General Plan

True to his word, Clint Eastwood has made Carmel safe for ice-cream cones. Indeed, in his first six months as mayor, he also has made Carmel safe for tourists and merchants while at the same time reassuring townsfolk that he wants to rein in the unbridled hype that once threatened to turn Carmel-by-the-Sea into Clintville-by-the-cash-register.

Hollywood, no stranger to the art of reinvention, is now at the center of a citywide urban planning makeover that could bring a sea of skyscrapers to the historic streets near the Walk of Fame. New zoning guidelines approved this month by the Los Angeles City Planning Commission will make it easier for developers to build bigger and taller buildings in many parts of Hollywood, often with extra incentives for placing them near bus and subway stops. It's part of a grand vision of concentrating development around transit hubs — a doctrine Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa likes to call "elegant density.

The Rolling Hills City Council has approved a $91,570 contract with Cotton/Beland Associates of Pasadena to review and update the city's General Plan and revise its zoning ordinances. City Manager Terrence Belanger said Monday that the firm has already begun work on the revisions, which will be ready at the end of the year. The General Plan was adopted in 1973, when the city's population was about 1,500.

An alliance by California and Nevada to jointly investigate misconduct and fraud in the mortgage business further divides efforts by the nation's attorneys general to bring the home-lending industry to account for improper foreclosure practices. The two states, which are at ground zero of the nation's housing bust, will join forces to probe allegations of foreclosure fraud and other wrongdoing in the mortgage markets, including the packaging and selling of mortgage-backed securities by Wall Street players and scams by smaller players offering to help troubled borrowers.

The Lawndale City Council voted unanimously Thursday to seek a one-year extension from the state to revise and enact a General Plan, which cities are required to have in order to pass zoning laws or issue special zoning permits. The city has been without a valid General Plan since November, 1989, when voters refused to endorse the plan that had been enacted in 1976, saying it was too outdated. The request for an extension must be approved by the state Office of Planning and Research.

After a resident argued against allowing a commercial building in a residential area of Glendora Avenue, the City Council on Tuesday reversed a decision made last month that would have modified the city's General Plan to allow the building.

The Lawndale City Council has called for a detailed report in 30 days on possible November ballot measures that would clarify how the city's General Plan should be adopted. The council Monday debated legal and practical questions raised by a recent state attorney general's opinion on the General Plan, a document that governs all zoning and development in the city. The Dec. 20 opinion upheld the validity of a 1963 ordinance requiring that any General Plan be submitted to the voters.

A tentative new General Plan for the city--a "sketch plan," city planners call it--will be unveiled Monday during a city forum. Described by officials as a consensus view of the type of city Pasadenans want, the plan has been brewing in community workshops since November. More than 1,000 people have participated in the workshops, identifying areas of the city they felt should be improved and indicating how much growth was acceptable.

Redondo Beach will hold a workshop on revising its General Plan at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the auditorium at Redondo Union High School. City Planner Randy Berler said the workshop is the first in a series aimed at getting the views of residents on such issues as density, traffic, noise, preserving historic buildings and development in residential and commercial areas. Participants may use a large aerial photo to point out specific areas that they believe would benefit from revisions in the city's rules for growth and development.

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General plans an investigation of an immigration enforcement program that purports to target "serious convicted felons" for deportation but has ensnared many illegal immigrants who were arrested but not subsequently convicted of crimes or who committed minor offenses, a letter obtained Wednesday shows. The letter from acting Inspector General Charles K. Edwards to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), who requested an investigation late last month, said the watchdog agency had already scheduled a review of the program, known as Secure Communities.

Newly elected state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris said Saturday that reviewing the civil case against current and former city officials of Bell was one of her priorities, but that she had yet to determine how her office would proceed. Her predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, filed a sweeping civil lawsuit last summer and vowed to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly pilfered from city coffers in a "civil conspiracy" to defraud the public. That lawsuit, which was filed against former City Administrator Robert Rizzo and seven others who have also been criminally charged with misappropriation of public funds, has since been dealt a number of setbacks.

Remember the "This isn't your father's Oldsmobile" advertising campaign? It was such a flop, General Motors Co. couldn't save the brand. The automaker's history is riddled with dead brands that couldn't attract enough younger buyers to stay alive. Pontiac was once GM's sporty performance division. But the last Pontiac rolled off the assembly line in November. Saturn, the division designed to win over a younger generation of buyers, sputtered and is shutting down this year. So why are GM executives so excited about Buick — the brand most likely to be left behind when mom and dad move to the senior living center?

Soldiers heading to war this summer are likely to see their tours shortened from 15 months to 12 months, even if troop cuts in Iraq are suspended in July as expected, the Army's top general said. Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said that while his forces are strained by nearly seven years at war, the Army can maintain 15 combat brigades in battle for at least a couple of months after July while military commanders assess the situation in Iraq. Casey said that his goal is to eventually shorten war deployments to nine months.

Jacob Smart, a retired U.S. Air Force general credited with planning the audacious low-level raid over German-held oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania, during World War II and later helped shape postwar Air Force doctrine, died Nov. 12 at his home in Ridgeland, S.C. He was 97 and had congestive heart failure. Smart was chief of flying training at Army Air Forces headquarters in Washington when the United States entered World War II in December 1941.

To those who love its jagged peaks, Mt. San Jacinto is to Palm Springs what Mt. Fuji is to Tokyo. At 10,804 feet above sea level, the mountain hovers over the Coachella Valley like a massive wave, visible from seemingly every vantage. A rotating aerial tramway, the valley's main tourist attraction, whisks nearly half a million visitors annually about 8,500 feet up the mountainside.

A power struggle is emerging over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $222-billion public works package. Democratic leaders say legislators and local governments would be required to cede too much influence in deciding how to remake California's roads, jails and waterways. The issue is expected to be one of the main points of contention as lawmakers today begin considering Schwarzenegger's proposal for the biggest building effort in four decades.

A Santa Monica developer has sued the city of Ventura, claiming its new municipal design guidelines could derail a $60-million residential and retail complex at the harbor six years in the planning. The development calls for a 300-unit apartment complex, 20,000 square feet of retail shops and a 104-slip marina. It's projected that the development would boost revenues for the financially struggling Ventura Port District by more than 10%.