Santa Ana News

A 39-year-old man was robbed while he was talking on a payphone outside a 7-Eleven Wednesday night, police said.

An unidentified man was killed Sunday after his Yamaha motorcycle smashed into a car in the 4100 block of West McFadden Avenue in Santa Ana, authorities said.

An Orange County judge has rejected a motion by the Mexican government to delay the penalty phase of the trial of a convicted murderer.

Eighteen California hospitals have been fined by the state for violating laws regarding quality care for patients, the state public health department announced Monday.

Aug 19, 2008 7:45 am US/Pacific Eighteen hospitals in California were fined for state health code violations in which patients received shoddy care that in some cases led to deaths.

Tonight’s Santa Ana City Council meeting is the second of the month – usually the second meetings are held offsite, at the Police Station’s community room, and are not televised. But here we are in election season again and sure enough tonight’s meeting has returned, like the proverbial swallow, to the Council Chambers. What’s up with that?

Clearly the members of the Santa Ana City Council and our erstwhile Mayor, Miguel Pulido, want more face time with the voters so now suddenly all the Council meetings are back at City Hall and back on T.V. The strategy may backfire however as the City Council is set to vote tonight on greatly expanding public employee benefits – just in time for the public employee unions to donate to Pulido and his chosen candidates and to walk precincts for them.

The obvious question is why aren’t all the City Council meetings televised – and more importantly in this Age of the Internet, why isn’t the resulting video footage made available on the City’s website? Clearly someone doesn’t want you to know what is going on.

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Jason’s Downtown Restaurant, in Santa Ana, is hosting a “Summer Salsa Celebration” on Friday, August 22, 2008 at 6:00 p.m.

The Celebration will feature salsa music on the patio, salsa tasting and $5.00 “El Don” Margatinis all night long!

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" Police are investigating a fatal motorcycle accident on West McFadden Avenue after the driver collided with a car on Sunday night, Santa Ana Police Commander Doug McGeachy said.

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SANTA ANA, Calif. - Two men who tortured an Irvine college student to reveal where her family kept valuables and then strangled her in her home have been sentenced to death.

Veronica Turner, 37, of San Bernardino is tired of unreturned phone calls from her lender and choosing between buying food for her son and paying the mortgage on her house.

Six people were arrested Thursday night in connection with a carjacking that occurred at gunpoint earlier in the week, police said.

The Santa Ana City Council is poised to hand out a generous boost to the retirement benefits offered to city employees at Monday evenings Council Meeting - even though the City of Santa Ana’s current budget is mired in millions of dollars in debt.

To this I say- NO.

One needs only to look at recent news reports to find an example of what this misguided act might lead to in a city to the North of Santa Ana.

For years, Vallejo’s public officials gave generous pay and benefit increases without having a clue how to pay for them.

You can tell a lot about a candidate by looking at who donates money to him. Santa Ana Councilman Carlos Bustamante says he wants to be judged by his record, so let’s take look at who owns a piece of Bustamante.

This data comes from Bustamante’s 2004 Campaign Finance Reports:

* Lincoln Club of Orange County (Republican group) - $1,000

* Hispanic 100 (Republican group) - $1,000

* Carrie Ware - $249 / Cristy Ware - $249 / Ware Disposal - $249

* Madison Materials - $249

Earlier this afternoon I had the opportunity to interview George M. Collins who is one of four candidates running for Mayor of Santa Ana. I reminded him that we met previously when he ran for council back in 2006. The city of Santa Ana, with almost 350,000 people, is the most populous city in Orange County and is the County seat.

Unlike traditional city council races the election of Mayor occurs every other year. The city is governed by six council members representing specific Ward’s and the elected Mayor, who, in the case of Miguel Pulido, has held that post since November 1988.

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Police are investigating the shooting death of a man who was found injured in his pickup this morning and later died at a hospital.

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A Santa Ana man has been convicted of murder after investigators found his DNA on a soda can left at the crime scene.

Poor Carlos Bustamante. He has done it again. This time he wrote in his candidate’s statement for Ward 3 that he believes “a candidate should be judged on results pure and simple,” according to the O.C. Register.

So what exactly has Bustamante “achieved” in the past four years? Let’s take a look:

* He backed raising our property taxes at a time that Santa Ana is leading the County of Orange in foreclosures, when he endorsed Measure G this year. Measure G was so fraudulent that even progressive SAUSD Trustee John Palacio said that we did not need it.

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Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido proposed a few months ago building a street car system that would connect our train depot to downtown Garden Grove. Is this a worthwhile transportation project – will it improve the lives of the residents of our city?

Admittedly the idea of a street car system, albeit one that appears to go to nowhere, is charming. But will it really solve any of our transportation problems?

Have any empirical studies been conducted to find out:

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The insanity that is SAUSD is again rearing its ugly head.

After laying off hundreds of part-time classified employees, mostly classroom instructional aides, SAUSD will rehire them along with 26 full-time clerks, library technicians, health aides and other classified employees according to a SAUSD press release issued today.

SAUSD has said that the part-time employees will regain full medical benefits.

District staff and the classified employees union worked on a plan to save nearly $2 million in costs, which will allow the district to rehire the 374 employees and give them all full medical benefits.

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