able to read a map!!

To Mr Hugo, no sir just because your neighbors speed doesn’t give right to anyone to speed, but I can not control how people drive. Maybe the city should place speed bumps on the street, or maybe they need to enforce the speed limit a bit more on palm that I agree with.
Ms Colleen Sterritt it seems to me that you are just placing blame on the school for moving into your neighborhood, how about putting blame on your city for not holding hearings and making people in that area aware that a school would be moving into the neighborhood. I live across the street from a daycare/preschool, and when the day care filed with the city to expand to become a family help center our city held hearings for us to attend and speak our mind. So have you taken this up with the city have you asked them why you as a community was not asked for your opinions??

I too live in a residentail area in Pasadena that houses a school K-8. Thankfully the school has worked with the residents as well as the City in working on parking, drop-off/pick-up, speed issues.

I used to live in Altadena. I have nothing against the school. However with that being said I think it might be wise for the school to partner with PUSD and look at other schools that have been closed and see if they can utilize those schools for their school.

Palm Street is too crowded, too compact and too residential to have a school housed there.

Ms Colleen Sterritt
I would be more than happy to meet with anyone and sit and have a friendly discussion to try to work something out, attacking each other is not going to get us anywhere. The school might be at fault but I think the city is just as much to blame for this situation also. You can contact me by e-mail if you would like at PINKJUJUBEE@YAHOO.COM, I know we can all come up with a reasonable solution to this. Your neighborhood, is beautiful and seems very safe, and I feel very comfortable dropping off my little ones to school everyday, you seem like a reasonable person so maybe we can all start over again?

Hey, Natalie —

Normally, we don’t get too involved in discussions unless there’s an egregious factual error or misunderstanding, and I think there is here.

First, the town council isn’t required to hold hearings on this, being an advisory body to the Board of Supervisors, as we aren’t a self-ruling city. The COUNTY, however, is required, and that’s part of the process of obtaining a CUP. The county is serving Sahab Mesrog with a violation notice because the school opened before the a CUP was granted — which means it opened before the whole CUP process could be completed, which includes holding hearings. It is not the town council’s job to do the planning and zoning work for the county. It is, however, the SCHOOL’s job to insure that they are obeying all the relevant regulations. In the opinion of the county, they’re not, hence the school has received a notice of violation

Mr. Garabedian, the school principal, has told us that he believes that the previous CUP on the property, which covers the Bienvenidos program that formerly occupied the site, would cover the school’s function. Again, the county maintains that it does not.

The town council can hold hearings on anything they want, but their only real power is writing a letter to the board of supervisors with suggestions. Zoning and code enforcement is a county function, and county officials maintain that Sahab Mesrog jumped the gun by opening before it received a conditional use permit.

The neighbors also have no actual power over granting permits; however, the county does want to hear from them (that’s why there are hearings).

And, everybody: I’ve had to delete and edit some comments due to personal insults that have crept in. We realize this is a hot-button, sensitive issue on both sides, but let’s stick to the issues and not launch personal attacks on each other.