Unincorporated Areas

Worried that unincorporated Los Angeles County could increasingly be favored by medical marijuana dispensaries excluded from other areas, Supervisor Mike Antonovich on Tuesday proposed a ban on the outlets, which would reverse a four-year-old county policy. Aides to Antonovich noted that many cities in the county have banned dispensaries or imposed moratoriums and the city of Los Angeles is trying to shut down about 400. The supervisor's office has received at least a dozen inquiries from Los Angeles dispensaries looking to move to the county.

Los Angeles County supervisors approved an ordinance Tuesday that requires new developments to have wider sidewalks, bicycle parking and other changes to promote exercise and reduce obesity. The ordinance also would make it easier for communities to start community gardens and hold farmers markets. "We are excited," said Susan Tae, the county's supervising regional planner. "This is the first step to address the healthier-built environment at the countywide level. " The ordinance, which affects unincorporated areas of the county, expands sidewalk widths to five feet, requires bicycle parking within developments and increases shade on sidewalks.

Acting on fears that a state proposition could make it difficult to raise local taxes after Nov. 6, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to enact a first-ever license tax for businesses in unincorporated areas. The new tax will cost each business, regardless of size, a flat rate of $100, plus $5 per full-time employee and $2.50 per part-time employee. However, Supervisor Brian Bilbray said the fee is certain to be reduced before the end of the year.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has scheduled a hearing to consider steps the county can take to address concerns about the 1-800-GET-THIN advertising for Lap-Band surgery. Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Zev Yaroslavsky said they wanted to direct county lawyers to study whether the county could take steps to ensure "truthful advertising" on billboards within unincorporated areas that would comply with 1st Amendment free speech guarantees. They've also asked their colleagues on the board to ask county health officials to launch a public awareness campaign about ways for people to maintain healthy weight, without surgery.

Cityhood will be a hot issue in 1998 for towns and neighborhoods around Orange County that remain unincorporated. Some, like Rossmoor, will be resisting moves to give up unincorporated status, an increasingly difficult situation with shrinking tax revenues and fewer dollars to support the rising costs of city services. Others, like many South County areas, will be arguing not over whether to incorporate, but how.

Every time their tax bills arrive, homeowners in the county's unincorporated areas shell out money for such services as fire protection, flood control and mosquito abatement--some seven fees in all. By fall, they may have to cough up an additional fee for parks. The Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation is quietly exploring the feasibility of making up an $8.5-million budget shortfall by taxing homeowners at least $10 per household. Parks Director Rodney E.

Teenagers in the county's unincorporated areas will have an extra hour before a nighttime curfew kicks in, according to revisions approved this week by the Board of Supervisors. The ordinance changed the curfew's starting time from 10 to 11 p.m. The change reflects a recent court decision in San Diego County where a curfew law was successfully challenged. A judge there agreed that 10 p.m. was too early to start requiring juveniles to be at home.

In most ways, the residents of affluent Hacienda Heights have little in common with the largely working-class community of South Whittier or struggling East Compton. But in one important way, they're connected by more than a maze of surface streets. Those three communities, and many other enclaves throughout vast Los Angeles County, lie in a bureaucratic no-man's-land. Unincorporated Los Angeles County, they call it. Areas, some only a few blocks long, that are not part of any city.

Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett on Tuesday again questioned law enforcement funding decisions, asking Sheriff Bob Brooks to consider putting more patrols back on the streets in unincorporated areas. Bennett asked why the sheriff was using state funds targeted for unincorporated communities to offset salaries for two crime lab workers. The money, about $143,000, might be better spent putting at least one sheriff's deputy on patrol, the board chairman said.

Saying violence follows gun sales, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky called Tuesday for a ban on "Saturday night specials" and other easily concealable weapons in unincorporated areas of the county. The proposal, modeled on the city of Los Angeles ordinance, would also prohibit federally licensed gun dealers from selling firearms in any neighborhood zoned as a residential area, including sales from homes or cars.

Riverside County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to ban registered sex offenders from putting up Halloween decorations or handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. The measure takes effect immediately. The state attorney general's office lists 2,584 registered sex offenders residing in Riverside County, but the ban applies only to sex offenders in unincorporated areas. County officials said their records show that there are 3,491 registered sex offenders. Registered sex offenders will now be banned from answering the door to trick-or-treaters or putting Halloween decorations on their homes between 12 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on Oct. 31 each year.

Supervisors in Los Angeles and Orange counties moved in sync Tuesday to ban medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated territories. The bans, affecting an area with 1.5 million people in L.A. County and 120,000 in Orange County, were approved in 4-1 votes in both counties. "Attracting crime and other nuisances, these facilities have a negative impact on the communities where they've operated ? leading more than 100 cities and nine counties in California to pass similar ordinances," said Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who wrote L.A. County's provision.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban plastic grocery bags in areas of the county under its jurisdiction, endorsing a broadly worded measure that proponents hope could become a model for California. The ban, which goes beyond ordinances adopted in Malibu and San Francisco, most directly affects 1.1 million people who live outside the county's incorporated cities. But anyone shopping at stores in such areas would encounter the new rules. Opponents suggested they might go to court to try to block the ban before the first phase takes effect in July, when 67 large supermarkets and pharmacies must stop providing disposable plastic bags.

The Buddha and bamboo shoots are gone. In their place is an empty home — except for the metal detector — that until recently was the site of one of half a dozen marijuana dispensaries that opened up in the last year in tiny Sunset Beach. The dispensary, West County Patient Collective Assn., packed up and left this summer, saying it had been strung along by the county in getting a conditional use permit to sell medicinal marijuana. The collective's volunteers saw the case as one of selective discrimination, but residents and officials viewed the association as an example of unwelcome businesses taking advantage of a lack of laws governing marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas of Orange County.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors moved Tuesday to ban medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas of the county, which would cover areas with a population of 1.5 million people. The motion is the first step toward reversing the county's 4-year-old policy on the dispensaries, which are allowed with strict prohibitions on their location: They cannot be within 1,000 feet of churches, daycare centers, libraries, playgrounds, schools and other sensitive uses. To date, the county has not approved a single dispensary in an unincorporated area.

Worried that unincorporated Los Angeles County could increasingly be favored by medical marijuana dispensaries excluded from other areas, Supervisor Mike Antonovich on Tuesday proposed a ban on the outlets, which would reverse a four-year-old county policy. Aides to Antonovich noted that many cities in the county have banned dispensaries or imposed moratoriums and the city of Los Angeles is trying to shut down about 400. The supervisor's office has received at least a dozen inquiries from Los Angeles dispensaries looking to move to the county.

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a plan to temporarily allow Redlands to provide police, fire, water and sewage services for an unincorporated area within the city known as "the Doughnut Hole." Under the plan, the city will get 90% of tax revenue from businesses in the unincorporated area; the county will keep the remaining 10%. The plan will be in effect until Dec. 31. However, Redlands voters will be asked in the Nov.

Some people call it El Camino Village, or western Gardena, or Alondra Park. Some label it No Man's Land. They are describing a neighborhood deep in the heart of the South Bay, an area of one-story tan stucco homes much like those lining the streets of any middle-class suburban city in Southern California. But this is no city. El Camino Village is an unincorporated area, lacking a city hall, a city council, a mayor or even a police department to call its own.

A trail of blood leading from a McDonald's restaurant to a private home resulted in the discovery of an underground "fight club" and the arrest of a San Gabriel man early Saturday morning, according to authorities. Richard Nguyen, 24, was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and ordered held on $30,000 bail after an incident at a home in the 500 block of Darlington Street, in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County just east of Montebello, authorities said. County sheriff's deputies said a private sport-fighting event was being held at the home when "a dispute broke out among some of the participants" and Nguyen allegedly stabbed two men with a knife.

Dawn Cordy always knew her neighborhood was an easy place to hide -- a semirural San Francisco suburb where housing is cheap, sheriff's cruisers rarely appear, residents don't snoop and registered sex offenders have found a refuge. It's a small, scruffy, unincorporated island largely surrounded by the hard-knock city of Antioch, a region synonymous with the foreclosure crisis in the Bay Area but now linked to yet another outrage. This is where Phillip Garrido, who was charged last week with rape and kidnapping, allegedly held Jaycee Lee Dugard for 18 years and fathered her two children in a warren of tents and soundproofed outbuildings behind his gray cinder-block house on Walnut Avenue.