GOVERNMENT City Council adds fresh face to...

GOVERNMENT

City Council adds fresh face to its ranks

There will be a new face on the Newport Beach City Council dais

Tuesday when Leslie Daigle takes her seat among the six councilmen.

Daigle, who was on the Planning Commission for a few months, was

chosen by the council last week to replace Gary Adams, who resigned

to take a job promotion in Washington, D.C.

* County park rangers will soon be able to issue civil citations

to people who violate park rules. Orange County supervisors approved

a plan Tuesday to train park rangers to write citations and equip

them with handcuffs and pepper spray for protection. A detailed plan

for the training is expected within six months. Area parks under

county jurisdiction include the Upper Newport Bay, Talbert Nature

Preserve and Newport Harbor.

* The Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Commission granted two youth

sports groups the right to light up the school athletic fields they

practice soccer on, but it is not letting them do so until

mid-October because they didn’t follow the rules. The American Youth

Soccer Organization Club 97 will be using the lights at Kaiser

Elementary School and the Orange Coast United Soccer Club will be

using its lights at Parsons-Waldorf School.

ENTERTAINMENT

Nothing arrested about this award

One of the city’s native sons did Costa Mesa proud last Sunday at

the star-studded Emmy Awards. Estancia High School graduate Mitchell

Hurwitz, creator of the Fox comedy “Arrested Development,” won an

Emmy for his writing on the show, and the show won four other awards

including those for best comedy and best directing.

The show is set in Orange County, and although Hurwitz and his

family live in Pacific Palisades, most of his relatives still live

here. His mother, Judy Gertner, lives in Costa Mesa. Hurwitz’s

father, Mark, and brother Michael live in Newport Beach, and his

brother, Greg Gertner, lives in Washington, D.C.

EDUCATION

Sprucing up the sports fields in Costa Mesa

Newport-Mesa Unified School District officials said that they were

moving at full speed to make sure sports fields at the two Costs Mesa

high schools are safe for athletes.

The move to set things right came after Mark Gleason, an Estancia

High School parent, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of

Education Office of Civil Rights on Sept. 13. In it, he said the

district is discriminating against Costa Mesa’s schools with

predominantly Latino populations and working to satisfy Newport Beach

schools, which are predominantly white.

District officials have said that they want to work closely with

parents to iron out communication problems with the schools so that

they can fix problems on fields right away.