Featured Columnists
Jay Beeler
by Beachcombing
Five years ago the Beachcomber endorsed Norm Ryan for the Long Beach Unified School District 4 race following the death of popular board member Ed Eveland. We made that decision after extensive interviews with the seven candidates, categorizing them as “insiders” and “outsiders,” giving high marks to Gary DeLong and Andy Nagle and then giving the nod to Ryan for his financial expertise with public institutions.
Apparently the Press-Telegram liked our reasoning as well and came out several days later with an editorial favoring Ryan, using the same arguments that we did. Jon Meyer was the favored candidate and won the opportunity to serve a district that includes most of southeast Long Beach, Signal Hill and Catalina Island.
This time the job is much easier with only three candidates to consider: Meyer, the incumbent, Karen Thomas Hilburn, an independent challenger, and Paul Croft, supported by the Teacher’s Association of Long Beach (TALB).
Anyone who has spent just a small amount of time watching the televised LBUSD meetings soon learns that the two TALB representatives on the five-person board have a built-in agenda to do what is best for the union members, not the students. Allowing a third TALB representative would not be in the best interests of LBUSD, the students and the citizens of Long Beach.
Looking back over the past five years, we’ve seen some good things occurring within the LBUSD with Jon Meyer on the board, especially the achievement of the coveted National Broad Prize for excellence in 2003-04. But that was for achievements largely preceding Meyer’s election.
In recent years the board has become embroiled in litigation involving the airport, violating federal anti-discrimination laws by removing a girl’s gymnastic facility at Wilson High School and a hostile relationship with TALB and teachers alike.
When Meyer was elected he ran on the coattails of Ed Eveland, whose goal was a state-of-the-art Vocational Technical High School to serve the needs of students not bent on a college education. Part of that goal, an auto shop at Cabrillo High School, hasn’t been used since it was built 10 years ago.
Challenger Karen Thomas Hilburn, recently retired after 39 years in top administrative positions with the LBUSD, has extensive experience with alternative education programs that will serve well in benefitting non-college-bound students and fulfilling Ed Eveland’s vocational goals. Hilburn has the support of the top three 2003 runner-up candidates for the position – Norm Ryan, Yolanda Benavidez and Marilyn Bittle (which speaks volumes about the candidate) – former Vice Mayor Doug Drummond, hundreds of other supporters and the Beachcomber as well.
According to the United States Postal Service (USPS) website, the words “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” inscribed at the top of the James A. Farley building in New York City, are considered to be the motto of the Postal Service.
The website goes on to say that “[t]he phrase is the translation of an ancient Greek work of Herodotus describing the Persian system of mounted carriers, c. 500 B.C.”
I stumbled across this information while learning that the USPS delivers 703 million pieces of mail each day using 700,000 employees. What I was actually trying to figure out is where those employees are instructed to remove an outbound FedEx package placed at our reception desk last week. Two days later, instead of giving the package to FedEx, the USPS returned the time-critical package to our office. It was in storage for two days.
For the past month we’ve gone to our mailbox at Bryant Station around 1 p.m. on Saturdays only to learn that the mail was in storage containers awaiting posting. Weekday service isn’t much better for mail that’s supposed to be in our boxes by 10 a.m.
Add to this the aggravation of hiking a long distance in the Los Altos parking lot to get to a postal facility that has no business being ensconced with numerous high-volume retail stores, which take up most of the parking spaces.
The good news is that it still costs three cents to mail a first class letter. The rest is the fee charged for storage.
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