Wednesday, February 4, 2026

Los Angeles County Adopts Heat Action Plan

CITY NEWS SERVICE

From bus stop shade to more trees to cooler apartments, a wide-ranging plan designed to combat extreme weather and heat was adopted by the county Board of Supervisors Tuesday.

The county’s Heat Action Plan was described as a blueprint for combating rising temperatures and extreme heat events, but supervisors said it represents much more.

“The county’s Heat Action Plan is not just a blueprint — it’s a commitment to support Angelenos as we navigate a rising trend in extreme heat events,” Board of Supervisors Chair Hilda Solis said in a statement following the vote. “Now more than ever, the actions we take today to protect our residents will ensure we create cooler and healthier neighborhoods in the future, while advancing heat resilience.”

Among the items included in the action plan are an effort to install shade structures at all L.A. County bus stops by 2050, achieve a 20% tree canopy in unincorporated areas by 2050,

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Pension Giant’s Boards to Vote in Pasadena Wednesday on New President

LACERA’s joint boards will consider making Luis Lugo permanent chief after nearly a year as acting leader

The boards overseeing the nation’s largest county retirement system will vote Wednesday on whether to appoint Luis A. Lugo as permanent chief executive at an annual salary of $490,000.

The Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, headquartered at 300 N. Lake Ave. in Pasadena, called a special joint meeting of its Board of Retirement and Board of Investments for 9 a.m. February 4. The sole action item: consider Lugo’s appointment and employment agreement.

Lugo has led LACERA as acting CEO since March 17, 2025, stepping in when his predecessor took medical leave. That predecessor, Santos H. Kreimann, resigned effective December 31, 2025. If appointed Wednesday, Lugo would formally take charge of an organization that manages more than $85 billion in pension assets and provides retirement and healthcare benefits to more than 200,000 active and retired Los Angeles County employees.

The proposed $490,000 salary represents a 9 percent increase from the $450,000 Lugo received as acting chief.

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

LA County Supervisors Move to Raise Rent Nonpayment Eviction Threshold in Unincorporated Areas

Proposed change would require tenants to fall further behind on rent before facing formal eviction proceedings in Altadena and other communities

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday directed County Counsel to draft an ordinance raising the threshold for non-payment evictions from one month to two months of Fair Market Rent in unincorporated areas, including Altadena.

The motion, authored by Supervisor Janice Hahn and co-authored by Board Chair Hilda L. Solis, would modify the county’s 2022 Rent and Tenant Protections Ordinance. For a two-bedroom unit in LA County, the threshold would rise from $2,601 to $5,202 based on current federal housing rates. County Counsel has 30 days to return with the proposed ordinance, which would then require Board approval.

The ordinance would apply to approximately 1 million residents in unincorporated communities — areas governed directly by the Board of Supervisors rather than city councils. Altadena, which has been recovering from the January 2025 Eaton Fire that destroyed more than 9,000 structures,

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

626-Area Native Launches Her Adult Fiction Debut at Vroman’s on the Book’s Publication Day

Christina Hammonds Reed, whose YA bestseller explored the 1992 LA riots, returns to Pasadena with a supernatural family saga

Christina Hammonds Reed grew up in the suburbs of the 626 area code. On Tuesday, she returns to discuss her adult fiction debut at Southern California’s oldest independent bookstore, on the day the book hits shelves.

Reed will sign and discuss “The Johnson Four” at Vroman’s Bookstore at 7 p.m. The novel follows three brothers and a ghost as they chase musical stardom in the 1960s, a story that spans decades and roves from the music industry’s exploitation to the war in Vietnam to the corridors of a mental institution. Reed’s debut YA novel, “The Black Kids,” was a New York Times bestseller, a William C. Morris Award finalist, and a California Book Award Silver Medalist.

Author Kelly McWilliams will lead the conversation. McWilliams, whose own novels include “Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay” and “Mirror Girls,” also writes about Black American history.

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Pacific Oaks, Los Angeles County Partner to Train Teachers from Underserved Communities

By THERESE EDU

Three-year, $800,000 partnership targets first-generation college students already working in early childhood settings

They already know the children. They know the neighborhoods, the families, and the particular challenges of teaching in underserved communities. What they lack are the credentials and completed Bachelor’s degree.

This spring, 18 working adults employed in early childhood settings across Los Angeles County will begin a new pathway to becoming credentialed transitional kindergarten teachers. Most are first-generation college students. Many come from the same historically underserved neighborhoods where they hope to build careers.

“Most of the educators who are going through this program are actually the first person in their immediate family to go to college – first-generation students,” said Dr. Breeda McGrath, president of Pacific Oaks College and Children’s School. “There are folks, many of whom are coming from historically underserved communities.”

The three-year partnership between Pacific Oaks College and the Los Angeles County Office of Education, valued at $800,000 according to LACOE records,

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Eaton Fire Survivor Walt Butler Named Grand Marshal of Pasadena’s Black History Festival

The 83-year-old former PCC track champion lost his Altadena home of 60 years but vowed to help rebuild his community

Walt Butler spent six decades helping his neighbors in Altadena, donating shoes to kids who needed them, mentoring youth, assisting seniors and the unhoused. In January 2025, the Eaton Fire took his home. On February 21, his community will honor him.

The City of Pasadena and the Black History Planning Committee announced this week that Butler, 83, will serve as Grand Marshal of the 2026 Black History Festival. The former Pasadena City College track and field athlete and coach won the state championship in the 120-yard high hurdles in 1962 and later helped guide three consecutive PCC state champions.

“We are honored to have Walt Butler as our Grand Marshal for the 2026 Festival,” said Pixie Boyden, Co-Chair of the Black History Planning Committee, in a statement released by the city.

“He is a shining example of who we are as residents of Pasadena,

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

South Pasadena Memorial to Honor Leader Who Helped Stop 710 Freeway Extension Into Area

FROM THE SOUTH PASADENAN

Public gathering on February 28 celebrates Joanne Nuckols, whose decades of civic work shaped Pasadena area neighborhoods

A public memorial gathering will be held Saturday, February 28, at the South Pasadena War Memorial Building to honor Joanne Nuckols, a longtime civic leader whose work helped stop the 710 Freeway extension from carving through South Pasadena, Pasadena, and El Sereno.

Nuckols, who died August 19, 2025, at her South Pasadena home, was among the key figures in what became one of the longest transportation land-use disputes in American history. The proposed freeway would have displaced thousands of homes and divided historic neighborhoods across multiple cities.

The gathering, organized by members of the South Pasadena civic and preservation community, begins with doors opening at 10 a.m. A formal program with speakers runs from 11 a.m. to noon, followed by a light lunch and informal fellowship until 1 p.m. The event is open to the public and does not require an RSVP.

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Pauli Murray Documentary to Screen at All Saints Church

Pasadena’s Racial Justice and LGBTQ+ Ministries collaborate on Black History Month film series

The first African-American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest will come to life on screen at All Saints Church on Friday, February 6, when the church screens “My Name is Pauli Murray,” a documentary about the trailblazing civil rights lawyer now honored as an Episcopal saint.

The screening is the opening event of “February Freedom Film Fridays,” a collaboration between the church’s Racial Justice and LGBTQ+ Ministries that examines the intersection of queer and racial liberation during Black History Month. That Murray’s story is being told at an Episcopal church—the same denomination where Murray made history in 1977—adds particular resonance to the evening.

Murray, who died in 1985, was a legal scholar whose work shaped landmark civil rights law. Thurgood Marshall called Murray’s book on segregation laws “the bible of the civil rights movement,” and Ruth Bader Ginsburg listed Murray as a co-author on a legal brief she presented to the Supreme Court.

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

SoCal Groundhog Day: Six More Weeks of Balmy Weather?

CITY NEWS SERVICE

The summery Southern California weather may have been omitted from the forecast of the prognosticating Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction Monday when he called for six more weeks of winter in his annual Groundhog Day prognosis.

The rodent was pulled out of his  burrow around 7:30 a.m. local time, Pennsylvania and the president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club said that Phil saw his shadow – which means six more weeks of winter are ahead.

In the Los Angeles area, temperatures were expected to by in the 70s on Monday and hit around 80 degrees by Wednesday, but for much of the rest of the U.S., parts of  which have been buried in recent snows that have left a swath of sometimes deadly devastation while delaying thousands of flights, winter has already been brutal.

In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where Phil and his handlers conduct an annual ritual known the world over, temperatures were in the single  digits as a crowd danced,

Monday, February 2, 2026

Guest Opinion | Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater: The Killing of Citizens and the Erosion of Democratic Norms

The fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis — coming just weeks after the killing of another U.S. citizen, Renée Good, by an ICE agent — is not merely an act of violence but part of a wider pattern that threatens the moral foundations of American civic life.

Pretti, an ICU nurse known affectionately by colleagues and family, was involved in protests against federal immigration enforcement when he was shot and killed. While the Department of Homeland Security asserts that he displayed a weapon, bystander video and accounts from family and community members raise questions about what truly happened — concerns that have fueled outrage and deep mistrust in public institutions.

Philosopher John Stuart Mill wisely wrote that “A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction.” When a government allows lethal force to be used without clear accountability, it commits a moral injury to the public it is sworn to protect. The fact that at least two U.S.