EDUCATION Record year for grants at UC...

EDUCATION

Record year for grants at UC Irvine

UC Irvine received a record $249 million during the 2003-04 school

year, university officials reported this week.

That represented a 6% increase from the previous year. Nearly 82%

funded clinical trials, and 6% went toward training and fellowships.

* The Coast Community College District announced this week that

Joseph Quarles took over earlier this month as its new vice

chancellor for human resources.

Quarles previously worked as deputy superintendent and chief of

staff for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District and in

various positions at Cerritos’ ABC Unified School District. He takes

over from John Renley, who retired last year but continued to work

part time.

* UC regents this week heard details of an internal audit at UC

Irvine’s epidemiology department.

Auditors will discuss an unidentified problem with the regents, a

matter concerning grant administration, a UCI official said.

COSTA MESA

Ground breaks for street improvements

Officials broke ground Thursday on a $6 million project to

renovate 19th Street and Placentia and Anaheim avenues. While city

officials applauded the renovation, some Westside residents said it

was overdue.

* Friday, the Orange County Transportation Agency Board of

Directors voted not to place the CenterLine light-rail project on the

November ballot. Some board members thought it would be a good idea

to have voters show how they feel about CenterLine to convince local

Congress members to push for the half a billion dollars of federal

funding the agency is hoping to receive from the government. But

opponents of putting it on the ballot felt Measure M, the half-cent

sales tax voters approved in 1990, which included a light rail

system, was enough.

PUBLIC SAFETY

D.A. requests judge revoke bail for Haidl

The Orange County District Attorney’s office is asking a judge to

revoke bail for Greg Haidl, son of Orange County Assistant Sheriff

Don Haidl, who was arrested Thursday on suspicion of having sex with

an underage girl.

The 19-year-old, who is awaiting retrial on a gang-rape case, was

arrested in Dana Point after the Orange County district attorney

issued a warrant charging him with statutory rape.

Greg Haidl, who lives in San Clemente, was driving near the

intersection of Coast Highway and Street of the Golden Lantern with

his mother when the deputies stopped him.

Greg Haidl was booked at the Men’s Central Jail in Santa Ana with

bail set at $100,000. He posted bail and was released the same day.

The new statutory rape charge, a misdemeanor, stems from an

allegation that Haidl had sex with a girl younger than 17 years old

Tuesday night at a gathering in a San Clemente home. Statutory rape

is a felony in California when more than a three-year age difference

exists between the two involved.

Officials responded to a noise complaint at the San Clemente home,

where they found Haidl with four other teenagers, including the girl,

police said. The girl did not make a complaint against Haidl. A small

amount of marijuana was also found at the residence, police said.

Before Thursday’s arrest, Greg Haidl was free on a $100,000 bail

on the gang-rape case in which he, along with co-defendants Kyle

Nachreiner and Keith Spann, is accused of raping an unconscious

16-year-old girl in the assistant sheriff’s Corona del Mar home and

sexually assaulting her with various objects.

* In a large-scale act of vandalism, one of the biggest in the

city’s history, miscreants on Sunday night reportedly slashed nearly

100 vehicle tires in an apartment complex, causing about $14,700 in

damages, officials said.

The tire-slashing occurred sometime between 10 and 11 p.m. at the

Lakes apartment complex in the 3400 block of Avenue of the Arts,

Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Bob Ciszek said.

The vandals entered the subterranean parking area of the apartment

complex and punctured the tires using an unknown sharp object, Ciszek

said.