The Brief

In Rancho Palos Verdes, sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island are plentiful. So too are cellular dead zones, which means no cell phone calls without working Wi-Fi.

The stakes can be high: the landslide that has destroyed homes and trails continues, medical emergencies can pop up anywhere, anytime, and lack of cell service can delay response times.

It’s a problem the city’s been trying to address for years. But residents on Tuesday overwhelmingly protested plans to improve telecommunications services, arguing new cell towers would disrupt the peninsula’s aesthetics. The City Council agreed and voted 3-2 to kill the proposal.

How we got here

In Rancho Palos Verdes, cellular service relies on telecommunication facilities that are larger in size and housed on private property and public facilities. Some smaller facilities are mounted on utility poles and streetlights. But city officials say complaints from residents about poor service and dropped calls have increased, raising worries about what to do in an emergency.

Wireless providers have requested city officials relax regulations and allow them to install larger facilities and skip public input.

But residents like Charles Nixt, a realtor, spoke out against the proposed code changes at the City Council meeting.

“ As a realtor, I know that RPV's property values are tied to our unique aesthetics and quality of life,” he said. “By removing community input, you are removing the only check and balance we have to ensure these installations are compatible with our residential zones.”

Another person who grew up in the city called the Rancho Palos Verdes open spaces and trails, “the visual identity of our city.”

“ We should not be forced to trade our tranquility of our backyards and the beauty of our trails for a solution to a problem that many of us simply don't have,” he said.

But Mayor Paul Seo, who supported updating regulations to increase connectivity, shared a story in which he said a resident died because a neighbor couldn't call emergency services in time.

“ A senior citizen was walking on the sidewalk and he ended up having a heart attack. (A neighbor) couldn't call out for 10 minutes, couldn't call an ambulance. The neighbor had to run all the way home to get on Wi-Fi,” Seo said. “He ended up passing. If we had reception, then he would have survived.”

A local nonprofit that runs homeless shelters and safety-net programs filed a lawsuit against Long Beach last week, alleging it nearly had to shut down its operations across Los Angeles County after the city refused to pay for $1.1 million of work it performed.

It’s the latest escalation in a dispute between the April Parker Foundation and Long Beach’s homeless services bureau that’s been simmering behind the scenes for nearly a year.

Long Beach contracted the foundation for years to run violence intervention and youth coaching programs, a rapid rehousing service, and even selected it in 2023 to run its new youth shelter. But the city began withholding payments for at least some of that work as early as late 2024, the lawsuit alleges.

The foundations’ billing “was not consistent with their contractual requirements, and the supporting documentation wasn’t provided to substantiate all the amounts on the invoices,” Deputy City Attorney Nick Masero previously told the Long Beach Post. (The city attorney’s office declined to talk about the lawsuit Wednesday, saying it does not comment on active litigation.)

By October, the city had decided not to renew any contracts with the foundation, shortly after it conducted a “routine program monitoring” of a contract in early August, according to the lawsuit.

Masero said the city was still willing to pay invoices for any completed work as long as the foundation submitted the correct paperwork. The city, for instance, paid the principal balance for one of four outstanding contracts, $135,744 for the youth programming, after months of delays.

And as recently as Tuesday, a city worker was asking the nonprofit to fix “date and invoice number inconsistencies” on other languishing invoices, according to emails reviewed by the Long Beach Post.

He wrote that he wasn’t sure why they weren’t paid originally, but “if these invoice issues were simple typos and could be fixed, I want to resubmit these as soon as you can revise and send them to me.”

April Parker, who runs the April Parker Foundation, said she has sent over hundreds of documents and receipts detailing every transaction tied to the program and alleges the city is manufacturing excuses not to pay her. Typos and clerical errors could have been easily fixed with clarifying questions instead of nonpayment, she wrote in an email to the city.

The financial dispute, she says, has crippled her nonprofit, forcing it to cut its youth shelter staff, reduce its administrative team and close its 36-bed transitional shelter. Parker said she had to take out a line of credit and stop paying herself a salary to save her organization.

This marks the second time in recent months that the city has distanced itself from a homelessness services contractor over billing concerns. The city in April abruptly cut ties with First to Serve, which ran several of its homeless shelters, after a long-running audit of the homeless services bureau found issues with the nonprofit’s billing practices.

Parker said she was informed her organization was included in the audit, but — despite her repeated texts and calls to city health officials — says she was never told if it found any problems.

Topline:

Context: Civil rights activists have long said that pretextual stops disproportionately affect communities of color, an argument that data backs up. In 2022, the Police Commission updated LAPD policy to require officers making a pretextual stop to turn on their body cameras and explain why they plan to pull a car over or stop a pedestrian.

Yes, but: The City Council’s proposal does not immediately change LAPD policy. The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, which sets department policies, will ultimately decide if the practice should be banned. LAPD leaders have said in the past that eliminating pretextual stops could diminish the department’s ability to detect illegal activity.

What's next: The Police Commission will have to take up the proposal before it advances further.

The Immaculate Heart Sisters of Mary (IHMs) — a Catholic community and teaching institute for women based in Los Angeles — has a long history of activism and social justice work, often resisting the status quo.

This led to lasting changes in the Catholic church — and those efforts largely happened right here in Southern California.

A California arrival, 1871

Originally founded in Spain in 1848, the Immaculate Heart Sisters landed in SoCal in 1871 after an invitation from the California bishop brought 10 sisters to the region.

By the 1920s and '30s, they had established the first all-girls Catholic high school and the first accredited Catholic girls college in Los Angeles, led by broad-minded mother superiors who were known for their wide-ranging ideas and perspectives.

“They weren’t afraid to invite people who might disagree with the church or with church policies,” Diane Winston, a Knight chair in media and religion at USC Annenberg, said during a conversation on AirTalk, LAist 89.3’s daily news show.

The group flourished in SoCal in the 1960s, which came at a time when the Catholic church started to reimagine itself. By 1962, the Vatican had its Second Vatican Council, a landmark meeting that led the Church to modernize.

Sisters in the 60s counterculture era

Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules, created around 1966–1967 by artist, educator, and nun Sister Corita Kent along with her students and colleagues.

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Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography.

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Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library

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From the folk-rock enclave in Laurel Canyon to the six-day Watts uprising, L.A. was at the forefront of the 1960s counterculture and the civil rights movement.

At the same time, the demographics were rapidly changing. Urban populations expanded significantly as the expansion of African American and Latino communities in the city coincided with white flight.

This consequential period for the city prompted the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart to make their own decision to respond to the signs of the times.

Winston said she believes ideas surrounding “authenticity” in the '60s combined desires for self-realization and making the world a better place — and this informed how the sisters wanted to live, what professions they could serve and how they interacted with the world.

Sister Lenore Navarro Dowling, a member of the Immaculate Heart Sisters since 1950, said, “Many of us went to get training to be a lawyer, a nurse, a social worker.”

Sister Corita Kent

One of the most prominent figures of IHM during the 1960s was Sister Corita Kent, an artist known for her pop art prints combining words and images from commercials, political statements and brands.

“She took the big G logo from General Mills, and made it stand for the goodness of God as well as the goodness of life on this earth,” Winston said.

The Big G Stands for Goodness (1964) by Corita Kent.

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Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library

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Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography

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Corita Kent's "Sunkist" (1965) .

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Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography

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Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library

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Corita Kent's (1985) 22-cent "Love" stamp.

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Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library

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Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography

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"Eight Men Slain" Corita Kent's "Eight Men Slain," part of the "My People" series (1965).

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Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library

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Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography.

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Dowling said it was revolutionary at the time for sisters to feel free to make choices.

“Making changes turned out to be an act of resistance,” Dowling said, adding, “We were in solidarity with one another in resistance to the administration of the Catholic Church.”

IHM today

The sisters of IHM function today as a network of Catholic parishes, schools and congregations across the nation that represent various professions that active sisters pursue.

Dowling said the nuns are still extremely active in social justice causes.

“Standing our ground is a core value,” she said.

Listen

As promised, warm temperatures are on tap for Southern California today.

Areas closer to the coast will wake up with partly cloudy skies, but otherwise we're in for mostly sunny conditions all day.

At L.A and Orange county beaches temperatures will stick around the upper 60s, and up to the low 70s for the inland coast.

For L.A. County valleys, temperatures will range from 79 to 87 degrees. Meanwhile, the Inland Empire will see highs of up to 89 degrees.

And in Coachella Valley, temperatures there will warm up to the mid 90s — up to 101 degrees in some areas.