myBurbank Talks
myBurbank Talks
The Week That Was and That Will Be - May 13
Discover the heartbeat of Burbank as Ross Benson, Craig Durling and Craig Sherwood unpack the intricate tapestry of our community in the latest episode of Burbank Talks. From the unanticipated twists in city council budget meetings to the solemn solidarity exhibited following a local teacher's untimely departure, we're bringing to light the stories that shape our streets and skies. This conversation is a journey through the city's fiscal prudence, an exploration of Burbank's empathy in times of sorrow, and a celebration of the civic spirit that propels us forward.
We're not just observers; we're participants in the narrative of Burbank's safety and well-being. Listen as we highlight the concerted efforts to enhance park experiences at McCambridge Park, commend the altruism of Friends of Monterey High School, and navigate the complexities of road safety on Olive Avenue. The conversation takes a turn as we grapple with the rising challenges of retail crime, weighing the costs and benefits of a more permanent police presence at local shopping centers against the backdrop of community resilience.
Finally, we lift the curtain on the magic behind our city's events, from the electrifying atmosphere of Fire Service Day to the serene upcoming morning at Johnny Carson Park. With special thanks to the unsung hero Austin Gephardt, we spotlight the technical wizardry that brought Fire Service Day to life. So come along as we traverse the vibrant community events, honor the pulse of local businesses, and invite you to engage with the stories of Burbank that resonate long after the microphone switches off.
From deep in the Burbank Media District. It's time for another edition of my Burbank Talks, presented by the staff of my Burbank. Now let's see what's on today's agenda as we join our program.
Speaker 2:Hello, Burbank, Craig Sherwood here with you once again, along with in the studio Ross Benson.
Speaker 3:Hi there, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, we're ready to do a show. We've got a lot to go.
Speaker 2:And through the, the mysteries of zoom, we have craig derling here I am from my underground, underground lair still well, we, I see we've changed the picture this week. What are going to be? A different picture every week while I'm stuck underground here in the bunker okay, so we have a, uh, a little thing, a fire. Do you remember which fire that was? He shot is? It was a wildfire.
Speaker 1:I believe you're putting me on the spot. I think this was the powerhouse fire of 2013. Okay, as I recall and it looks like we all survived fire service day.
Speaker 2:We all survived. Yes, we did.
Speaker 1:A remote there and display of photographs. Good day, good turnout. But we'll debrief that a little later on, as we get to it.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Let's start off with last week's winner. The word was, of course, Jaws. We actually had a lot of people. It's funny. The week before nobody sent in anything, and this week we got numerous submissions, you know why we did a call to action.
Speaker 1:We called them out, told people to submit, so they had the chance. We got a winner.
Speaker 2:We got a winner. I went to the old Alexa app and I said pick a number between this and that, and the number they came out with belonged to Julie Hayes. Okay, Julie Hayes. So, Julie Hayes, we need you to send us an email with your address so I can send you out that gift card. Of course, the gift card is $25 to Hill Street Cafe.
Speaker 3:Where's Hill Street Cafe.
Speaker 1:It's down on Glen Oaks.
Speaker 3:Glen.
Speaker 1:Oaks and Hollywood Way around there between Hollywood Way and Buena Vista.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't you call it up on Glen Oaks, not really down on Glen Oaks?
Speaker 1:I used to live up the hill from it, so Glen Oaks was down from me. But they said we had proof at Fire Service Day that we do send these out and people do enjoy the gift cards because some past winners came up and told us about their experience at Hill Street. Fantastic reviews. It was good to get some feedback.
Speaker 3:Last week at Fire Surf Day, the guy that named the hill report or airport Yep At Avalon.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right. Yeah, catalina.
Speaker 3:He came up. But you know, I don't know if he came up because we we had said we were going to do a podcast, but he had the whole family there and it was kind of cool. You know him saying that he was the one that won and he talked to us for a bit A couple people came up.
Speaker 1:A lot of people came up and listened to the podcast and watched the podcast and appreciated it. Several people appreciated my rat hole alarm and asked for the continuation of that.
Speaker 2:So stand by for that.
Speaker 1:But congratulations to Julie on submitting the winning answer. Now, if you want to win your $25 gift card to Hill Street Cafe from this show, you've got to listen for the word of the week. You can't miss it. It's hard to miss, you just have to stay up long enough to get to it, because it's always in the second half.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you what the word this week is out of this world.
Speaker 1:let me tell you a clue, but you still have to wait to hear it yes and we bury it late in the show. So you got to stay up, you got to pay attention.
Speaker 2:Well now, I'm going to fast forward to the end of the show, hopefully not not to move.
Speaker 1:They can find it yeah, that's up to you, know, the technology is there. But if they're watching live. They have no choice. They have to wait.
Speaker 2:Well, let's get into the week that was, Because the week that was was the week that was.
Speaker 3:The week the week. Wait a minute.
Speaker 1:It was and it will be it will be.
Speaker 3:It will be the week. That was the week. That will be May 13th. We're trying it again. Go ahead. Okay, we started yet. Go ahead. Okay, I thought I just said that. Have we started yet?
Speaker 2:So last Tuesday the city council met and talked to budget and actually, you know, what's funny is, once again, when it comes to how the sausage is made, people don't seem to be that concerned because they'll come and they'll pack those council chambers for this and that and everything else. But now when it comes out to you know how much money is going here, how much money is going, they don't want to read that 661-page report and try to figure it out and come and discuss the fine print, as they say. So there was very few speakers and each department got up and presented their parts of the budget and I thought it all went pretty well. I mean, I don't think anything was as controversial. I have a little. I have no idea.
Speaker 2:We lost Constantine Anthony sometime. He didn't stay for the last hour or two of the meeting, which I'm not sure where. He had to go at 9 or 10 o'clock at night on a Tuesday night, but he just this is the meeting where all the department heads come in and make their pitch their elevator pitch for next year's budget.
Speaker 2:And the city council had any questions, they would ask them. So I thought it went pretty well. So it's just interesting that people aren't more in tune with that. I would think that's more important for them in the whole process of a city is having a balanced budget and what we spend money on and maybe what we don't spend money on.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I'd like to give kudos. It was a very long and lengthy report. Jennifer Becker, who is in charge of our finance department, made it very understandable. She's a great public speaker. Jennifer started her career with the city as administrator at the fire department. It was Jennifer, I can't remember her maiden name, but she's been around the city for a long time. She has a lot of people that work in finance. But you know she was ready for the questions when the council threw him at her. I saw I was there for that presentation. If you recall, for the mad pavoka, she walked in with three binders. I'm surprised she didn't have somebody carrying her. These things were those like five inch binders. I think she could tell you how many rolls of toilet paper public works uses in a week looking through her binder. But she's a. She did a great job, jennifer, pat, on your back and to your whole department.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So they're going to finish up some budget stuff at the next council meeting, which will be a um a week from. Uh, this they're, they're, they're dark this this week. Um, and their darkness this week, and then they'll also be getting next week's show. We're going to be talking about the gun ordinance. It's going to be coming up in front of them also.
Speaker 3:That would be the 21st. Six o'clock yet.
Speaker 2:We'll wait until we get there and then we'll let people know about it. Well, that's right. If you tell them now they won't listen later.
Speaker 1:Sure, that's the week that will be will be, but they can't do it and kudos to you, ross Benson, for working a toilet paper joke into a budget conversation sometimes it's pretty shitty when you have to talk about money now I gotta put a rating on the podcast.
Speaker 2:It's too early. The kids are still awake.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there you go some people look forward to that but I was thinking, you know people could read, you know that 661 page for the next week if they're not doing anything.
Speaker 1:And the one page we determined was intentionally left blank right Right.
Speaker 2:Well, let's move on to.
Speaker 3:Wednesday, and this one gets a drumroll. I forgot to tell you before.
Speaker 1:Wednesday.
Speaker 2:May 8th. Okay, we have a new general manager of the Burbank Water Power Department.
Speaker 3:Now, craig and I talked prior to the show and this is a test for him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. What's he going to do? Better not be this. Craig Mondip Smara is our. What was that?
Speaker 3:Can you say that again? Why don't you try it once? We?
Speaker 2:we kept trying to say this it's mondup mondup samara if you say so I think that's close, and if it's not exactly right, I apologize might be an extra syllable in there because I don't want my power shut off you know about juice yeah, I'll tell you what you know.
Speaker 3:I want to make sure the water runs and lights go on, that's, but did you see her resume?
Speaker 2:I mean well, yeah um, she was our, um, um assistant. You know, assistant thing, but you know, I, I just I just jotted down that one thing she has she has a master's in urban planning from USC, and that alone, I mean, they don't hand those out.
Speaker 1:That qualifies as wrong. Yeah, that sounds all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't hand those out at the Palestine protest. Those you have to actually earn, but you know what Joseph Lulio, joseph Lulio was, he didn't get sidelined, didn't get, he was, he was running, but he's gonna go back and be and, once again, still a stay that the chief financial officer so come on that's.
Speaker 2:That's I hope he I know he ain't going anywhere he was a little disappointed, but you know I, I know justin hess. By the way, justin stepped by the podcast on Saturday at the fire department. It was good to see him. He's in a very upbeat mood. He makes good decisions. I have trust in Justin, as they say.
Speaker 1:It's funny I always speak very highly of him. I'm sorry I couldn't join at the podcast table. I was babysitting the photo table for the majority of the time sitting the photo table for, uh, the majority of the time.
Speaker 3:But I said to justin, I was at the um the gala the night before, you know, he picks his e-team, what they call the e-team, the executive team. He does his homework and he says, look at our police chief, look at our fire chief, look at our, you know all the department heads. They are, and you wonder why our city runs so well and they're not here for two weeks and then going to another city. He picks people that are in. He apparently did his homework. I bet you on this one.
Speaker 2:I know it was easy for him. He didn't just, you know, do like we did for our winner of the week. He actually reads some resumes.
Speaker 3:Okay, good example Probably. Read some resumes Okay, good example, probably. I think one of the best is we chose for assistant city manager and our PIO.
Speaker 2:You can't talk about better people than Courtney and Jonathan Jones, and Courtney came up and said hi to me at the podcast also. How do you like that? It's funny because I see these people each week on the show. I'm watching the meetings so I know who they are, but I don't realize. Well, they don't ever see me, and I try to make that as much as possible, of course.
Speaker 1:And, as far as you're concerned, they waved at you with all of their fingers.
Speaker 2:Yes. So once again, good selection, good person, you know. I mean, you can say what you want to say about oh, this sucks, that sucks, everything else sucks. But you know what? I think a city like Burbank, we've got good personnel in the right places. And yeah, there are problems. Yeah, we've got problems, there's no doubt about it. But I think we have people in problem-solving areas who are going to figure those problems out eventually too.
Speaker 1:Every city, city, especially cities our size, are dealing with the same problems right now, the way politics and the governments and everything's going right now. But burbank has set itself up to to deal with them better than probably most other cities, yeah, uh, similar in size to us you know, and you just said it, craig, all these cities are same size.
Speaker 3:They all talk to one another. They know, and you just said it, craig, all these cities are same size. They all talk to one another. They go to their, you know, state conventions or whatever they call it, but the people that we have in it is those leaders of that department. We're running pretty good. You could tell by the finance. We have money left over. You know we don't have. They've done things like fix a police contract and the fire paramedic contracts and some of these things that you know we don't have. They've done things like fix a police contract and the fire of paramedic contracts and some of these things that you know it takes quite a bit to do to run a city and all these people do a darn good job and it's easy for someone to make cheap shots, I get it.
Speaker 1:I mean you know, but sometimes you say what you feel, yeah, burbank isn't immune from issues that plague communities like this, but I think we're pretty well set up to deal with them.
Speaker 2:Well, that started on Wednesday morning and then Wednesday afternoon we got some terrible news that a teacher at Breadhart, a kindergarten teacher at Breadhart Elementary School, was murdered by her son. Everything points to the fact it was accidental. The son has definite mental issues in many ways I hear he's autistic, he has Asperger's. I hear you know a lot of things going on with him and it's a tragedy and yeah, it made the news, made even some national news, but it really shook not only the Bret Hart community but it really shook the city too. So, you know, condolences out to the family and all the former students Somebody was talking to me about. She's been there for 20 years teaching kindergarten. I go, oh yeah, I mean boy, my kindergarten teacher, mrs Brady at Stevenson. I mean, I still remember Mrs Brady at Stevenson, that first teacher you know I remember my kindergarten teacher?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean, that's a lot of lives that she's touched.
Speaker 3:Yeah and she was so outgoing she was at that school 20, 30 years, yeah, 20 years. But what you touched on, you know our own, ashley Erickson, is PT president at that school. Ashley is on that campus, I think, daily. So as much as that teacher and for her to. She covered part of it. She gave us a quote, but you know the city stepped up. When I say the city I hear total kudos go out to our school district.
Speaker 2:No, go to our school, superintendent.
Speaker 3:Not our district.
Speaker 2:But that's not school board, it's not administrators I said administrators John Perammo, we were told, sent a whole lunch a whole you know, they had lunch there Rounded up all the subs you could find in the district to get subs into the school so the staff could, and brought in, of course, the professionals for counseling and everything else. I mean he really was on top of it from the first second and I think he did a great job. He really led as a superintendent.
Speaker 3:We talk about FSA Family Service Agency and I have mentioned it many times on this podcast. Craig Durling and I worked the care walk with FSA. They were on that campus immediately when they were called. All their counselors were there. Their counselors are still there and every campus in this district because it involved every teacher, principal district employee knew Karen Lombardo and they were there and they are still there to counsel. This is something that you just don't do one day there to counsel. This is something that you just don't do one day, and that's what I. I just really. You look at something like this and I've often wondered how prepared our city is when you have a tragedy like this and don't be fooled, and don't be fooled by the name family service agency.
Speaker 3:They provide count all kinds of counseling for anybody out there right and and they had, um, they had their crew there and I hear, like I said, they're still there. Their, their phone is 24 hours a day. You know it's three o'clock in the morning and you're having problems. They will, they will take your calls, you know. So, this, this community tragedy, and it's not over yet. They have not had a funeral or memorial yet. I drove by there today. The flowers and the sign notes and the poster boards are growing daily. You know it's the end of the school year and so forth.
Speaker 3:They postponed last week's dance to this coming week.
Speaker 2:And we're all adults, you know and we still it bothers us and we feel it. And we're all adults, you know and we still it bothers us and we feel it. These are those kids who go to that school and are walking by that every day and see that and are trying to comprehend what has happened.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it was Ashley that said to me, and I think I even heard it from my son or my daughter-in-law the kids are very resilient. Yes, they don't know about death and they're learning at a very young age. It's the adults that it's affecting harder, the ones that left, had her years ago and remember how well she was.
Speaker 3:I mean so, but um, well like I say, our city came through and and, uh, just, you think of her family, her husband and daughter and so forth, their neighbors. I happened to talk to somebody that knows the next-door neighbor very well and it's affected their neighbors. So hopefully we can come out of this. You know it's going to be a long thing. It's unfortunate. He apparently has a mental capacity, the son of a 10--year-old, and has no clue what's going on. We had a follow-up when he was his preliminary hearing.
Speaker 2:We'll talk about that later.
Speaker 3:You know postponed, so let's move on to other things that happened.
Speaker 2:Other things happened on Wednesday, and that's the thing. The world will keep spinning. It's tough sometimes. Uh, the city held a um their second master plan meeting. Uh, mccambridge park for their the the uh parks master plan. And ross, you stopped by there. Anything at the meeting that you wanted to well pass along I know we were, um, I was asked to.
Speaker 3:Uh, I live in the neighborhood of McCambridge Park, up on the hill they call the hill and didn't know how many people. There were 65, 70 people to listen to what the Parks Department, it's their. I guess it's master plan meeting to focus on what they want to do in future years. I heard some great comments. The community really came through and we will have an article. I'm waiting for some information from the Parks and Rec Department. We will have something on my Burbank because if, even though you were not at the meeting, They've had one at Olive.
Speaker 2:They've had one at.
Speaker 3:Verdugo Right, they have been recorded and all the questions and information that they are gathering, they are compiling and we'll have a link to um so you can watch it. If you didn't make that meeting and still want input, they are still taking input. So very nice to see the community come out for that master plan meeting in cambridge well, let's move on to Thursday.
Speaker 2:Thursday we had a nice story on the site about what they call the Friends of Monterey, monterey High School Talk about Monterey.
Speaker 3:Where is that?
Speaker 2:Is it on Monterey? It's on Pacific.
Speaker 1:It's up in the Bay Area, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's right, by the Empire Center. I guess you could say it's on the other side of the tracks correct, you were in the school district kids that sometimes they need a fresh start.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's kids who don't get along with everybody else. They need something different. And they have about 150 kids in school but they don't have a PTA. They have no PTA there and sometimes you wonder if some of these kids don't have that foundation at home so the foundation does not follow them to school also like other schools. But they have a group of supporters, kind of like an ad hoc committee, and it's a volunteer group that was formed by former Burbank Board of Education President, dr Roberta Reynolds, and so she, you know, once a month they get together and they do things. They did lunch for the staff for Staff Appreciation Month. So that was nice of them to do that.
Speaker 3:Well, you know also we did a story just a couple weeks ago Lynn Lipinski that Burbank Noon Rotary.
Speaker 2:these are kids that they stepped up and got them graduation gowns.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:They paid for their gowns. These kids can't afford it and they should cross that stage to get their diploma right like everybody else. So they paid for, I think, 150 or 75 brand new cap and gowns and that's kind of cool. Our city steps up sometimes and here's another proof between this group to support the teachers and Rotary to support the kids.
Speaker 2:Well, later that night, as the news kept flowing in our city, we unfortunately had a fatal motorcycle accident on Olive, right near the Social Security building around Beachwood and Griffith Park in that area.
Speaker 3:Actually, you know what? We have our days backwards here because that accident happened on Wednesday night, because I was leaving a Magnolia Park merchants meeting.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, you know what You're right. Yeah, it did happen on Wednesday night. Yeah, wednesday was just a tragic day in our city. Yeah, it was. Yeah, we didn't get the story up until Thursday. That's because, yeah, we got the story up on Thursday.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that accident, because that didn't happen on Wednesday, we got a call from our good friend Tim Conway, who was there, went right over there, you got a little story down.
Speaker 2:We did a little video on it.
Speaker 3:Another tragic accident. The young man out of the city of San Fernando it's in the story I don't know his name off the top of my head but you know lost his life riding a motorcycle Speed was definitely one of the concerns, I was told by the officers out at the scene and for the other gentleman that he collided with. So they had Olive closed off from Beachwood to Griffith Park during the investigation.
Speaker 2:I know a lot of people heard it, I was told and they Well, craig, in your time, through enforcement and everything else, I mean you've probably seen more than anybody else that people, I'm sure under 30 years old, all think they're invincible, can never get hurt. Speeding is oh, I can do this, I know what I'm doing and they're the ones who wind up, usually dead. So I mean I'm sure you've seen a lot of it in your time.
Speaker 1:Well, I have, but I'm not making a determination as to the cause of this crash. I don't have all the information and the investigators probably haven't even finalized anything yet. But motorcycles, you're already vulnerable. On a motorcycle it's a less stable platform and on a on a street like that at night, the speeds tend to go up and whether the motorcycle is at fault or the car, typically when the two collide the lug nut rule applies. The larger vehicle wins and an unprotected rider of a motorcycle is typically going to be on the losing end of that, which, in this case, he certainly was. It's a shame. Speed is often a primary causal factor of collisions like this, if not a right-of-way violation, those are usually about the top two, uh, but uh, yeah, that's hard to tell.
Speaker 2:I mean, I haven't seen enough to to make it a termination, but I think ross, I've seen more than my share I think, ross, they told you that the scene at speed was probably a consideration, correct?
Speaker 3:Yeah, they were looking for cameras. It happened right next to the Social Security building there. That's where he ended up and it's you know. I've covered a lot.
Speaker 1:They were looking for skid marks, the length of skid marks or whether there are skid marks visible or none.
Speaker 2:That also is a fact, and the thing that people don't really know that they can do is now everybody's got cameras. There's doorbell cameras, there's security cameras, everywhere and what they do is they take the cameras and they look at the footage and they measure how long it took for a person to go from point A to point B on the film and they can use that and then get the speed they were going just by looking at the distance traveled in a second on a videotape or something. So there's a lot of ways they can figure that out. It's kind of like clocking speed.
Speaker 1:Traffic speed from aircraft. Right you know, you have a fixed distance and you measure the time that takes a vehicle to get from one point to the next and you can figure it out and they get a pretty accurate number.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, it's If you do it right, yeah, I've covered a lot of accidents in this city. In the same location, 100 feet east, with somebody crossing the street a well-known photographer that had a studio there at Griffith Park walking across the street and got hit and, like I said, just a couple hundred yards, that's a dark area right there too.
Speaker 2:There's really not a lot of lighting in that area right.
Speaker 1:And really no, there are no marked crosswalks in that stretch, as I recall, for as far as for pedestrians but all of. I mean, that's a straightaway. I mean you, you stand at one end of all of. You can see the other end of all of in the city. I mean that you stand at one end of Olive, you can see the other end of Olive in the city. I mean that street doesn't turn so that almost like up on Glen Oaks, another straightaway, so the speeds go up.
Speaker 3:Well, I was speaking to the traffic one of the investigators. How many times have we said on this podcast, with Craig Durling being, you know, used to be in that field speed is crazy. This is the third fatal accident that he's had to investigate within three months. We had the gentleman at Empire Center a couple weeks ago in the parking lot 71-year-old that got killed.
Speaker 2:That wasn't speed, though, that was just…. Fatal accident, right. A fatal accident, right, that's my point here.
Speaker 3:You said speed Our numbers, you're not going to win. People aren't going to win versus a car.
Speaker 2:Stop on your phone when you're walking, where cars go.
Speaker 1:And that's a big argument I make in the teaching I do of defensive driving is I'm opposed to new cars coming out and making more decisions for the driver than the driver. You know, you see these commercials now with a new Mercedes and, oh, I had my baby in the back seat and I didn't realize I had drifted across the center line and almost, you know, hit an opposing dump truck until my car alerted me and swerved back to the right. How about the driver? Pay attention?
Speaker 1:yeah I don't like the cars paying attention for the people. All that does is give the drivers an you know, false insecurity, an unreal, false sense of security and an excuse to not pay attention at all well, it's funny you say that, craig, because I was talking to a police officer one day.
Speaker 3:He was talking a captain, in fact talking to his mother Didn't realize that he passed the off-ramp that he was planning on getting off at because it was such so ingrained in the conversation versus his driving.
Speaker 1:Well, that's it. There's a huge argument that that in my personal experience personal, professional, you know there's an argument, school of thought that the holding the cell phone isn't the problem. The conversation is the problem because cognitively, it takes your mind off of what you should be concentrating on the driving, the conversation itself. It doesn't really matter if it's in your hand or in a cup holder or whatever. The conversation is what's distracting you.
Speaker 2:As a baseball coach, something that I used a lot of times when talking because you talk psychology and information with players you just don't tell them how to swing a bat, but you have to tell them how to approach it at bat, and one of the things I constantly will tell them is that your mind is only capable of thinking of one thing at a time. You want to say multitask and all these things. I get it, but your mind can only develop and process one thought at a time.
Speaker 2:So I always ask the kids, you know, I go, okay, I give them a situation and I say, well, and then hey, what did you have for breakfast today? They go, oh, I had scrambled eggs. I go when you remember you had scrambled eggs, did you forget what you're supposed to be remembering? Yeah, I guess I did, because you can only think of one thing at a time.
Speaker 1:People as a species, we think we're so much better and smarter than we actually are. Our brains, physiologically, can't say that word. No, they uh. We're not wired to multitask. We're not good at it, we. We squeak by and we think we're multitasking, but we're we're weak on some category.
Speaker 3:We're leaving something out, one thought at a time so I'm curious, as they say, aren't the majority of the accidents caused by distracted driving? You know they're now, like you said, putting all this electronics in the car. You don't need to have a cell phone, you can talk through your radio. Now I remember going through high school. You know my parents wouldn't let me have friends in the car. You could back then. Well, now if you're pretty young you can't have other. You know that distraction of the kids in the backseat going oh, turn the radio up, do this, turn left? Oh, who did you see last week All that stuff, folks, driving hasn't changed. We got to get it under control and parents, please know the rules.
Speaker 1:If you have a youngster that's driving on an operator permit, a driving permit, learner's permit, because the terminology is different in different states, but please be aware of the rules. You know the law requires if they're under a certain age they have to have a licensed California driver in that car with them anytime they're behind the wheel. That's, I believe, 25 or older.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I know Ross and myself both had clunkers for our first cars and I think some of these parents are buying their kids $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 cars for their first cars.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Southern California.
Speaker 2:I think that's a huge problem. I think you need to give that to your kid. That first car needs to be a clunker.
Speaker 1:Well it's like somebody gets their motorcycle endorsement and the first thing they do is go out and buy a Ducati.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, Buy something. Please don't buy the fastest road bike you know, being manufactured as your first motorcycle. Learn on something that isn't immediately over your head.
Speaker 2:Well, let's keep going here. Well, the next one is another crunch, yeah well they had the arraignment in Burbank for the is another crime Friday morning they had the arraignment in Burbank for the suspect in the murder of the teacher, their son, and they are going to hold it over and continue it again on May 22nd in Pasadena now. So we will send our reporter out there to recover it when it happens.
Speaker 1:Okay. So they got a change of venue which, considering the impact to the city and people in the city, not a bad idea.
Speaker 2:Also on Friday, our big story came out about crime at the Empire Center, a story, actually, I had been working on for close to a month.
Speaker 1:Great, job on that. By the way, Kudos to you. Appreciate that A lot of work. You could tell a month.
Speaker 2:Great job on that. By the way, Kudos to you Appreciate that I want to work it.
Speaker 1:You could tell a lot of work went into that.
Speaker 2:I want to. Well, I want to thank the administrative analysts at the Burbank police department, who provided me with just more information than I actually asked for. They were very forthcoming. They're very they, they. They gave me great information, great, great statistics. Sergeant Turner was very helpful. You know I was very happy. I wasn't sure what we were going to get, and the whole story came about from one thing when Ross and I, we all listened to the radio every day. We're hearing 24 and 25 484 at Walmart, 14 and 15 44 at Walmart 14 and 15, 44 at Target 44 meaning petty thefts, and they're sending units out there 44 in custody.
Speaker 2:Right, or it'd be a robbery in progress and it'd send five or six units out there, and that's just not happening at once, that's happening every day and multiple times every day. There's probably six, seven calls a day, and Ross actually pointed out earlier today which was a good idea. I wish I thought of was to record a bunch of the calls that they put out and put those in the video also yeah.
Speaker 2:And then put them into the video and let people hear. It's a constant, constant thing. And so I started looking and saying, well, how many crimes are actually happening there? And boy, when I saw the numbers and I saw the amount of arrests, I go you've got to be kidding me. And then I see the fact that 75 to 80% of all the people arrested aren't even Burbank. They're not Burbank people.
Speaker 1:So and how many are just sided out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like 800 who were sided out or something. And I said why do we keep pulling officers off the street to go there all the time? Why aren't officers permanently assigned there? I'm thinking, well, why is there a substation? And I thought back to the substation they had at the Burbank Media Center, which actually they got rid of because it just wasn't very crowded there at times. It wasn't used that much.
Speaker 3:It wasn't used that much, but there was a little back when they put it in a lot less current Right.
Speaker 2:And, as Ross pointed out to me later, glendale Galleria has had a substation there for 40 years and it's in use and you know, donated piece of property, the same as the one in Burbank was, was donated. We did a nice little video and we showed actually the story that Burbank did on it 30 years ago. It's kind of the video is kind of scratchy but it still points it out.
Speaker 1:But I just thought Just like back in that time, the traffic, the amount of shopping being done at the mall justified the presence of a substation and full-time officers being dedicated to the mall. That may not be the case anymore. That's why it was vacated. But now there's a need at the Empire Center.
Speaker 2:I think we can justify that Well when you're seeing the cities making $7 million a year in sales tax money, then you need to invest some of that money back into the center, you know, and invest in. You know I get it. It's not you know people are getting knocked over the head and things like that, but it's you're taking cops away from their beats to go cover that constantly. I just think you know.
Speaker 1:And it's in the best interest of the businesses too, for their safety, their sense of security, to have officers in the immediate area so they can help foot the bill, just like they did at the mall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and hopefully they would donate a piece of property.
Speaker 3:Well, you know it's funny you talk about when you started this, about the crime analysts. I remember you know Craig Durling remembers when departments didn't have crime analysts. I remember 272 East Olive. They ran out of room in that building for officers. Still had the punch cards, exactly, you know out a room in that building for officers Still had the punch cards Exactly. You know and we didn't. But now they look at. Use these crime analysts to look where the crime is and map it. They can almost tell you where the next crime will occur.
Speaker 2:Well, as you saw, it gave me you know what months of the year, what days of the week, even what hours a day, are the most likely to have the crime happen.
Speaker 1:It's good for documentation, but they can take that information and predict seasonality, locations, areas, what area might be hit next. They look for patterns, which really is where their talent is really best used, not just as kind of a record keeper of crime.
Speaker 2:And is our society nowadays, with our, you know, cite and release policies, more, you know, adding to that. I'm not going to get into that. What I am going to get into the fact is we have our manpower being used in that way and if we change the laws, that's great. I don't think it's going to change theft.
Speaker 1:And in Burbank the way they're set up is they're probably pulling two units out of the field to respond to a lot of these calls, Not just one.
Speaker 2:If they're running one-man cars, they're sending two officers, so that's two cars coming out of their beat Every call taking away from 30 minutes to two and a half hours. Yep.
Speaker 3:Well, also, when you call about something on your block and you look out your front of your house and you don't see a police officer for a while, that's because they're writing a theft report at the Empire Center Not just the Empire Center, but other places. Last night I heard them at Vons on Pass but majority, and you wonder why sometimes there's that delay. You know, did we all take that?
Speaker 2:I remember when they put Walmart in, a lot of people were not happy and Walmart has their own loss. Prevention people there, yep, so does Target, but they can't arrest people.
Speaker 1:Right, but they can't take people, they can't cite them, they'll detain people, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then they've got to call Burbank and Burbank has to come and pick them up and do the report and book them and everything.
Speaker 3:Correct. Sherwood, do you remember when we had a reporter we wanted to do a story on the traffic light cameras that they can gather information and Burbank for years said no, no, no, we don't want anybody to know that we have cameras that we can record license plates? Now they want to put them. They are on almost every traffic light and they use them to find out and most cars. If you're stealing something, you're not the best citizen in the world. You're driving a stolen car with a stolen plane.
Speaker 2:They'd love to see the Empire Center put in cameras with licensed readers in their parking lot. I contacted the management company and they would not respond to me. All I heard was a. Anyhow, please read the story. I'm very happy to see how many views it's had.
Speaker 1:We have a video up on it too, and where can they see the story and the video?
Speaker 2:The story is on MyBurbank. Hopefully you know what MyBurbank is.
Speaker 1:MyBurbankcom is the website.
Speaker 2:And the video is on.
Speaker 1:MyBurbank, myburbank on YouTube. The video is up there.
Speaker 2:So please check it out. Ah, moving on, Holy cow. Last week was a busy week, wasn't? It Holy cow Really really was. Now we're to Saturday and we got a lot more on Saturday even.
Speaker 1:We haven't even finished last week yet.
Speaker 3:We still have Friday.
Speaker 2:Oh, we still have Friday, don't we? Oh yeah, we have one more thing the Home Again LA Gala. I think one of the last galas for the gala season.
Speaker 3:Thank, goodness, I think there's only one left or something. Yeah, I think there is.
Speaker 1:That just means we're coming into some new season.
Speaker 2:So how was the gala Ross?
Speaker 3:Well, the go was over at the Gene Autry Museum. That is a gorgeous, gorgeous facility. It wasn't as cold as the previous week at the Lakeside Country Club, but this was for Home LA and they honored the city on housing and so forth. They also gave an award to Barbara Lazar, who worked in Burbank community development for many, many years and she started working on homelessness and so forth over 30 years ago and they honored her posthumously. It was very, very well attended. Our own, ashley Erickson, and myself, were there and the story is online right now as we can say, Of course we're on myberbrickcom.
Speaker 3:That's right there you go A nice photo gallery. I know they collected a lot of donations for the purpose. They had some auctions that were going on. Our city mayor and vice mayor were present to accept the award. Our city manager and assistant city manager were there. Our city treasurer was there. Our city clerk was there.
Speaker 1:It was very, very well attended by our city, Ross, didn't you and I attend a Home Again LA event around Christmas at Tequila's right?
Speaker 3:That's right, in fact, the good timing, I think I.
Speaker 1:No, you had a 50-50 shot and you're looking at the one that didn't say anything.
Speaker 3:Well, see, that's the thing Having all four of you, or two of you, all four of us, huh.
Speaker 1:On the same monitor.
Speaker 2:I guess Dodger's asleep. He ain't in this conversation. And, technically, there's two people in my shot here, yeah, and Dodger's, wait a minute, I'm bored.
Speaker 3:Forget it, he checked out. You are correct. Tequilas, along with the Burbank Chamber of Commerce and Home LA, do a benefit every year at Tequilas, and Wednesday night they are doing another to support Home LA. You can eat any time onuesday and say you're there, uh and you want uh it to go to family promise and they will donate to for this. So coming wednesday night, may 15th okay, that was a good point, correct, darling?
Speaker 1:but now, tuesday, are we talking about Tomorrow.
Speaker 3:Wednesday, the 15th.
Speaker 1:Wednesday, the 15th Yep.
Speaker 3:Tequila's 4310 West Magnolia.
Speaker 1:A sponsor, a wonderful sponsor.
Speaker 2:Yep, now we're moving on to the weekend. Saturday morning, byron Police Service Day, once again very well attended, very crowded. The same things they do every year with the extrications and this year, of course, some years they do, some years they don't. But they had the helicopter there this year also. So, ross, anything you want to talk about?
Speaker 3:Well, it's funny, we were there at the Caracadon. What about 9 o'clock? And it's funny you say that because somebody-.
Speaker 1:It started at 9. We were there at 7.30.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the crack of dawn.
Speaker 3:Somebody said that they do the same displays. We've been there a couple of years. They do CPR, kids CPR, sidewalk CPR. They have the train set up by a fire captain. They did a car extrication. They did firemen climbing up the hundred foot ladder.
Speaker 2:I can watch that every year, though, just because it's the same thing.
Speaker 1:It's always fascinating it is, and a lot of these, you know it's a lot of first timers, it's the they've never been to one, so it's all new to them.
Speaker 1:You know it's a lot of first timers. It's the they've never been to one, so it's all new to them. So you get a kind of a new crowd every year. But the helicopter was there, the airport fire crash rig was there, disney fire department mickey and minnie were there taking pictures with everybody you know, I said how fortunate are we to live in a city where disney is uh, that's the thing. This was the mickey and minnie this wasn't some.
Speaker 2:Oh no, these are no, that's a neighborhood carnival.
Speaker 1:Uh, mickey and minnie smell like mothballs they're the 70 year old originals and they're getting around pretty well.
Speaker 3:Yes, they are the motor, the police motors had a slalom course, is it or a course that they wrote out there? They had the drone operator, they had juvenile bureau out there. The animal, the command staff with the command post, the bear cat, the SWAT truck, laz, don't forget, they came in and said hi to us, the new parking enforcement.
Speaker 2:Yes, our parking folks Didn't say hi to me this time.
Speaker 3:No, you were too busy talking to some police commissioner.
Speaker 2:But they did come in and say, hi, you brought over to the table.
Speaker 3:But they in this last budget they are hiring. If you'd like to be a parking control officer, they are accepting applications currently. The city found that they're making good revenue.
Speaker 1:Last year, when we interviewed their supervisor, he was telling us what was to come when Laz started working on the job in Burbank. This time was there a year in review done.
Speaker 2:Well they're hiring more people, so that's a good sign they found. More people means more money coming in, so that's the bottom line.
Speaker 3:Well, that's true, and they were out there. I'm trying to think I've never seen the forensic people. They were out there this year showing people how they lift latent fingerprints and they had some really neat tools out there Free ice cream for the kids, they had bounce houses, they had a couple of food trucks, the fire department was cooking. It was just a great day again at the second week of may usually, and I highly recommend I know my granddaughters one got on the ground and learned cpr. She's five and, god forbid, I'm around. I know she would jump on my chest and know how to what to do and tell yell to somebody well, we call 9-1-1, sure wouldn't?
Speaker 1:I would do the same thing. We would jump on your up, up, down on your chest, but uh and then she got to go, go ahead go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, burbank is one of the unique fire serve, fire and police service days, isn't that? It's mostly it's usually fire service day where a fire department they open. They basically have open houses, their station, where members of the community can come in and have a tour and look at the apparatus In their neighborhood stations Burbank, because they share a police and fire headquarters, they share the day. Like we said, we had the helicopter, the SWAT team, the canines and all the fire department represented there. It's a great day and that's unique to Burbank in itself. But a lot of communities don't have events like this. They just have, like LA City, they have these open houses. The stations are open for kind of the public to visit, but they don't. This is an event, this is something else. This is you know, you spend half a day. Some people spend the whole time. It goes from what nine to two, so that's five hours. Some people are there waiting for it to start and are there when it closes up because there's that much to see.
Speaker 3:Well, craig, didn't you have that little thing in your hand counting how many people didn't lose? Count over a couple thousand. The little finger, you know, the number counter, the little clicker.
Speaker 1:The little clicker Well, that's not to be confused with the rat hole clicker, but but, uh, you know I lost count. There was a. It was a steady stream of people from from nine o'clock to to two o'clock when we started breaking down. But, um, I was manning our photo display that, uh, that you and I uh always set up at this and those it's hugely popular. A lot of people enjoy uh seeing because the demonstrations and the equipment, um, you know that are on display there kind of see the tools that are used, and I'm proud to say that our pictures show them in action actually doing the job, and a lot of people don't normally get to see that from the perspective that we're able to share. So the photo table is always very popular. The kids love it and it was right next to the my Burbank uh talks table where you did your interviews and and all that which it looks like that brings up uh we, we did a podcast.
Speaker 3:We um, we are going to have a story in my burbank about fire service day. I know ashley's working on it. She's been busy, busy. That'll be online in the next couple of days. But it was really neat to see a lot of these firemen are young and they have families, all their families. They're carrying their kids on their shoulders and it was kind of neat to see some of the young, young kids.
Speaker 1:You know they love to come get their help. There are smaller firefighters too. I remember, you know, photographing their academy graduation and now they're either battalion chiefs or retired Scary.
Speaker 3:Well, in one of our podcasts we talked to Deputy Chief Mark Hatch, only to find out his 30 years. July 1st will be 30 years and him and two others have his 1990—30 years ago. Let me do my mouth.
Speaker 1:His classmates are retired.
Speaker 3:His classmates, they're all retiring July 1st, so it's like wow.
Speaker 1:Another great fire and police service day, and there was an event after that too, across town right, yes, there was Elevate.
Speaker 2:Burbank had their community festival. Yeah, I know Ross stopped by there, also Busy day for Mr Benson.
Speaker 3:Gosh, my feet were killing me, my back and everything.
Speaker 1:All on about 20 minutes of sleep right.
Speaker 3:You are so correct. Doing an event the night before you know me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3:And yeah, I didn't sleep at all the night before and I got home and it hurt to lay down, but I stopped over at Elevate Burbank. Good turnout, a couple thousand people out there. That was going on same, you know, from 11 before. I think they had a stage. We're going to have a photo gallery and a little story. Um, linda beson, who I think is the chairman of the president of elevate elevate burbank, and her crew used that parking lot. It was a free event. They had food trucks out there that probably weren't free, but I saw there were. Yes, when I was there at 3.30 still there were several hundred people out there enjoying the day. So Burbank had a lot going on this weekend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's too bad, we couldn't have done it on the weekend, and this was all on one day, so Burbank had a lot going on this weekend, and this was all in one day.
Speaker 2:We couldn't have split that up into a couple different weekends?
Speaker 3:If you recall, you and I asked Lynn and she said she didn't know if fire service. It's the second week of May and it has been every year since I had here, probably on a city calendar somewhere, Well, even if they don't, you know, and I know some people get confused because they change it once or twice because of Mother's Day, always on the Sunday following. But you know what? It's the second week of May, but you managed to do it.
Speaker 1:You took in both events, you ran across town and you stayed until the end of Fire Service Day, so that can definitely be done. You could get the twofer if you tried.
Speaker 3:And if you stayed long enough at fire service day, you could see the helicopter take off from the back parking lot. It arrived about 6.
Speaker 1:I think I was so busy inside because our display was on the apparatus floor. I don't think I got outside, maybe once to say hi to your son when they and his family showed up, but I didn't see much of anything because I was too busy at the photo table.
Speaker 3:So look for the article that, ashley. In fact, greg, don't we have a video up? Didn't she do a video of fire services, I believe?
Speaker 2:she did. She did a little highlight. They call it a short.
Speaker 1:A short, A short On the YouTube my Burbank Great.
Speaker 2:Well, moving on. Okay, well, that's it for the week that was. Let's take a quick commercial break and we're going to come back. Wow, look at that, we're bringing the show a long time. But you know what? All good information.
Speaker 3:We had a lot going on this weekend.
Speaker 2:Be back in a second, of course, with the week that will be.
Speaker 4:Enjoying the show right now, thinking you may want to do your own podcast, viberate Talks is renting out our podcast studio on an hourly rate. You can do audio podcasts or both audio and video, and even bring in guests to talk with. We will help you get set up on podcast platforms and start a YouTube channel, and we can edit your productions to make you look and sound your very best. If you are interested, please drop us an email at studiorentalsatmyburbankcom. That's studiorentalsatmyburbankcom, and we will get back to you. Now back to our show.
Speaker 2:And we are back. Greg Schuett here, along with, of course, ross Benson. I guess he doesn't for you listening on your cars right now. Maybe he's not back, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know it's funny. I have this little control board in front of me and I'm waving and nothing's coming out of the mouth, even though I said to my brain we got to do audio and video.
Speaker 2:Remember one thing at a time. It's all your brain can process, See.
Speaker 3:You guys put this machine in for me. Multitasking, and we also have Mr Durling with us, mr Durling on the Zoom, zoom, zoom.
Speaker 1:Still here, looking forward to next week.
Speaker 2:Will you be back in our studio next week?
Speaker 1:No, but we're about to talk about next week. Oh, this week, the week that will be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the week that will be. That is currently going. There we go Today. This morning we had a ribbon cutting at uh ballers and brew ross. You were there, anything you?
Speaker 3:want to report on. Besides, it was very early. Thank goodness I lived two blocks away and I could get up. It was an 8 30 ribbon cutting. I could get up at 8 15 and be there I wonder why so early for a beer place not a beer place isn't brew beer no coffee oh that kind of brewing coffee okay, see, I didn't know that either.
Speaker 1:See ballers and brew, not to be confused with a brewski there you go, ballers and brew is is over.
Speaker 3:Uh, right across from, oh gosh, the masada call on irving drive. Not a lot of people know where irving is it. It's a 400 block, 407 Irving.
Speaker 1:Drive.
Speaker 3:There you go and they have been there for a couple of years. This was an anniversary. They do a lot. We're at Fire and Police Service Day giving out free coffee and donuts. The police department does meet a cop for coffee with a cop at their place. All the time they go out Very community-minded, the family operation, their daughter, their husband and wife team. I will tell you they had some fresh stuff. This guy makes croissants. I am not exaggerating.
Speaker 1:You do not have to chew, they melt in your mouth. You still have some powdered sugar on your shirt there I wouldn't doubt it.
Speaker 3:They had donuts with cheerios on them, colored fruit loops on them, tetanus, colored ants on them. They had the maple cake and they had apple fritters and you know what? We had a great ribbon cutting and, uh, stopped by. I mean, little business like that, a mom and pop shop, um, even lox and bagel. I saw, I didn't know that, a block from my house, but uh, where's what? Was the numbers?
Speaker 1:again, mr derling, on irving 407 irving drive, plenty of parking uh organic glen oaks and irving.
Speaker 2:Gl Glen Oaks and Irving is where the intersection is it's a hundred block.
Speaker 1:It would be put it at Glen Oaks right.
Speaker 3:Yep, exactly, we're the old next to J Scott Drug. So it was this morning then I did have to go take a nap.
Speaker 2:Well then you probably would have slept through this tonight. Tonight they had the planning commission meeting. No-transcript, busiest intersection, okay, but here's the thing. It says here that they need to get a permit because it's a unique-looking property, but they call it a new convenience store. Well, that convenience store has been there for years. They're not building a new store there. I'm not sure why. In other words, somebody screwed up and they didn't have the right trash thing they're going to put in there, or they're going to get the variance they need for what they did to make this enclosure, but it just seems like I don't know.
Speaker 3:Well, honestly, I drive by there quite a bit. And I've used that station, but if you think how the entrance is off of Olive and off of Pointe Vista, there is an alley that goes right behind the place and a cross alley right behind the place, so you don't have yeah, it's an unusual property, that's it exactly and for them what they need, I get it. People pull in over where you fill up your air and that's where it's going Right.
Speaker 2:I'm saying that's great, but they call it a new convenience store and it's not a new convenience store.
Speaker 3:I would say, when we have our planning, commissioner on, it might have been a new convenience store when they actually applied for this permit years ago.
Speaker 2:Anyhow, moving on, tomorrow night the city council our new water and power person decided to turn all the lights off. It's a dark meeting. It means there's no meeting at the city council on Tuesday, but a week from Tuesday they will be back and finishing up the budget and talking about gun stores. So we'll get to you next week on that when it comes up On Wednesday. You were talking earlier about Coffee with a Cop. Well, coffee with a Cop is going to be at the Nordstrom Rack at the Empire Center from 10 am to noon and I guess I happen to see that I see a North Hollywood or Van Nuys division is doing also a Coffee with a Cop at a shopping center, also at the same exact time. I guess it's saying that a lot of departments do at that. It's not just a unique Burbank thing. You want to see the Empire Center. In all honesty, there probably won't be a lot of crime going on at 10 o'clock in the morning. There probably won't be any issues there.
Speaker 1:It's a good excuse to watch your Empire Center video. So you go to coffee with a Cop with some questions.
Speaker 2:Yes, and read the story and then say what's going on here.
Speaker 3:Wednesday, may 15th is a busy, busy day. I'm just curious, greg Sherwood, how many times have you been in North Samarac?
Speaker 2:I don't know. North Samarac even sells, okay, greg Durling rack I don't know what nordstrom rack even sells, okay correct derling uh, I don't know that, I've ever gone into that one is it a women's store?
Speaker 1:no, I know it's. It's like you know, nordstrom is a kind of an upscale department store. Nordstrom rack is kind of like seconds and last year's, so it's like that.
Speaker 2:It's an upscale cheap store. Wait a second here. It's discounted Nordstrom, okay well upscale and me just don't mix Any kind of clothing store, but you'd fit perfectly in Nordstrom rack. Well, the only store I can go to is the big fat ugly tall store. I just go to the big fat ugly tall store. That's about it. All I can go to is the Big Fat Ugly Tall Store, bottom Shelf, nordstrom. I just go to the Big Fat Ugly. Tall Store, that's about it all I can go to.
Speaker 1:Anyhow, I'm going to get that website.
Speaker 2:if that's a website, I'm going to claim that Also on Wednesday, the Burbank Transportation Management Organization they're going to hold a bike walk and breathe event at carson park from 11 am to 2 pm. So, um, this is on a weekday now, not on a weekend. So at this event you're gonna have a chance to get a bike checkup. If you'd like one, um, you're going to. You know, talk to representatives from different local bike shops, so I guess I'll have a lot of representatives out there.
Speaker 2:If you want to talk about that, it'll be about planning agencies discover the best bike routes in Burbank, learn about the group rides they have planned and, of course, get biking tips. You can also learn about the eco-friendly mobility options and chat with local health and community representatives. There's going to be a lot of people out there for a weekday at Johnny Carson Park, and of course, you're going to enjoy activities such as prizes and giveaways, free fitness activities, food trucks, music, bike on bus rack, demonstrations. Okay, so you want to put your bike onto a bus rack and when you're going on a bus, I'll show you how to do that and more. And then, if you can't make it during the day, don't worry, they're going to have another one at the downtown Burbank Metric Station from 3.30 to 6 o'clock, where they'll be once again stationed with giveaways and transportation resources.
Speaker 1:I think the city of Burbank is single-handedly keeping the food truck industry alive in Southern California. Holy cow.
Speaker 3:Well, every year the parking management puts on this event because, I've covered it, every year it's usually at the park building on Alameda and this time they've moved it, you know, to Johnny Carson Park because of the space and parking.
Speaker 2:They don't do it on a weekday, when more people would be accessible to more people.
Speaker 3:Because a lot of people don't work on the weekend and it's walk bike Burbank workday. You know they want to get people.
Speaker 2:But if they're working at their jobs, how can they get there to?
Speaker 3:You know how many people down in the media district ride their bike like the park building and provide showers. If you're working nine to five job, it's gonna be hard to well. There's as many nine to five jobs as there used to be. Yeah, that's true. I remember several years ago shooting our city managers justin s riding a bike that day and I remember I had to get him in the right block and it was up at the metro station where he rode to. But um, like Walk Bike Burbank is going to be out there. Last week they closed Front Street so they could put in the bike lane and correct that street. And you want to know, you want a map of where all these things are. This is the event to go to, and so forth. I know, like I said, I'll be out there shooting some pictures of some of the stuff going on. And I was also told if you ride your bike and want to get on any Metro bus the day with your bike, your ride is free.
Speaker 1:On what day? Any day On Wednesday, on Wednesday.
Speaker 3:All day Wednesday. You ride your bike and want to put it on the front of a metro or on a train. Your fee is free.
Speaker 2:There you go. Too bad a bus doesn't run by Johnny Carson Park.
Speaker 1:Do you ride in your bike there, Mr Benson?
Speaker 3:No, my bike needs the training wheels changed on it, uh-oh.
Speaker 1:They're square.
Speaker 2:Wait, wait, there goes the bus right now. You're a weak sound effect though, isn't it? Oh well, also, on Wednesday there will be a community meeting. Community Development Department invites you to join them for a community meeting to discuss the residential soft-story seismic retrofit program from 530 to 630 pm at the community services building, and basically what that is is they want to seismically retrofit all the first stories of these two-story apartment buildings, so when there's an earthquake, it remains a two-story building.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right Ross, say that three times fast. Residential soft story seismic retrofit program.
Speaker 3:I'm still trying to figure out what page he's on.
Speaker 2:Well then, after, of course, after 530,. When you go to that quick meeting, then jog over to the city hall, because it's 6 o'clock, your favorite.
Speaker 3:We're going to have a police commission meeting well before the police commission meeting, even though you're not a big supporter, leadership burbank if you grow. Having a graduation at five o'clock that same wednesday is god darn crazy that was not in the order.
Speaker 2:Okay, I put things in order by time, but that you just kind of stuck it in at the end what time?
Speaker 3:is that that's at 5 o'clock oh okay, yeah, there's no time on here. And that'll be up at Woodbury. That'll be up at Woodbury. And then I said to our police commissioners one or two of them that are leadership Burbank graduates, they're not going to make it. I don't know how the police chief's going to make it, why they plan all this stuff on the same day. Wait a second.
Speaker 1:You know what's right across the street from Woodbury Hill Street Cafe.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 3:Hampton oh, the Hampton place. Wow, and none of them considered that Wednesday is my damn birthday. You're having a busy birthday I got to cover all these events and if I get cakes at all of them, I won't walk on Thursday.
Speaker 2:So the city's putting all these meetings on the same day. I can't imagine how the city would ever do something like that. It's a first for everything, mr Sherwood. Oh boy, let me tell you what.
Speaker 1:First, time for everything.
Speaker 2:The city doesn't even look at their own calendar.
Speaker 3:That's what gets me. When somebody called me and said put this my calendar. You know I use Gmail or Google Calendar, it just keeps saying you have four things overlapping. How do you get from one to the other, to the other?
Speaker 2:Well, you don't schedule them all on the same day. That's how you start, I mean. And the city, these are all city events and they still schedule them all on the same day. Well, they must be assuming that one person isn't going to be interested and want to attend all the different things. Right, people are going to pick one.
Speaker 3:I mean I understand that your premise the departments don't talk to each other. That's the problem. Well, good point, because we have liaisons. Our city council, you know our liaisons on, like, the police commission. Okay, two of our city council members are usually there. Well, they probably won't be this wednesday because they'll be at the leadership burbank graduation. Our mayor will be at the burbank. You know leadership, you know presentation and it just, it's just crazy, crazy it's pretty thin it's crazy and you're talking about with the police commission meeting.
Speaker 2:You're right, because I'm over them, so I'll let you just yeah, today was a good example talk he's recusing himself oh, yes, well
Speaker 3:he said he was going to, but he keeps bringing it up. But um, today somebody said to me oh, mr schultz said we got seven minutes to do this ribbon cutting. I have a Zoom call at 8.50. And it's like who schedules, you know, ribbon cutting? And then he has to dart off and drive what 100 miles to an hour down Glen Oaks to get to a Zoom meeting.
Speaker 2:It's not the same people I mean people don't schedule the ribbon cutting who schedule the meeting at City Hall? Those are, they don't work for City.
Speaker 3:They schedule where he's a private business. We get his calendar. When you look at his calendar, there's things like this Wednesday I'll let you get into the police commission meeting. I just know they're going to talk about nothing and probably bring up something. You're the one that talked to the police commissioner the other day. Did you ask him why they don't do anything?
Speaker 2:I told him I'm done with them. I go. What's the use of communicating with you when you don't read my emails, when you don't listen to our, when you guys, all you are is the PR wing. You're the PR wing of the Burbank Police Department and you have no policy decisions and you do nothing besides just get reports and file them. You do no actions of the city council. I'm done with them.
Speaker 1:But for the sake of talking about their meeting, they do have four items.
Speaker 2:Yes, at 6 o'clock at City. Hall on Wednesday.
Speaker 1:You want me to say what the items are. If you'd like to go ahead? Okay Presentation, discussion and recommendations, if applicable, on the status of patrol vehicles and technology updates. Let's see department policies, statistics and outcomes of the department's homeless population engagement, the deployment of the new mental health evaluation team vehicle and general announcements by the police chief. Brief announcements regarding upcoming events and or items of note related to the police department I don't know where you go. There's your police commission agenda there it is.
Speaker 3:You know, and one or two of those I I get it, you know. I think I heard, uh, in a previous meeting. Everybody's talking about this 2035 plan or even 2025 plan. You know, a couple of commissioners want to know electric vehicles. How well prepared is Burbank PD when we're, you know, down the road you can't get Ford Explorers anymore. I hear they're looking at buying Pajos now because they're running out of vehicles and now the computers that they put in these vehicles are different from Ford to Chevy, so you've got to retool everything. So there's things like that they want to have answers on.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say one thing I did have a long talk with the commissioner and it was a good talk. He's a good commissioner. I'm not going to say who it was, because he told me that he's frustrated, also because he's trying to bring things up to the agenda and they won't put him on the agenda. They won't talk about the things he'd like to talk about. So you know, even the commissioners are being stifled. So you know, good luck and best wishes.
Speaker 3:Well, today, I will say, one of the other commissioners was at Ballers and Brew and he I asked him the agendas that you guys have had two of. You have put 70 to 80% of the stuff on that agenda.
Speaker 1:Just two commissioners want to know what's going on.
Speaker 3:And are actually there for the meeting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, wow, but I'm curious, curious moving on and besides okay, besides the leadership, burbank graduation, we're also going to have a, a um, an event in the burbank oh, that's what I'm a library.
Speaker 3:That's what I meant to ask you. Is that the same flipping day?
Speaker 2:that's the same flipping day. Holy holy hemorrhoids.
Speaker 3:I know, and that's the same flippin day.
Speaker 1:Holy holy hemorrhoids and that's it um. Wednesday the 15th has like two and a half pages of our rundown yeah, all from 7 to 8 30.
Speaker 2:They're going to have a if you're into space travel and to who isn't? They're going to be having a a meeting about the Europia what Europa? The Europia Clipper mission. It's a NASA mission to Europia, which, of course, is a moon that travels around Jupiter. I'm sorry, what's that word again?
Speaker 1:Europa.
Speaker 2:That's also our word of the week.
Speaker 3:So if anybody writes it, word of the week we finally got there, we're only 72 minutes in 71 minutes in. So if somebody writes NASA, you don't qualify.
Speaker 2:No, no, not NASA, you got to write.
Speaker 3:Europa.
Speaker 1:I can spell it. I mean you can sound it out no, no, not NASA, you've got to write Europa. I can spell it. I mean you can sound it out and spell it however you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't care how you spell it E-U-R-O-P-A.
Speaker 1:Europa.
Speaker 2:We don't give notes for bad spelling, so what do they do with the word of the week, mr Sheridan? Well, if they send an email to contest at my burbankcom and in the subject line put europa and send that in to us, we will pick a winner of the week for a 25 gift certificate for hill street cafe.
Speaker 3:I I'm sorry if if we get more, I can't wait to see how many people send in those emails.
Speaker 1:The more the merrier, the more the merrier, you know. But uh, what was I gonna say? I'm gonna say something. Oh, you know why? We use the air horn as the sound for the word of the week to wake our people up. Thank you, there you go, just to wake you up, in case you've dozed off. We're we're deep into the show now, but thanks for sticking around long enough to hear that.
Speaker 3:Okay, just for your submissions, that we look forward to your submissions. What's the word of the week?
Speaker 2:I'm sure it's Europa. Anyhow, they're going to have a presentation by two NASA scientists. I understand talking about the mission they're going to have to Europa In person, In person. A five-and-a-half half year mission from the JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the spacecraft will enter orbit around Jupiter and perform nearly 50 flybys of Europa over a four year period. So I don't know if you, I enjoy the space stuff. I know that the Mars rover or whatever I'm not sure what exactly it's called, but they've been sending back some amazing pictures of the Mars stuff. I know that the uh, the Mars Rover or whatever I'm not sure what exactly it's called, but they've been sending back some amazing pictures of the Mars surface.
Speaker 1:Well, the SpaceX is getting a lot of the attention right now because of all their launches, but people are forgetting about these ongoing projects that have that have been going on for a few years.
Speaker 2:And Europa is a great work. Europa is a frozen planet, so I mean what Doing some great work. Europa's a frozen planet. What is Europa? It's a frozen planet, Frozen moon. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I'm just trying to get you to say Europa again.
Speaker 2:There's no life there. But if it's frozen it must have water Wait wait, wait, there is water.
Speaker 1:There's no life there because there's no Wi-Fi.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Who would want to be there? Craig Sherwood would not function then life there because there's no wi-fi.
Speaker 3:oh, that's absolutely who would want to be there, craig sherwood would not function. Then I would not work I know, neither would his house I'm sorry, is that word anything kind of like when you go to a greek restaurant, they throw the plates in the floor. What do they say?
Speaker 1:no, that's opa, oh opa, not europa I thought I was close Opa. Nice call Good call though my Opa, your Opa? I don't know you can't say Europa without saying Opa.
Speaker 3:Watch how you say that, buddy.
Speaker 2:Hey now. Well, that's going to take us to the weekend.
Speaker 3:Oh, we got there finally. I'm exhausted.
Speaker 2:Holy cow, there's actually a weekend coming up and of this weekend we're going to have one of the great things in our city a dig event Dig it, and that's going to be at the McCambridge Park War Memorial from 8 to 10 am. I'm sure they need to spruce it up a little before the ceremony at the end of the month here.
Speaker 3:I drive past it. I did three hours ago and you know what those people will be digging for a while, because there's a lot of weeds in that rose garden.
Speaker 2:So you're saying they need to bring their hose, it's going to look great when they're done. Everybody bring your hose.
Speaker 1:They need to bring their hose, never leave your hose at home, not in that neighborhood.
Speaker 3:The hotels are around when you're going to a dig event.
Speaker 2:Do not leave your hose at home. Okay, yes, you've got to bring your hose.
Speaker 1:Anyhow.
Speaker 2:Community Development Department. It's that time of the show. Yes, it is the late night version. Community Development Department is hosting its fourth community workshop in conjunction with the first of two walking tours of the downtown Burbank TOD, which is a transient-oriented development. So if you want to get involved in that conversation, they're going to meet at the Community Services Building at 9 am and it goes till noon and they're going to have an update and presentation of what's going on through the planned area, followed by a guided walking tour through the downtown core Civic Center, the area around the Metric Station and then back to the CSB building. Carry around the Metric Station and then back to the CSB building and then they'll be able to give you project.
Speaker 1:City staff and the project consultant team will be available to answer questions and hear your comments and you get your steps in.
Speaker 3:You get your steps in. So wait a minute, I'm glad. Thank you very much. When you do these show notes, you wrote down TOD specific, specific plan and I will say, if you did not write in parentheses transit, or you know what.
Speaker 2:I didn't know what it was either, in all honesty, and I had to go look it up oh okay, how many? Times have we looked up dig and found nothing because and I actually sent an official request in dig does mean nothing doesn't stand for anything, it's just the word like, like the action to dig.
Speaker 3:So if you're walking all over downtown the MetroLink and the POD specific, you know the, et cetera do you get a discount at Fleet Feet, the new tennis shoes there you?
Speaker 2:go, boom, boom. I do have one of those too, by the way I beat you to it.
Speaker 1:You're slow, by the way. I beat you too.
Speaker 2:It wasn't worth it.
Speaker 1:Sleep at the switch. I got to give them some credit for trying.
Speaker 2:Once again, they don't plan if you can't walk, didn't you look into that? I want to go to the media specific plan, the media specific plan. They had a walking tour. I couldn't go because they didn't have any kind of transportation for people like me, who just can't, who need new knees.
Speaker 3:So I was left out. We have Burbank bus that will hold 60 passengers that will lean down and pick up wheelchairs. We have things for our disabled Burbank residents. Why the hell can't they bring out one of those buses?
Speaker 2:Put you on a bus and do a tour with the bus. I'd be the tour guide if they want me to talk. It's not like those buses are full of paying customers.
Speaker 3:I'd lend them a wheelchair that I have, you know, to put some, because that's come on, they say Burbank bus and people can wave out the window, and all the handicapped people and they wonder what you're doing.
Speaker 1:So you're saying these tours aren't ADA compliant? There you go, there you go. Well, there you go. Yep, what a joke. Did I open a can of worms?
Speaker 3:City's going to get sued from somebody soon. Edit point.
Speaker 2:Who's that lawyer that sues all the businesses for not having the right size of the?
Speaker 3:he goes by his initials. I don't know whatever.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, you know what we are so far are we there yet? We're there, we have finally made it there, you can, you can get ready, you can get excited, because it's time for one thing, yes, and one thing only, and that would be ross's rant ross's rant.
Speaker 4:Ross's rant I'd take a flame through into this place. What's up, doc?
Speaker 3:well, doc, or or whoever that was, why is this? Flashing here. We've detected your local network is slow. That's because look who's talking. I'll try to hurry it up. So this show is even called worse. Yeah you're right. My rant, I got a good rant. I have a couple of things drive along, oh great. It says that we lost somebody's camera don't get distracted okay, all right, um everybody's been waiting for the rant.
Speaker 1:Let's go somebody.
Speaker 3:I will say I saw it on facebook, but I also saw it when I walked out of UME Credit Union the other day. There is a whole block of businesses across from the UME Credit Union owned by the same property owner who happens to own a Halloween shop at one end of the block, owns them all. They're all vacant. She has painted them all black. Now, black is not my favorite color, but I noticed. I was on Burbank Boulevard, our victory, the other day at a new Mexican restaurant, and I'm looking across the street and there's now two businesses over there painted black. What is this thing? I think the city. We should either have the kids go out there and paint a mural, but I'm sorry, black looks like shit.
Speaker 3:There he goes again what happened is I happen to have somebody say at fire service say they don't mind when I get a little foul, but everybody wants you to get a little fired up, yeah you know, I, I don't, I hate, I think I remember telling everybody when I drove Sherman Way from wherever out there, where were we? Craig? We came back via Sherman Way. We were out of Burbank.
Speaker 1:It was out of.
Speaker 3:Arizona.
Speaker 1:You left the bubble.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but the businesses look like crap out there. You know you paint them black. Next you're going to see a poster on them or you're going to see a wood or this or that most attractive architectural color.
Speaker 1:But you know the sinclair station at riverside hollywood way yeah that's always been black. Nobody's been able to explain it. And I went in there one day and asked the proprietor why it's painted black and uh, he said it because he thought it looked cool. And then he said check out the bathroom. All the walls are covered in diamond plate, which it was, some people will say, black is beautiful, it's an aesthetic, I guess.
Speaker 3:Wow. Well, that was one of my main rants and then my other rant I noticed on. So you know the city, I think you know. In fact, I remember when Nickelodeon put those characters on top of their building, one of our city council members said who allowed them to do that? You know, I'm sorry, I would rather have SpongeBob SquarePants on a vacant building or something that says media capital, this place for rent, you know, than painted black. So I would love to know if the city does have an ordinance about that and they've just done it and the city hasn't gone out and inspected it. And quickly.
Speaker 3:I just want people to throw on their calendar. I know it's a couple of weeks away, on May 22nd, which is only what? A week away, burbank in Pictures is doing a thing at the Boys and Girls Club with some longtime photographers in the city. I will admit that I am a guest speaker, along with Bonnie Burrows and David Larell. We are going to talk about pictures in the history of Burbank via pictures. Pictures in the history of Burbank via pictures you can find out from, I believe, through the library, or Burbank Art Commission is who's working on it. It'll be at the Boys and Girls Club starts at 7 o'clock and the other thing is the May 23rd wine tasting. I know tequila is one of our advertisers and highly recommend it.
Speaker 1:Tequila tasting it's actually tequila. El Sativa. Tequila, say that quickly. You did I tasting it's actually El Sativa.
Speaker 3:Tequila, say that quickly.
Speaker 1:You did.
Speaker 3:I did.
Speaker 1:It's not a wine tasting it's a tequila tasting and food pairing.
Speaker 3:And the other thing I know I've mentioned next week there's a lot of graduations. Kids are going to be darting across the street. Don't drive down, parrish, don't drive up, you know, verdugo on Thursday or Friday.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Kids are going to be running across the street not knowing if they're in high school or not, with no diploma or whatever. But also all the other schools next week have graduations. Slow down if you're around a school district and we're getting into summer folks. That's it for me. We had a long show, but we had hey, look at the news that we had last week Just one day.
Speaker 1:Let me just make a quick point about the event coming up at Tequila, since you brought it up. But they do have some limited spots left. It is a reservation kind of a deal, but I'd recommend going to the Tequila Burbank Facebook page. They have all the information so you can get signed up. Get your reservation for their tasting on Thursday, the 23rd.
Speaker 3:Yummy, well for me. Dr Sherwood, I think you're not really a doctor. We're not doctors?
Speaker 2:I just play one on TV. We're not doctors.
Speaker 3:Well, we had, like I said, a long show and a lot went on, and we'll be back.
Speaker 1:We'll be back next week, and not a single rat hole. Congratulations to you, tom Holy cow.
Speaker 3:But that show is coming and we still went 85 minutes.
Speaker 3:Craig is editing 24 hours a day. We got a restaurant show coming up. We got Fire Service Day. We got Ashley doing stuff. We got Ashley doing stuff. We got Lynn Lipinski. Our sports department is still out there trying to find their balls and I'll tell you we got a lot going on and we forgot to thank Austin Gephardt, our electronics engineer at Fire Service Day, for setting stuff up. He was our TD for us Technical director. He not only set stuff up for the stuff up, he was our TD for us.
Speaker 1:Technical director. He not only set stuff up for the podcast and helped us with our displays, he set up all the AV equipment for the event itself.
Speaker 3:That's right, and he also brought the handicap out.
Speaker 2:Yes, he did. He brought me to the table.
Speaker 3:No, he brought Craig to the event. Sherwood Dirling to the event.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, that's it. Oh, he did, we're done.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:For Craig Durling. For Ross Benson this is Craig Sherwood saying that we will talk to you again next week. Thank you again for listening.
Speaker 1:My Burbank Talks would like to thank all of my Burbank's advertisers for their continued support Burbank Water Power, cusimano Real Estate Group, ume Credit Union, burbank Chamber of Commerce, game Credit Union, providence, st Joseph Medical Center, community, chevrolet, media City Credit Union, ucla Health, tequila's, burbank, logix Credit Union, hill Street Cafe, pertain, escobar Wealth Management and the UPS Store on 3rd Street.