The Brief

All southbound lanes of the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills will be closed for five hours each weeknight for construction on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing starting Monday.

The closure will extend from Liberty Canyon to Chesebro roads, but the northbound lanes will stay open, and Caltrans has detours available for drivers. The entire project could last until early 2026.

What you should know 

The southbound lanes will close from 11:00 p.m. to 4 a.m. Monday through Friday. On Saturday mornings, the lanes may reopen a little later.

Drivers can take Agoura Road to get around the closure, getting back on the 101 Freeway near Liberty Canyon Road, according to Caltrans. But if you’re hoping to avoid side streets and potential delays, you can bypass the construction zone by taking the 23, 118, and 405 freeways.

Caltrans will post updates on X, formerly known as Twitter, but you can check the current closures anytime here. The agency is reminding drivers to slow down and keep an eye out for workers — traffic fines are doubled in construction zones.

Once the work on the southbound side is complete, crews will switch to the northbound lanes, which will bring additional overnight closures.

The street detour in Agoura Hills to get around the 101 Freeway southbound closure.

(

Caltrans

)

The freeway detour for both the southbound and future northbound closures on the 101 Freeway.

(

Caltrans

)

What are they working on?

Crews will be installing the first girders, a nearly 100-foot-long box of reinforced concrete that will act as the base level of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing. The girders will help support the structure’s horizontal reach across one of the country’s busiest highways, according to the National Wildlife Federation’s #SaveLACougars campaign.

Beth Pratt, the California regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation, said in a statement this work will make the structure start to look like the bridge it will become.

“We know that closures of the freeway do have impacts on traffic and the community, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” Pratt said in a statement. “And these ‘Closures for Cougars’ are for a good cause — helping to save the area mountain lions from extinction and ensuring a future for all wildlife in the Santa Monica Mountains.”

Each girder weighs more than 126 tons, and those being placed over the northbound lanes will be even bigger and heavier. For comparison, just one of those pieces is about the same weight as 14 African elephants, the statement said.

Installing all 82 girders across 10 lanes of the 101 Freeway is expected to take more than a month to complete. The wildlife crossing itself is scheduled to wrap up construction by the end of next year or early 2026.

You can also take a live look at the progress here, and learn more about the project here. Caltrans and the National Wildlife Federation will also be hosting a virtual community meeting at 4 p.m. Monday.

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

(

Destiny Torres

/

LAist

)

Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

(

Destiny Torres

/

LAist

)

Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.