California South Bay Blogs

Because according to the letter sent out by Mr. Craig R. Casner of Casner Construction (Est. 1947) dated September 28, 2009, it said that demo and construction was supposed to start October 16, 2009.

Only yesterday afternoon, September 30, 2009 did we receive this letter. Yet that very morning bright and early before 7:30am, the bulldozers have been moved onto the landscape and have been ripping up the landscaping all day. I find it strange that a construction company could not keep its own start date straight, but if the company’s been in business that long, then this is not a matter of not keeping its own start date straight, but rather, not keeping its own word.

One of my neighbors have called Mr. Casner and said it this way:

Spoke to the owner of Casner Construction inquiring why they have started before their start date. He was rude.

Spoke to the city (they indicated Casner is rude to them too) and they sent out a guy who has stopped construction until the start date.

The city has instructed me to do the following:

If they start earlier or work later than the times indicated below, the city has instructed me to call the police and say “the building department has instructed me to call you regarding this construction company working outside the work times. ”

The times are M-Fri 7 a.m. – 6 p.m. Sat 9-5

Please pass on to other neighbors requesting a later morning start date to our counselman, Mat Kilroy…information below….as well as feel free to call the police if this company violates the above.

I understand the desire to build a new home. THERE IS NO REASON WHY A NEW HOME CAN’T BE BUILT AND THE NEIGHBORS WELL BEING BE CONSIDERED AS WELL.

That’s the rub – “considering the neighbors” – can it be that a company that builds its very business building a neighborhood doesn’t actually CARE about the people (”residents”)?

We’ll find out, but so far, it’s not looking good from where I’m blogging.

Britt’s BBQ is new this year (2009) in El Segundo. We went there this past weekend since my husband was craving BBQ.

The restaurant is tiny. It doesn’t take too much to start a take-out line, and when we got there, there was a line out the door because there were more than 5 people waiting in line. That gives you an idea of how cramped the place is. The two huge plasma televisions in the restaurant were a strange contrast against the bland looking cramped interior.

Cons: The wait was LONG. The servers were really nice and friendly, but the service was SLOW. People with time to burn and endless philosophical (or political) debate topics wouldn’t mind, but parents with an active toddler like us were concerned about how long our toddler could be entertained by the sight of his cuteness in the mirror next to our table.

From reading the Yelp reviews, I’ll have to agree that the logistics of the place needs work, and while we were there – they literally ran out of chicken. Good thing we didn’t order any chicken. But it was kinda early to be already out of chicken, unquestionably one of the most popular BBQ meat on the menu – maybe this was why they ran out of chicken! I got the potato salad and the chili mac, and both were kind of bland.

Pros: Price was reasonable. My husband ordered the ribs and I ordered “beef tacos”. True, I was a bit mystified that my taco had nothing except beef and some BBQ sauce. I was counting on sour cream, guacamole, cheese, and stuff that tacos stereotypically came with. It was on a soft taco shell, I suppose that was why they called it taco.

I took one bite and I was glad that I didn’t get all that other taco stuff, because this was the most tender tasty beef I’ve ever had in a BBQ place! I wished I had asked for extra BBQ sauce early on, so I could drink that sauce with the beef tacos. My husband really enjoyed his ribs too, but I was too busy inhaling the beef tacos and wishing they went on forever to check in with him and asked him for a review of the ribs. I can’t even remember which ribs he got at this point, my brain has been so full of chemicals of satisfaction from the beef tacos.

You can find the menu on the Britt’s BBQ website, which, at this writing in June of 2009, looks awful. I’m hoping that by the time you read this, they’d have given the website a face-lift and you’re thinking “what the hell you talkin’ ’bout there, Chin?” The site I’m lookin’ at’s got this cartoon gal wearing a yellow T-shirt with a “peace” logo on the back of the shirt, and she’s waving one whole chicken with one BBQ pitchfork and a rack of ribs with the other BBQ pitchfork! Someone must have made a mistake doing this cartoon, because the gal looks like she’d be vegan! (or maybe it’s not a gal but a guy with a mean weave, I honestly can’t tell…)

Verdict: Worth checking out if you’re a BBQ fan, but don’t go there when you’re starving because you’ll probably be in for a long wait. We’d definitely go there again!

I wrote recently about filing our own property tax reduction appeal, after receiving tons of junk mail and scam mail from “companies” offering to do this, and after getting a huge tax bill.

The “catch” if you let other people do it for you was that you have to pay a few hundred bucks up front, but there is no guarantee that you’d get your property tax reduced, because whether or not you get your property tax reduced was up to the Los Angeles County Assessor.

I can see why people wanted to get help doing these forms, though, because the instructions and the form itself can scare the heck outta ya.

I also didn’t realize at first that the “short” form – the 1 pager – wasn’t the true important form that you have to file. The real important form is the one page form with text so small you need a magnifying glass to read it – the one with 3 columns squeezed on a sheet of paper. If the form you’re looking at isn’t giving you a headache or gripping your throat with a deep sense of fear, then you’re not looking at the right one.

Anyway, as can be expected, the LA county folks take a looooooooooooong time to respond. I got a couple of mails after that saying they’ve received it. Of course by then I’d have paid my overinflated property taxes already because I didn’t want to get penalized.

FINALLY, this week I got a letter in the mail with my copy of the appeal I filed. Good. It meant they got my appeal.

TODAY I got a letter in the mail saying “notice of assessed value change”!

Now, the assessed value change wasn’t as low as I had appealed for – even though I based my appeal on the comparable properties sold between Jan 2008 and Mar 2008 as instructed by the forms. STILL, it is a heck of a lot lower – more than $91,000 lower – and while the value is still overinflated, it’s a bit easier to stomach.

Anyone out there “do it yourself” and get a successful property tax reduction appeal? I suspect that if you fill out the form, you’ll surely get approved for a lower tax bill, but you just gotta bear the intimidating forms.