Monday, September 7, 2026

PUSD Board President Drops Recall Signers From Lawsuit

Tina Fredericks says she never intended to sue the 124 residents named as “Doe” parties; it was a paperwork snafu; a trial-setting conference is scheduled Tuesday in Los Angeles

Pasadena Unified School District Board President Tina Fredericks has removed the proponents of a recall effort against her from the lawsuit she filed to block the recall petition, saying they were never meant to be targets of the case.

Fredericks said an unclear understanding of filing requirements resulted in listing “DOES 1 to 124, inclusive” as respondents and defendants in her original July filing.

“I had no intention of suing them,” she said. “From the beginning my goal was just to clear up the falsehoods about me, and that’s it.”

She told Pasadena Now she wants to make clear that people involved in the recall are not targeted by her lawsuit and are no longer described in it.

Fredericks filed an Amended Verified Petition on Sept.

Monday, September 7, 2026

A Pitzer Classicist Reads the Roman Republic Against This American Moment

Michelle Berenfeld discusses and signs Lessons from a Lost Republic at Vroman’s at 7 p.m. Thursday.

Michelle Berenfeld is the John A. McCarthy Professor of Classics at Pitzer College. Her new book describes nearly five centuries of representative government undone by wealth and power concentrated among elites, political violence, expansionist wars and a Senate that normalized emergency measures. She is at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., at 7 p.m. Thursday.

Lessons from a Lost Republic: What Ancient Rome Can Teach Us about This American Moment came out August 11 and sells for $26 in hardcover at the store.

Berenfeld teaches in the Classics field group at Pitzer, an interdisciplinary and intercollegiate program whose courses are taught by faculty at Pitzer, Scripps, Pomona and Claremont McKenna.

The bookstore lists the evening as an adult event and a book signing. Vroman’s asks that attendees buy the book from the store, which it says makes events like this possible.

Sunday, September 6, 2026

Free Blood Pressure and Blood Sugar Screenings at Bob Lucas Library Tuesday

A registered nurse from Huntington Health takes walk-ins from 10 a.m. to noon in Meeting Room 2, and no appointment is necessary.

A registered nurse from Huntington Health, an affiliate of Cedars-Sinai, will be in Meeting Room 2 at the Bob Lucas Memorial Library and Literacy Center on Tuesday morning offering free health counseling and screenings. The session runs from 10 a.m. to noon at 2659 Lincoln Ave. in Altadena. No appointment is necessary.

The screening covers hypertension, or high blood pressure, and includes a diabetes risk assessment and screening for high blood sugar.

One piece of preparation has to happen before anyone leaves the house: the diabetes screening requires a minimum two-hour fast. Plan the morning around it.

Health promotion literature and resources are available at the session.

The Altadena Library District’s Main Library is closed for renovation, and the district’s branches are keeping extended hours during the closure. Bob Lucas is one of those branches.

Sunday, September 6, 2026

State Bill to Rein In License Plate Cameras Dies Without an Assembly Vote

Rules under which Pasadena’s 61-camera Flock network operates, unchanged

A bill to tighten how California police collect and share automated license plate reader (ALPR) data died in the Assembly without a floor vote last week, leaving Pasadena’s 61-camera Flock network operations unchanged under existing law.

Senate Bill 1013 by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, passed the Senate in May but was stopped by Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry on the final day of the session before it could reach the floor, CalMatters reported — the fifth straight year the Legislature has failed to regulate the technology.

In Pasadena, where a City Council committee is divided over whether to keep the cameras at all, the outcome leaves the question to the city.

The bill would have limited police use of plate-reader data to locating criminal suspects or missing people, required privacy and cybersecurity training, restricted sharing with national databases by default and required the attorney general’s office to audit plate-reader activity at random.

Saturday, September 5, 2026

Pasadena Unified Says No Longfellow Elementary Tree Removal “Currently Happening,” Takes Fresh Look at Situation

Pasadena Unified School District told the Longfellow Magnet School community in an email Friday that no tree removal was “currently happening,” and that it is taking a fresh look at the available arborist, environmental and remediation information before making any further decisions about the “protected trees” on the campus.

The message came four days after the district told the same community that several large, mature trees on Longfellow’s front lawn would need to be removed so contaminated soil beneath and around them could be fully remediated.

The announcement drew swift community pushback.

About a dozen parents, neighbors and tree advocates gathered outside the closed campus on Washington Boulevard the following morning, Sept. 1, disputing the district’s account of the preservation efforts it said had failed.

A second demonstration was called for that Wednesday, continuing what reporters described as a months-long standoff between the district and tree advocates over the fire-recovery cleanup effort.

The opposition was led largely by Friends of PUSD Trees,

Saturday, September 5, 2026

Altadena’s Loma Alta Park Pool Stays Open Through Sept. 30 Under an Extended Season Funded by Supervisor Barger

The county pool at 3330 N. Lincoln Ave. is running lap swim, recreational swim, water exercise classes and swim lessons through the end of the month, with free morning lap swim for adults 65 and older and people with disabilities.

The pool at Altadena’s Loma Alta Park will stay open through Sept. 30 under an extended summer season paid for with a one-time grant from Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, the county says.

The extended season, which began Aug. 24, includes recreational swimming, lap swim, water exercise classes, swim lessons and other aquatic programs at the pool, 3330 N. Lincoln Ave., according to a county bulletin issued Aug. 12 and Barger’s Aug. 6 announcement. Free morning lap swim is offered for adults 65 and older and for people with disabilities. Barger repeated the reminder in her newsletter Friday, Sept. 4, telling residents there was “still time to make a splash before summer ends.”

“Access to safe, affordable recreational opportunities is especially important as our Altadena community continues to recover and rebuild,”

Saturday, September 5, 2026

Altadena Music Theatre Plays “Little Shop of Horrors” Sunday Night, Rain Policy in Hand

Altadena Music Theatre performs “Little Shop of Horrors” at 8 p.m. Sunday on the temporary outdoor stage the company built at Mountain View Mausoleum, 2300 N. Marengo Ave. in Altadena.

The performance is the fourth of eight in a run that closes Sept. 13, and it falls on a day forecasters expect a chance of showers. The stage has no roof, and the company has published a policy setting out what a ticket is worth if weather delays or stops a performance.

Performances run Thursdays through Sundays at 8 p.m., on Sept. 3 through 6 and Sept. 10 through 13. Four remain after Sunday.

The National Weather Service zone forecast covering inland Los Angeles County calls for mostly cloudy skies Sunday with a 40 percent chance of showers. The weather service’s Los Angeles and Oxnard office has flagged tropical system Marie in its Labor Day weekend messaging for the region.

The company says the start time may be delayed or a performance interrupted because of inclement weather or other reasons,

Friday, September 4, 2026

Pasadena Unified Board Edits “District Transformation” Definition for Two Hours, Leaves Consolidation Among the Options, But Takes No Vote

The Pasadena Board of Education spent roughly two hours Thursday night line-editing a draft definition of “district transformation” and adjourned with school consolidation written in among the options, a running list of “points of contention,” no vote on the final wording of the definition and no date for one.

The special meeting, held under the banner of a ‘Committee of the Whole,’ was the board’s first completed pass at the draft, which had been scheduled for Aug. 31 before that session was halted over a notice-posting lapse.

Thursday night, Vice President Dr. Yarma Velázquez chaired; Board President Tina Fredericks and Trustee Michelle Richardson Bailey took part remotely.

Velázquez said the board would consider approval of the draft at its next meeting.

Asked by a student board member whether there was a deadline beyond Thursday for adding language, facilitator Natalia Guerra of Collaborate PASadena said, “Not that I’m aware of,” and asked when the board would return to the document. No one gave a date.

Friday, September 4, 2026

Officials Put County Firefighting Aircraft on Display as Fire Season Nears

CITY NEWS SERVICE

The Los Angeles County Fire Department put its array of firefighting aircraft on display for local media Thursday as the 2026 wildfire season gets underway.

Fire Chief Anthony Marrone was on hand at the department’s Air Tanker Base at Van Nuys Airport to showcase the aerial fleet, which includes newly arrived CL-415 SuperScoopers leased from the provincial government of Québec, Canada.

It marked the 33rd year that the province has sent the planes to L.A.

Also displayed were the department’s Boeing Chinook CH-47 Helitanker 55, which is contracted through a partnership with Southern California Edison.

Scheduled to join Marrone at the display of the fire department’s air assets were Los Angeles County Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger; Anne- Catherine Briand-Fortin, acting delegate of Québec in Los Angeles; and Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners Vice President Vanessa Aramayo.

Officials also reviewed such community safety tools as the Ready! Set! Go! program and the Genasys Protect —

Friday, September 4, 2026

Guest Opinion | Calmatters’ Dan Walters: California’s Top Democrats Struggle But Can’t Resolve The Question Of Wildfire Liability

By Dan Walters, CALMATTERS

One might assume that with Democrats controlling every lever of political power in California, they could easily resolve issues that emerge from the state’s ultra-complex socioeconomic matrix.

Nope.

Lacking an effective partisan rival and a need for unity, Democrats are free to fragment into factions defined by ideology, geography, gender, ethnicity and, most of all, economic interest.

Fundamentally the Capitol remains a “commodity market,” where interest groups bargain over laws that affect their financial status. Carey McWillians, one of the state’s keenest analysts, described it that way in his 1949 book “California: The Great Exception.”

California has since undergone massive population growth, economic evolution and political reorientation, from Republican dominance to Democratic hegemony. But McWilliams’ description remains true, even though the specific interests vying for advantage have evolved.

The issue that dominated the final days of the Legislature’s biennial session — and wound up in a stalemate — is a perfect example: the multibillion-dollar question of who bears the financial burden of wildfires that have become a fact of California life.