Special Meeting of the Montebello City Council

 Howdy friends and neighbors of the hills!

 The City of Montebello is facing some mighty serious budget problems so the City Council has called for a "special" meeting to address these issues. 

CITY OF MONTEBELLO COUNCIL MEETING AGENDA,

TIME, DATE AND LOCATION AS FOLLOWS:

COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY MEETING (CLOSED SESSION) STARTS AT 5:30PM

FOLLOWED BY THE REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING AT 6:30PM

(Every 2nd & 4th Wednesday of each month)

MEETING LOCATION

 CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS

1600 WEST BEVERLY BOULEVARD

MONTEBELLO, CALIFORNIA, 90640

SPECIAL MEETING

   •  CRA MEETING           AGENDA FOR 4-06-2011

  •  CITY COUNCIL MEETING           AGENDA FOR 4-06-2011

Contact: Administration Office @ 323-887-1370

The carrot on a stick

The City of Montebello has been facing a growing crisis for several years now so the recent news wasn't much of a surprise to the few but dedicated folks who actually pay attention to city politics.

Now even though the Montebello hills are not mentioned on the agenda for either meeting I can't help feeling an itty bit suspicious the Montebello Hills Specific Plan might crop up during Wednesday night's discussions. In the past, Cook Hill Properties Llc, the wannabe developer of the hills, has bragged about how the project would bring "millions of dollars" into Montebello.  The way Cook Hill has swaggered all over town handing out "donations" for this and "sponsorships"  for that, you'd think Montebello was the heroine in an old time melodrama and CH was the mysterious stranger-in-the-white-hat come to save the day.

Just this past January, Cook Hill spokesperson Byron de Arakal was quoted as saying:

“We look forward to continuing to work with the city of Montebello to bring the city a new community that will deliver significant revenues, economic benefits, homeownership opportunities and new public recreation amenities its residents and business owners deserve,”  EGP News

All Montebello has to do is sign over the title to her daddy's ranch, or worse.

Cook Hill has been carefully wooing the City of Montebello with such promises since it first rode into town in December of 2007 but unlike a virtuous suitor, it hasn't hesitated to press it's advances when CH thought it could get away with it.  In a recent "Spotlight on Montebello" Montebello Chamber of Commerce advertisment, Lodwrick Cook is quoted as saying:

"It's very important for the City to move through the environmental process and public hearings for the Montebello Hills Specific Plan as soon as possible," said Cook. "Every month that we're delayed equates to a half million dollars the City can never get back."

Yup, there's nothing like promising a plate of vittles to a starving woman, then threatening to take it away, to make a girl feel "special."

I don't see any white hats here, only greedy vultures circling overhead, but Montebello is a tough old gal and she's got plenty of homegrown defenders willing to circle the wagons on her behalf.


Daisy Mae

Spotlight on the "Spotlight"

Howdy friends and neighbors,

This week you may have received the latest copy of the "Spotlight on Montebello, the Official Bimonthly Publication of the Montebello Chamber of Commerce."


Some of you may recall that last year (2010) there were several heated discussions about the Spotlight going on in the Montebello forum of a site called Topix.com.

It seems that a few local folks took exception to the Spotlight calling itself a "newspaper."

Now the Spotlight does have a few news stories about local events but most of the publication is devoted to advertisements for Chamber of Commerce members.  What the local folks were complaining about was that standard newspapers are mighty careful to make sure their readers know the difference between what is "news" and what is an "advertisement" but this wasn't always clear with the Spotlight.

A "news" story is supposed to be a straight-up, facts-only telling of an event that happened or is about to happen in the community.   Nobody pays a newspaper to  put a "news" story in the publication.  Respectable newspapers try real hard to be impartial and tell all sides of a story when reporting the news or else they risk damaging their reputations.

An "advertisement" is just that, an ad.  Sometimes an advertisement looks like a news story but if a business pays to have it placed in the publication, it's still just an ad.  It's only natural that an advertisement would be carefully worded to favor the business or person who paid for it or else what would be the point of placing the ad?

So what was happening with the Spotlight?  Well, it appears that one member of the Chamber of Commerce got caught placing ads in the Chamber's publication that looked like news stories!  Yup, you guessed it, the perpetrator was Cook Hill Properties, the would-be developer of the Montebello hills!

For a long time, Cook Hill had been paying for FULL PAGE "news" stories in the Spotlight promoting all the benefits of the Montebello Hills Specific Plan.  These fake news stories didn't say anything about the possible negative effects the project would have, ignored community opposition to the project, and failed to mention the fact that Cook Hill had paid the Chamber of Commerce to have these stories placed in the Spotlight!

Cook Hill even refers to it's own advertisements as "news stories" on it's website:  Montebello Hills News

Well, the Montebello Chamber of Commerce got the message and did the right thing!  The Spotlight no longer refers to itself as a "newspaper."


Keep this in mind when you open the latest copy of the Spotlight on Montebello and get to Cook Hill's full page ad on page 13.

Note too the "-Paid Advertisement-" that now appears at the bottom of the page.


Daisy Mae

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