INSIDE SCOOP

NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES

At the Dec. 6 Huntington Beach City Council meeting, resident Virginia

Sims said she doesn’t pay any attention to rumors about council members

receiving payoffs from developers -- because she knows them all too well,

she said.

“Mean you are sometimes, [but] I think you’re all honest,” she said. “You

know what? You couldn’t be crooked because you’d all tell on [each

other].”

EVERY 32 YEARS

During Councilman John Collins’ last speech as mayor last week, he said

his list of thank-yous to his fellow council members and city staff. He

concluded his speech by asking his wife, Barbara, to stand up for a round

of applause for her patience and support during his time as mayor.

“I’m always in the limelight,” he said. “She’s always in the shadows, and

I wanted to give her a chance to be recognized.”

After the audience acknowledged Collins’ wife with a warm round of

applause, Collins stepped back into the limelight and told her, “Now

that’s it for another 32 years.”

WALL-CLIMBING 101

Rebbe Bates, bargaining chairwoman for the Huntington Beach Elementary

Teachers Assn., said her district’s new parent conference schedule has

teachers climbing the walls.

A new conferencing schedule that does not give teachers an entire day for

conferences was too much for many educators, she said.

Parent-teacher meetings this year were also longer because of the new

retention laws governing the promotion of students.

“Some teachers said the recently completed conference week was ‘the most

exhausting of their lives,”’ she told the board of trustees at a district

meeting last week.

-- Eron Ben-Yehuda, Angelique Flores and Andrew Wainer