NEWPORT BEACH Committee will pass four Marinapark...

NEWPORT BEACH

Committee will pass four Marinapark ideas to council

An a hoc committee vetting plans for the city-owned Marinapark

property agreed to pass four proposals on to the City Council for

consideration, including a new plan from restaurateur Mike Palitz,

who suggested that some of the mobile homes now on the property be

converted to recreational cottages for rent.

Other plans include a place to launch boats, a public park and

slips for larger boats.

The City Council has not yet scheduled a discussion of the

proposals.

ENVIRONMENT

Group wants to take Coastal Commission to Washington

Ronald Zumbrun, attorney for the Newport Beach-based Marine

Forests Society, filed a petition Tuesday that asks the U.S. Supreme

Court to reconsider a ruling issued in June by the California Supreme

Court.

The ruling reversed two earlier victories in which the Marine

Forests Society successfully argued that the California Coastal

Commission was unconstitutional. A 2003 piece of legislation altered

the Coastal Commission to address the constitutional questions. The

state Supreme Court’s ruling stated that the reformed Coastal

Commission was a legal body. That ruling did not address the Coastal

Commission’s structure before the reforms, and Zumbrun said he wants

the nation’s highest court to issue a ruling on whether the agency

was a legal body when the case was filed in 2000.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to begin its next session in

October. The court is not required to hear the case, which is about

an artificial reef built off Newport Beach. The Marine Forests

Society built the reef from tires and plastic materials without a

permit from the Coastal Commission.

PUBLIC SAFETY

Woman badly burned in early morning house fire

A space heater left too close to a bed caused a two-alarm house

fire in Corona del Mar early Thursday, leaving one woman hospitalized

and another requiring treatment for first- and second-degree burns.

Four generations of females were living in the home in the 500

block of Narcissus Avenue. The blaze erupted at 1:40 a.m.

Firefighters arrived to find two women and a 7-year-old girl

outside the home. Capt. Jeff Boyles pulled 90-year-old Muriel Englund

from her bedroom inside the burning structure.

Englund remained hospitalized in the burn unit at Western Medical

Center in Anaheim. Her son, Gary Englund, said she had a 50-50 chance

of survival.

* A former employee of the Orange County Performing Arts Center

was arrested Monday on suspicion of embezzling more than $1 million

from the arts center.

Ana Limbaring, 53, of Costa Mesa pleaded not guilty Friday at her

arraignment in Orange County Superior Court, said the district

attorney’s office.

Limbaring, who worked in the arts center’s accounts receivable

department for more than 10 years, was responsible for collecting the

daily cash revenue and depositing the funds directly into the arts

center’s bank account, prosecutors said.

Between January 2000 and Sept. 2005, Limbaring skimmed money from

the amounts deposited in the bank and altered financial statements,

prosecutors said.

During a routine audit of the center’s financial records, auditors

discovered discrepancies in several accounts.

Limbaring remains in custody, held on $2 million bail.

If convicted on all counts, Limbaring faces 10 years in prison,

prosecutors said. Limbaring is scheduled for a hearing Oct. 13 at

Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach.

* Newport Beach detectives in plainclothes arrested two men at the

Taste of Newport last weekend for allegedly selling counterfeit

tickets to the event.

The men approached the detectives and offered to sell tickets at

$5 less than the $20 face value. Police have not determined how many

counterfeit tickets were sold.

Chamber of Commerce officials relied on security features on the

real tickets to determine that the tickets being sold were

counterfeit.

A portion of the proceeds from Taste of Newport goes to charity.

Since 1998, the event has raised more than $140,000 for charities,

according to the Chamber of Commerce.

The sale of counterfeit tickets would not have an ill effect on

the event’s charitable contribution, a Chamber of Commerce official

said.

Jeffrey Alan Lipton, 42, of Los Angeles, and Richard Robert Bove,

43, of Los Alamitos, were arrested on suspicion of counterfeiting.

BUSINESS

Mall’s Robinsons-May to become Bloomingdale’s

Federated Department Stores Inc. announced Tuesday that the

Robinsons-May store at South Coast Plaza would be converted to a

Bloomingdale’s next year.

A company spokesman said Federated does not have a specific

timeline ironed out for the store’s transformation. The announcement

followed the completion of a merger between Cincinnati-based

Federated and St. Louis-based May Department Stores Co.