Land Use

A Disney-backed ballot initiative that would essentially strip the Anaheim City Council of its authority to make land use decisions in the city's resort district apparently will still go before Anaheim voters in June. Mayor Curt Pringle asked the council to bypass the ballot and instead adopt the initiative outright, saving taxpayers about $250,000 in election costs. But a majority of the five-member council has indicated a desire to see the anti-housing measure remain on the June 3 ballot.

In his quest to balance the city's books, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is gearing up to sell city-owned properties in some of the Westside's most sought-after neighborhoods. But Villaraigosa's budget-saving strategy is running up against one of his biggest campaign pledges: to expand affordable housing.

It could be a bad sign for Hollywood meat-eaters. Leaders of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Thursday that they hope to rent the 1,821-foot Cahuenga Peak next to the Hollywood sign to promote "healthy eating and compassion for animals." PETA officials said they want to erect a large sign of their own to the west of the famed landmark that would spell out "Go Veg" in 45-foot-high letters.

Hundreds of thousands of drivers daily thread their way through the spaghetti-like interchange of Interstate 5 and the Antelope Valley Freeway, and some may well recall its spectacular collapse in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Few, however, probably are aware of the six-year development battle raging over the jagged ridgelines cradled between the intersecting freeways at the Newhall Pass.

An Orange County land battle going back half a century has resurfaced, and as is always the case when it's real estate with a Newport Beach ZIP Code, things get thorny. At stake is a privately owned, undeveloped 402-acre parcel known as Banning Ranch. Costa Mesa, which flanks the property on the north, has had its sights on annexing the land, arguing that the city would be most affected if it gets developed.

Millions of privately owned acres in National Park Service boundaries could be developed into luxury homes or commercial enterprises because the federal government has not allocated funds to buy out these lands, according to two reports issued this week. About 4.3 million acres of privately owned land lie within the 391 National Park Service properties nationwide, according to a National Parks Conservation Assn. report released Tuesday. Of these acres, 1.

When Richard Nixon made San Clemente his western White House, the late satirist Art Hoppe described the population as "15,000 conservative Republicans, 2,000 surfers, five poor people [and] roughly the same number of liberal Democrats." That was in 1972; today the population is 65,000 or so and it's possible they've chased off the last of the poor people and the liberals. As a matter of politics and philosophy, San Clemente has long been friendly to business, to growth, to builders.

The federal government on Thursday took the first step toward a massive expansion of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area as President Bush signed legislation ordering the Interior Department to consider making additions to the protected area.

The southern half of this swath of grasslands and chiseled pink spires looks untouched from a distance. Closer up, the scars of history are easy to see. Unexploded bombs lie in ravines, a reminder of when the military confiscated the land from the Oglala Sioux tribe during World War II and turned it into an artillery range. Poachers who have stolen thousands of fossils over the years have left gouges in the landscape.

In downtown Los Angeles on Saturday there were sights and smells and sounds of a milestone event the concrete urban core had not hosted in more than a century. Fresh bark. Tinkling water cascading down a rocky slope. California sycamores and coast live oaks, an expansive meadow of velvety green grass and squealing children everywhere -- in soccer fields and on slides, clambering atop playground snakes and turtles.