Well, I am back from vacation, three weeks in Europe, cruising along the Rhine from Amsterdam to Budapest. This was our first trip to Europe and I was thoroughly impressed with the cleanliness and strong effort to preserve historical property. The churches and castles didn’t come as much of a surprise as did the effort to protect personal residences. It was so great to walk into a small or large city along cobblestone streets and see homes one and two hundred years old in beautiful condition. Don’t get me wrong I was greatly impressed with the churches and castles. It is still difficult to imagine the labor and skill taken to build such fantastic structures, and the art work displayed everywhere we went. We have a lot to learn about preserving the history of our home sites and I can now fully appreciate people that get totally involved in preserving neighborhood and the history of a region. I just have to show one picture, from the town of Wertheim, Germany, which displays exactly what I am talking about.

I don’t usually talk about our family adventures, but this time it fit in with a notice I received about a meeting coming up on the subject of historical preservation.

“The City of Long Beach, Dept. of Development Services, Preservation Division, invites the public to a Community Workshop. As a follow up to an initial community workshop held this past April on the HISTORIC PRESERVATION ELEMENT (HPE), a second workshop will be held to further identify and refine specific goals and objectives of the HPE.

This meeting will be held in various locations throughout the City on three different dates. The meeting in our neighborhood will be on;

July 8th, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the El Dorado Park Craft Room, 2800 Studebaker Rd.”

Congratulations to all of our graduating seniors! Last week we traveled back to Pennsylvania for our Grandson’s, Dane, graduation from Camphill Special School. It doesn’t seem possible but after I retired from McDonnell-Douglas in 1993, Dane lived with us for a while and at 5-years of age I used to take him along on real estate appointments and many walks through our fine neighborhood. Time sure flies by

Back to business and business it is, I am happy to see sales in the neighborhood and I think the worst is over. I know nationally the news is bad, but our neighborhood appears to be doing ok. I saw in the Times this week that home prices in the 90808 Zip code neighborhoods were only about 4.9% lower than a year ago, which I interpret as a positive sign that we have bottomed out. There are fewer homes on the market in our area and out of the 33 homes on the market only 8 are priced for less than the outstanding loans on the property, (Short Sale). I personally believe it’s a great time to buy property, I am still seeing homes in the surrounding neighborhoods selling at prices that can, with a good down payment, be covered by rental income. One thing to remember, when we see broad news on the real estate market, that in many areas in our state and across the country we had long building boom. When the market changed, many areas were overbuilt and as a result are still seeing dramatic price reductions. We are not over built in the Long Beach area, and because of our strategic location to the job market coupled with the cost of driving these days, I am confident that we will see demand for our homes remain strong.

Good news recently was the announcement that the Douglas Park Development has been modified to eliminate residential property. This will mean that more business revenue for the City and increased employment to offset our losses of recent years.

I also see that a deal is in the works to turn the buildings on the east side of Lakewood Blvd. into a state of the art Hollywood style studio complex. All of these business types appear to be environmentally friendly and an asset to our community.

Around the neighborhood, I hope everyone had a safe 4th of July, Unfortunately I don’t think this edition of my newsletter will reach you until after the fourth, so it may be too late to encourage respect for our laws regarding NO FIREWORKS.

Word is that we are still having problems with the “BB” gun vandals in the neighborhood. I hope anyone spotting persons using such a weapon will immediately call the police at the East Division number (562) 570-5880 or 911, so that they can respond as quickly as possible.

Our East Division Police officers are well aware of the problem and can use any help we can provide.

One of our neighbors on Karen had a tool box stolen out of his pick-up this week and along similar lines, there are some of us that remember an earlier “Energy Crisis”, when gas siphoning became a real problem? Getting gas was a “nightmare”, long lines at the then many gas stations, fights breaking out over crowding in line and not being able to get gas and then occasionally we would come out in the morning to find our gas tanks had been drained during the night, I understand now-a-days, thieves are puncturing tanks to get the gas, which results in an expensive repair bill in addition to the cost of gas. Back in those days we were living on Roxanne and I remember myself and many neighbors cleaning out our Garages to get our cars off the street at night. Might be a good idea, to help get better gas mileage?

I hate to report incidents like this, but in the interest of safety in the neighborhood, I was told that a homeowner, south of Wardlow on Roxanne, was groped after she allowed an unsolicited, supposed painting contractor, into her home recently. Happily she got the person out of her home and filed a police report, but we all must remain vigilant when it comes to allowing anybody we don’t know into our homes.

Our neighborhood receives good coverage by the police, but they can’t be everywhere, so we must keep our eyes and ears open for the random crime incidents and call 911 at the first sign of any suspicious activity.

On this note, monthly, I attend the East Division Police Advisory Committee (EPAC) meeting, in the interest of representing our neighborhood with a continuous dialog with the police department as to any problems in the area. I try to keep my ears open to incidents in the neighborhood so that I can report and get feedback from the police as to action taken. Often I hear of incidents from the police that I have reported in this newsletter.

If you have something of interest, that you think I should bring up with the police, please give me a call. I take your calls seriously and do my best to follow up on any problems we may experience in our neighborhood.

As a public service I am passing along a recent publication I received in my e-mail this last week discussing in detail some upcoming events in our City, I hope you find it interesting?

Charter Communications Long Beach Sea Festival 2008 to include more than 90 Events:

“This three-month celebration of the Southern California experience is highlighted in a series of beach, ocean and summer-fun events, this will be its’ most ambitious season.

First staged 50 years ago with a handful of events, Long Beach Sea Festival 2008 showcases Long Beach as a spectacular place to live in or visit and offers Southern California families, and countless thousands of visitors an opportunity to turn a day at the beach into much more than just a dip in the ocean!

Long Beach Sea Festival began last week with the start of the Thursday night Twilight Concerts in the Park and the Long Beach-to-Tahiti sailing event and wraps up with the Sept. 5-7 Lobster Festival at Marina Green.

In between, Long Beach Sea Festival offers a slate of almost 100 unique, family-oriented events, ranging from sand castle building to free Moonlight Movies on the Beach to boat racing…and virtually everything in between!

Prestigious International sporting events include the July 9-13 Mayor’s Cup, featuring eight world-ranked female skippers and crews from four nations in a heated sailing competition and the debut of the Pacific Open Water Challenge, a unique, no-holds barred 5K open water swim, a sport that will make its debut at the upcoming Beijing Games.

If you enjoy unique celebrations, Long Beach Sea Festival includes its famed July 4 celebration, a Dragon Boat Festival (July 26-27), Crawfish Festival (Aug 1-3) and a Tiki Festival/Polynesian Spectacular (Aug 23-24).

Into speed? Don’t miss the July 17-20 Long Beach/Catalina Offshore Powerfest presented by Powerboat Magazine, featuring water ski race, personal watercraft race and the 97th annual offshore powerboat race. The Long Beach Sprint Nationals (circle boat races) are August 2-3.

Music frequently takes center stage during the Long Beach Sea festival with an ongoing schedule of Thursday night Twilight Concerts in the Park, the Municipal Band Concert Series and Bixby Bluffs Municipal Band Concerts.

And, kids will enjoy such events as the Pirate Invasion Faire and Festival (June 28-29), Kid’s Fishing Derby Rodeo (Aug. 1) and the Capture the Wind Festival (Aug. 16) among others.

A continually-updated schedule, as well as contact information for each event and a short history of Sea Festival, can be found at www.longbeachseafestival.com.

Apart from its major sponsor, Charter Communication, Long Beach Sea Festival is also sponsored by; the port of long Beach; St. Mary Medical Center/Catholic Hospitals West; Long Beach Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine; the Long Beach Airport; Long Beach Environmental Services; Coca Cola; the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau; Powerboat Magazine; the Long Beach Press-Telegram; Long Beach Channel 8; Professional Business Services; the Grunion Gazette; and Supervisor Don Knabe.

In 2007, Long Beach Sea Festival captured the prestigious California Park & Recreation Society (CPRS) award, given to “the agency that represents the finest in recreation programming in California.”