SANTA ANA (AP) — A five-acre orange grove in Santa Ana has been designated historic by the City Council. That gives preservationists more time to raise money to save one of the last sizable orchards in Orange County.
Orange County is named after once plentiful groves.
The Sexlinger family bought the 230-tree grove in 1913. When Martha Sexlinger died in 2006, the untended, fenced-off grove was donated to Concordia University in Irvine and Orange Lutheran High School. They turned it over to a developer who was making plans to cut the trees and build 24 homes.
The historic designation will trigger an eight-month wait if a demolition permit is requested.
Save Our Orchard Coalition wants to buy it. The developer wasn't exact but says it's worth millions.
Transient held in
benefactor’s death
FRESNO (AP) — A transient suspected of killing a Fresno man who befriended him and kidnapping the man's wife has been taken into custody.
Police say 56-year-old Donald Ray Anderson was arrested Thursday outside a drug store in central Fresno after the manager recognized him from police fliers.
Anderson was wanted in the death of 62-year-old Michael Weisser and the kidnapping of his wife, 61-year-old Donna Weisser. Police say Anderson met the couple through a church ministry and lived with them off and on for two years.
He is suspected of killing Michael Weisser on Monday and then kidnapping his wife at knifepoint when she came home. He allegedly forced Donna Weisser to drive to nearby Selma before letting her go.
Former Carlsbad chief
must repay pension payments
CARLSBAD (AP) — The California Public Employees' Retirement System says former Carlsbad police chief Thomas Zoll must repay thousands of dollars in pension payments that he collected while working as an interim employee for the North County Transit District.
Zoll was the district's interim security chief from July 2010 until last month when he got the job full-time. But he started collecting a pension after he retired from the Carlsbad Police Department in 2009.
Calpers sent Zoll a letter this month saying that state law limits the time public retirees can work to 12 months so he'll have to pay back pension payments made beyond that. The paper estimates overpayments at about $35,000.
Zoll did not immediately respond to the newspaper's request for comment.
LA says housing authority
boss deserves extra pay
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles is paying new housing authority boss Douglas Guthrie $100,000 more than allowed under recently implemented federal guidelines.
Agency officials say they will use non-federal money to augment his $260,000 salary because the amount is needed to make the pay comparable to that received by other city agency chiefs.
Guthrie was hired to help calm a scandal at the housing authority, the agency that's supposed to help shelter the city's poor.
Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development officials say ousted director Rudolf Montiel received $606,000 in salary and other compensation in 2010. Montiel tells the Times he got $278,000 in salary, a $43,200 housing allowance and $50,000 bonus in 2010. Montiel left after reaching a $1.2 million settlement.
