dining in and out of town

Last night we were tired from a long week and not up for cooking, so we headed to 2nd Street Bistro. As K. says, it's not exactly good, but it's here.

Imagine our surprise at finding that it was closed up tight, with an application for a b&w permit in the window. I'm not surprised that they went under; I'm just surprised that they haven't gone under before now, frankly. They tried hard, but the full range of competencies just wasn't there. The last time we ate there, maybe nine months ago, they didn't know the difference between a poached egg and a hard-boiled egg (in a classic French dish where it makes all the difference).

We ended up skipping town for downtown Laverne, where we were planning on gyros at Angel's but diverted at the last minute to T. Phillips Alehouse or whatever that place is on D Street.

Upshot: too similar (or even identical?) to Claremont's Heroes for my taste. Good beers on tap (although my Anchor Steam was kinda flat or even elderly), good service, huuuuge portions, miserable food.

Where do you go when you're too worn down to cook and there's no frozen pizza in the house?

I'm still here

This is either very sad, or an expression of democracy in action. Your choice.

Live tweeting continues, even most of the audience is gone, at www.twitter.com/tweetpomona

Dog-Cat or Cat-Dog

Am I the only one who has actually read the proposed Inland Valley Humane Society (IVHS) contract???

Why does it cost $10/day to feed a Pomona dog, but only $7/day to feed a Claremont, Chino, Chino Hills, La Verne, or Montclair dog? Same question for cats? Do our stray dogs and cats get better food? Or do the workers get hazard pay......."Oh No! I don't want to feed that cat.....It's a Pomona cat!"

If the proposed increase in dog fees is related to an increase in service calls, then why does IVHS want the dog fees to go up but not the cat fees? According to the data presented, cats account for about 60% of the service calls, are less likely to be adopted, and are picked up by owners less frequently.

Why would you decrease the difference between altered dog fees($10 moving to $35) and unaltered dog fees ($45 moving to $65), if the problem is with unaltered dogs. If we assume it costs $100 to alter your dog, an owner will recover the difference in a little over two years with the current fee schedule. With the proposed fee changes, it will take an owner a little over three years. Here's an idea that I'll get back to.........why not leave the altered fee at $10, but increase the unaltered fee to $80? You'll give people a financial incentive to spay or neuter their animals and they could recover the cost of the surgery in a little over a year.

If cats account for 60% of the service calls and 66% of the euthanasias, are we making any adjustments to the cat license fees? Hmmmm, give me second.............No! So let's look at the payback period for altering your cat. An altered cat license is $5 and unaltered is $10, so if we assume a $100 operation, you wouldn't recover your costs for 20 years!!!!! Can't really blame people for not altering their cats when you look at THAT math.

This one was a shocker.....Pomona has 9000 unaltered licensed dogs but only 5000 altered licensed dogs. Wow! No data on cat licenses.....who wants to make an informed decision anyway.

The city is proposing the increase to generate an additional $305,000. The increase of $25 for an altered dog will generate $125,000. The increase of $20 for an unaltered dog will generate $180,000. Assuming we don't increase the fees for altered dogs, how much will we need to increase the fee on unaltered dogs to generate the $305,000? $34!! By raising the unaltered fee to $80 and keeping the altered fee at $10, the city could generate just as much money. If this leads to more dogs being spayed or neutered then the number of service calls should decrease (saving the city more money).

A couple of closing thoughts:
Why should it cost 3x more money to buy a license for a Pomona dog than Claremont dog?
How many pets are being dumped in Pomona after owners realize they'll be charged for dropping them at the IVHS?
How much would it cost to contract with La County Animal Control? Why aren't those numbers presented?
Why isn't the city staff giving us the animal control data for years other than 2008?
How much does the IVHS pay the city for rent? Yes, the Humane Society is sitting on city-owned land! Do they have a long-term lease?

Would we really need mandatory spaying and neutering if we incentivized the process by charging substantially more for unaltered animals?

tell 'em meg sent you

I meant to post this ages ago, but there's still time: Come on down to the dA saturday night 7-10 for Pomona Heritage's Speakeasy Party!

Tickets are a mere $5 at the door, with donations taken inside for bathtub gin (and other forms of hooch). And you can buy tickets for the Annual Home Tour while you're there!

The publicity says to dress in your best Roarin' Twenties outfit, but one of the organizers assures me that costumes are purely optional. Clothing, however, is not optional -- be sure to wear some, of any decade.

Just another council Monday

Live tweeting, if I feel up to it, at twitter.com/tweetpomona

Special session: evaluation and possible appointment of a police chief

Regular agenda:

• Discussion of lawsuit by illegal immigrant activists vs. City, Police Chief Romero, and other officers over the incident in February
• Award/amendment of various engineering and construction contracts (yes, there is yet another "interim" public works director, Neil Miller - formerly of the City of Manhattan Beach)
  
• Award of traffic signal at Garey Avenue and Magnolia to facilitate access to the Pomona Metrolink station
• Various budget adjustments
• Appropriate funds for homeless prevention projects
• Vending machine contract
• Resolicitation of security contract to parks and other facilities, after the previous contract was cancelled due to performance failure (including security for "senior citizen Monday Night Dances")
  
• Suspending collection of rent for restaurants that use the public sidewalk for three years
  
• Appoint Michael Schowalter to replace Paige Bruyn on the Vehicle Parking District
  
• Public hearing on the alcohol license for the Towne/I-10 7-11 (punted from last meeting)
• Public hearing on the suspension of the Conditional Use Permit for Angelo's Pizza (punted from April over and over again)
• Public hearing on increasing dog tag fees by 250% for spayed/neutered dogs and only 44% for unaltered dogs, thus resulting in Pomona having the highest dog tag fees for altered animals in the region
• and over a dozen more items that I didn't put in this summary
  

The meeting starts after closed session is completed, but no earlier than 7 p.m.

PUSD looking for a new head

PUSD has scheduled several community meetings to discuss the search for a new superintendent. I don't know the exact format, but it's probably a Q&A with the School Board. If you're interested:

Wednesday, Sept. 16, Palomares Middle School gym, at 4:30 pm (PUSD staff) and 6:30 pm (public); Thursday, Sept. 17, Fremont Middle School gym, at 4:30 pm (PUSD staff) and 6:30 pm (public); and Monday, Sept. 21, Lorbeer Middle School gym, at 4:30 pm (PUSD staff) and 6:30 pm (public). An online survey is also available on our district website: www.pusd.org

Also, congrats should go to students, faculty and staff of Montvue Elementary (on San Bernardino, near Indian Hill) which boosted their API score by 60 points this year.

Please support the Pomona schools.

all-hands meeting?

I'm picking up from a comment that calwatch left under the "thufferin' thuccotash!" post below (see Recent Comments sidebar to read his comment).

We are located just about equidistant between the two shootings, and we've got a very active and engaged NW captain. She emails us about any incident she hears about over the grapevine, as well as general NW news.

I haven't heard about any NW meetings since the, um, exciting one on July 27. At the beginning of August, I think that Muffin Turk, who is on the Community Life Commission (I believe -- I could be wrong), was agitating for a LP community meeting, but I don't think anything ever came of it.

So, I'll add my voice to Muffin's and calwatch's: CAN WE HAVE A COMMUNITY MEETING PRETTY PLEASE?

[That said, I am not concerned about getting shot in my front yard. And not just because I've been shot at twice and both times they missed.]

What's for dinner?

Three weeks ago a shiny new store front popped up on Holt near Reservoir: Tweedy Panda Donuts & Chinese Food. 969 E. Hold Ave. (909) 802-2088. Open from 5AM - 10 PM.

Stew ate there a week or so ago and had good things to say, so I tried it out this evening. Thumbs up!

This is your basic "select a starch and pick two dishes from the steam table" sort of place. The selection is okay, though the only veggies I could find were embedded -- like journalists? -- with beef. Oh well. I opted for white rice with orange chicken and beef and broccoli, heavy on the green stuff. The portions were huge -- I'll be grazing on this order for a couple days.

How much did this bounty cost, you ask? $4.69. And, it came with a free 12 ounce soda. I added on a donut for dessert. Spot hitting. I'm looking at the menu now. Here are a couple highlights:

$2.79 for a bowl of rice covered with one item from the steam table. A small order of chow mein for $1.25 ($3.75 for a large). None of the small orders cost more than $1.85; all the larges cost around $5.50. Eggrolls for 50 cents. Granted, there's more to a good eat than cheap prices, but I'm living on a tight budget, and admit I'm a sucker for great prices.

As of this second, I'm committing to supporting this business, which I'd very much like to see succeed, by eating there at least once a week from here on out. Care to join me? Silly as this may sound, I really want to celebrate the presence of a welcoming, family-friendly business anywhere on Holt, but especially along this stretch that is largely populated by sketchy characters and sketchy businesses. Here's wishing the paw-waving cat brings appropriate levels of luck and good fortune to this new business.

thufferin' thuccotash!

I heard the cop-choppers all in an uproar last night, but I didn't realize it was because of the H word again. I swear, the LP is the most dangerous part of Pomona -- y'all Southies just better watch out when you see us comin'! (I'm looking at you, Anduhrew.)

Pride In Pomona!

I've been seeing the beautiful hexagonal Pomona logo all over -- it's on our street signs, on the tiles that pave the Civic Center area, and now on t-shirts and cars! I was excited about showing my Pomona pride, but had some trouble tracking down a source for the logo.

After drinking enough beers at dba256, I finally got a lead -- Juan of BUNNY GUNNER is able to make copies on vinyl in a variety of sizes. I selected the four-incher, which seems to fit nicely on my poor high-tech beater. I'm still not sure if the logo will result in obsequious groveling at the finer LA parking lots, or a little more room on the freeway, but I'll let y'all know how it works out.

If you'd like to make your own experiment, I have an extra to give away for FREE. Send me a picture of the vehicle (or other object) that you'd like to put it on, and I'll happily give a copy to the most interesting submission received by next Wednesday.

OTOH, it's probably easier to head on down to BUNNY GUNNER and hand over a few bucks, but there it is. There's something wonderful about free.