Ventura Business District, CA

** Expansion Marks Credit Union's 90^th Anniversary of Service to Members**

GLENDALE, Calif., July 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- California Credit Union has announced regulatory approval to expand its service area into two significant new Southern California counties. The $4.5 billion credit union will now serve San Bernardino and Ventura Counties, and also has converted to a community-based charter in Los Angeles County. Founded in 1933 by a Los Angeles teacher, the charter expansion marks the credit union's 90^th anniversary of service to members.

"Expanding our service area to San Bernardino and Ventura Counties, along with a community charter in Los Angeles County, is a significant strategic accomplishment as we look ahead to future expansion and member acquisition with a cohesive service network across all of Southern California. With a number of members already living in these new counties, this field of membership expansion is a logical extension of our existing geographic footprint," said California Credit Union President/CEO Steve O'Connell. "Serving the education community remains an important aspect of our 90-year heritage. We are excited to bring both our community and educator products and services to new communities across Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. And, as members increasingly move to digital channels, we are well prepared to immediately begin serving our new communities through our Virtual Branch, online and mobile banking, and various technology service platforms."

With this expansion, the credit union has extended its field of membership to all communities in six counties across Southern California; anyone who lives, works, worships, attends school or has a business in the California counties of Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego is eligible to join the credit union. The credit union also serves school employees throughout the state. California Credit Union's state-of-the-art digital service channels, including full-service online banking, a Virtual Branch, and 5-Star rated mobile app, along with its nationwide network of 30,000+ surcharge-free ATMs, will be available to its new communities immediately as plans for new retail branches are determined.

O'Connell added, "Our approach has always been to be of service and become a community-wide asset in our markets. We look forward to building relationships within our new communities so we're not just providing best-in-class financial services, but also offering financial education programs, supporting under-resourced areas and community members, and partnering with local organizations to make a meaningful difference in the health of our communities."

California Credit Union is certified as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), a designation only given to organizations proven to provide financial services in communities that have historically lacked access to traditional banking services. In addition, its Checking account meets the stringent Bank On National Account Standards, offering safe access to a traditional checking account, with zero fees or overdraft charges to support moving members out of a debt cycle. The credit union also has adjusted underwriting guidelines to provide easier access to funds and launched credit card products for members looking to build/restore credit.

California Credit Union currently operates with dual headquarters in Glendale and San Diego, and serves members under its North Island Credit Union brand in the greater San Diego and Riverside areas.

About California Credit UnionCalifornia Credit Union is a federally insured, state chartered credit union founded in 1933 with assets over $4.5 billion, more than 170,000 members, and 24 retail branches. The credit union serves community members and businesses in the California counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura as well as school employees throughout the state. The credit union operates in San Diego and Riverside Counties as North Island Credit Union, a division of California Credit Union. The credit union offers a full suite of consumer, business and investment products and services, including comprehensive consumer checking and loan options, personalized financial planning, business banking, and leading-edge online and mobile banking. Visit ccu.com for more information or follow the credit union on Instagram^® or Facebook^® @CaliforniaCreditUnion.

SOURCE California Credit Union

As the need for water increases in drought-battered California, one water district in the region is looking at pooling resources as the best strategy to meet those needs.

The United Water Conservation District, which oversees groundwater and other water resources in western Ventura County, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Palmdale Water District “to share resources and work on large-scale projects that are of mutual benefit,” the districts said in Jan. 13 news release.

Mauricio Guardado, United Water’s general manager, told the Business Times the deal took a few months to come together. The first two projects the agencies will work on are in Palmdale, but there will be benefits down the road for Ventura County, he said.

“We have so many common interests and we can help each other with so many different things, like grant funding. We can help each other with water sustainability projects, using our strengths and resources collectively,” Guardado said. “When the board members started talking about that collective resource management, they got really excited about it.”

United Water, directly or indirectly, accounts for about two-thirds of Ventura County’s water supply, Guardado said, overseeing groundwater in the Santa Clara River watershed and the Oxnard Plain, along with the Lake Piru reservoir, the reservoir’s Santa Felicia Dam and the Freeman Diversion on the Santa Clara River.

Palmdale is in Los Angeles County, about 100 miles inland and 50 miles east of United Water’s Lake Piru. But two projects that have been greenlit already by the agreement will help the Palmdale Water District meet its needs.

The first is a water augmentation project, which treats recycled water from the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County for reuse purposes, something United Water already has experience with.

The other project the two sides will work on is a potential rebirth of the recreation area at Little Rock Reservoir near Palmdale.

“Little Rock in Palmdale is the community’s crown jewel, where everybody wants to be able to take their kids and have fun,” Guardado said.

United Water can lend its expertise, as it helped create the recreation area at Lake Piru, which now offers overnight camping, fishing, watersports, picnicking and other activities.

“When we can help each other develop these projects and secure funding to make sure the implementation of those projects occurs, it’s a win-win for everybody,” Guardado said.

Though the first two projects lean more toward helping Palmdale, Guardado said water policy efforts and grant funding proposals pursued through the agreement are something that will make a difference for Ventura County.

“We have resources in Ventura County, legislatively, and they have resources in the Antelope Valley that are different and bringing those people across the aisle to work together to help us develop better policies. It’s huge,” Guardado said.

The MOU also calls for engaging in transfers and exchanges of available State Water Project water, as both agencies are water contractors for the state.

United Water has also proposed a coastal brackish groundwater treatment plant at U.S. Navy Base Point Mugu, to combat seawater intrusion and treat aquifer salinity contamination. Groundwater that’s too salty, which can happen under a coastal plain like the one in the Oxnard area, is unsuitable for crop irrigation.

And, United Water treats water at the Freeman Diversion and is working with the city of Oxnard to improve its recycled water program.

“These are legacy projects for the future to ensure sustainability for Ventura County for years to come,” Guardado said. “These are really, really critical. These are not just one and dones. These are going to be projects that are going to help the region not just get through a drought, but be more drought tolerant.”

Naya Rivera‘s July 8 death in Lake Piru has sparked a wrongful death lawsuit against Ventura County, California, on behalf of her young son, who was on the water with her that day.

The suit was filed Tuesday in Ventura County Court on behalf of the 4-year-old by his father, Ryan Dorsey, Rivera’s estate and the late actress’ business manager. They’re suing not only the county, but also United Water Conservation District and Parks and Recreation Management for allegedly failing to warn visitors of the dangers of the lake and outfit the boat with the requisite safety equipment.

According to the complaint, the boat Rivera rented had not been equipped with flotation or lifesaving devices, or a ladder, rope, anchor or other equipment designed to keep swimmers from being separated from their boats. There also were no signs in the area warning of dangerous conditions like strong currents, low visibility and high winds.

“While Naya and Josey were swimming, the boat started to be carried away — likely by the current and wind, which gusted up to 21 miles per hour that afternoon,” writes attorney Amjad Khan in the complaint. “Josey, who was closer, managed to get back on the boat by his own volition and braced himself on the boat, which was rocking back and forth forcefully in the current and wind. Josey knew Naya was still in the water, and heard her cry, ‘Help! Help!’ in her struggle to get back to the boat and avoid drowning. Josey searched in vain for rope to help his mother get back on the boat. Josey then looked back at the water for his mother and saw that Naya had disappeared. Josey yelled for help and cried alone in the boat until he was found more than an hour later by a PMC boat leasing agent.”

The suit also alleges that defendants have attempted “to discredit Naya in the media and distract from their own negligence.” It also notes that the lake has a “deadly history” — more than two dozen people have drowned in it over the years — but no one warned Rivera of the potential dangers while she was renting the boat.

In addition to wrongful death, the suit on behalf of Rivera’s son also includes claims for survival and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

With the fire season growing longer and wildfires increasing in intensity, Californians living in fire-prone areas are having a harder time finding affordable insurance for their homes — if they can find coverage at all.

With that in mind, state officials unveiled a “Safer from Wildfires” framework this week for improving fire safety and reducing losses. The goal is not just to save lives, but also to hold down premiums and make coverage available in more areas.

The framework lays out a list of upgrades that individual homeowners should make and preventive actions that local governments and community groups should take. Rather than breaking new ground on fire safety, it draws from the best practices outlined by the consumer group United Policyholders, the Insurance Institute for Business & Homes Safety and Cal Fire, among others.

Advertisement

Many of the items on the list are already required for homes being sold or new homes built in neighborhoods with an elevated risk of fire. And some of the recommended upgrades are costly, albeit less so than a blaze that destroys your home.

The recommendations are the fruit of an effort started a year ago by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and several state agencies involved in firefighting and prevention.

Today, Lara said, 13 insurers with 40% of the market in the state are offering discounts to homeowners who have made fire-related safety improvements or who live in communities that have done so. His office is weighing regulations that could require more insurers to follow suit, with the new framework potentially serving as a benchmark for determining who qualifies for lower rates.

The state is also putting more money into helping communities and homeowners meet the standards laid out here.

Here are the framework’s recommendations.

Making houses more fire-resistant

There are six recommended structural upgrades to “harden” your home against wildfire risk, and specifically the risk that your house will be set ablaze by burning trees or buildings nearby or by embers blown in from a distance. Some of these carry price tags north of $10,000, while others are do-it-yourself jobs. The steps are:

Advertisement

For more detailed suggestions, consult Cal Fire’s “Hardening Your Home” site, its low-cost retrofit list and the University of California’s preparing your home webpage.

Get earthquake-ready in six weeks

From building a kit to buying insurance, our Unshaken newsletter course will help you prepare.

Enter email address

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Reducing risks near your home

The framework calls for three types of improvements to the property around your house, most of which include things you can do on your own. They are:

Taking community-wide action

Lara noted Monday that a homeowner’s safety upgrades can be undermined by neighbors who ignore the hazards on their own properties. So community-wide efforts are crucial.

The framework lays out the following “mitigation elements” for communities to adopt:

Currently, 10 insurers are offering community-based discounts to homeowners, although they aren’t all using the same criteria. The new framework puts forward a standard that all insurers could use to judge a community’s mitigation efforts.

California

June 12, 2021

Where to find help

A good place to start is with your local fire safe council, which you can locate on the California Fire Safe Council website. These groups draw up wildfire plans, educate local homeowners about prevention and tackle larger projects to protect their communities, such as clearing brush and creating firebreaks.

For example, the Meadows Fire Safe Council in Altadena offers to inspect properties and let homeowners know what safety improvements they should make, said the group’s spokesman, Bill Ramseyer. In addition, he said, “we will help people do the work, in terms of physically having our people come by with the chain saws and the weed whips.”

That help, however, won’t extend to replacing someone’s roof or windows, Ramseyer said.

Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, said one challenge for homeowners is the lack of funding for that sort of costly improvement to an individual property.

The California Office of Emergency Services is providing grants to local agencies to help low- and moderate-income homeowners with wildfire mitigation projects, but they’re confined at this point to pilot programs in San Diego and Shasta counties. The agency says it is aiming to take the program statewide in 2023.

In the meantime, the agency has a $100-million grant program to help vulnerable communities obtain federal aid for a variety of disaster-related purposes, including creating defensible space and retrofitting structures. As with the wildfire mitigation grants, money flows to local governments and organizations, not directly to individuals.

Some counties have taken matters into their own hands, creating funds to help homeowners directly. One example is Marin County, which approved a special tax in 2020 to fund a new county wildfire prevention authority. That group offers grants for home hardening and defensible space projects.

Clean Power Alliance Encourages Ventura County Entities to Apply for New CALeVIP Electric Vehicle Charger Purchase Program Beginning August 5

Businesses, Commercial Properties, Multifamily Residences and Local Government Facilities Can Apply for Rebates for Electric Vehicle Charger Purchase and Installation Costs Ranging from $30,000 to $80,000, Benefitting Consumers and Communities Across Southern California

Los Angeles, CA –August 5, 2021– In an ongoing effort to ensure a clean and equitable energy future, Clean Power Alliance (CPA) has partnered with the California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project (CALeVIP) to help ensure there will always be a place to plug in electric vehicles (EVs) in the Ventura County communities CPA serves. CALeVIP will offer incentives for the purchase and installation of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure at publicly accessible sites throughout California.

Starting today, businesses, commercial properties, multifamily residences, and local government facilities throughout Ventura County can apply for the electric vehicle charger rebates. CALeVIP incentives range from $3,500 to $6,000 per connector for commercial-grade Level 2 EV chargers and $30,000 to $80,000 for high-powered DC fast chargers (DCFC). The higher amounts for both charger types are available for installations in disadvantaged or low-income communities and for Level 2 chargers at multifamily housing in all communities.

This program represents CPA’s commitment to transportation electrification, which provides important short and long-term benefits such as increasing equity of resources in disadvantaged communities and the reduction of both local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

“Because vehicles are one of the top sources of pollution, transportation electrification is a high priority at CPA,” said Ted Bardacke, Executive Director of CPA. “We look forward the seeing the results of this partnership and have committed additional funding in Los Angeles County as well, so that drivers moving through our entire region can be assured of places to charge their EVs.”

There are numerous benefits to participate in the CALeVIP program. Business-owners can look forward to attracting more customers by offering an incentive to park at their facility and increase customer dwell time by up to 50 minutes. By investing in EV charging stations, business-owners will increase their property values. And by expanding the supply of charging stations and increasing the demand for the purchase of electric vehicles, California will meet sustainability goals by contributing to the betterment of the environment and aid in lessening of greenhouse gases.

This launch is part of a statewide effort to provide a streamlined process for getting chargers installed to fill the significant gaps in charging availability, with the goals of supporting local businesses, families, and underserved communities across California. CPA will be expanding this program to LA County in 2022.

“To achieve its ambitious clean transportation goals, California must ensure EV charging stations are installed in all areas of the state,” said Peter Colwell, CSE’s CALeVIP senior program manager. “CALeVIP’s expansion into the South Central Coast will help the area achieve greater consumer EV adoption and reduce transportation emissions.”

For more information on the CALeVIP electric vehicle incentive program, please visit, CALeVIP.org. For more information on CPA or its many other customer incentive programs, please visit cleanpoweralliance.org.

###

About Clean Power Alliance

Founded in 2017, Clean Power Alliance is the locally operated electricity provider for 30 cities across Los Angeles County and Ventura County, as well as the unincorporated areas of both counties. CPA is the fifth largest electricity provider in California and the single largest provider of 100% renewable energy to customers in the nation. CPA serves approximately three million customers via one million customer accounts, providing clean renewable energy at competitive rates. To view CPA’s 2020 Impact Report click here. For complete information regarding CPA visit cleanpoweralliance.org.

Media Contact: Joseph Cabral, External Affairs Manager 213-442-8109 jcabral@cleanpoweralliance.org

The South Central Coast Incentive Project is sponsored and funded by the Energy Commission and regional partners: Central Coast Community Energy (3CE), Clean Power Alliance (CPA), San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District (SLO County APCD), Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District (Santa Barbara County APCD) and Ventura County Air Pollution Control District (VCAPCD).