2006: YEAR IN REVIEW :

1 Police Shooting of Ashley MacDonald — On Aug. 25, two Huntington Beach officers shot and killed 18-year-old Ashley MacDonald after she allegedly lunged at them with a knife.

According to Orange County sheriff’s deputies, MacDonald had fought with her mother earlier, saying that she had been drugged and date-raped the night before. During the fight, MacDonald reportedly cut her mother, Lisa Guy, superficially several times with a knife.

Later that morning, responding to a 911 call of a hysterical girl wandering in the area, officers Read Parker, 28, and Shawn Randell, 26, found MacDonald at Sun View Park, holding a knife. MacDonald allegedly jumped at them with the knife, ignoring their commands for her to stop, and they shot her.

MacDonald was rushed to Huntington Beach Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

MacDonald suffered 17 gunshot wounds, including five in the back, according to a copy of the hospital’s emergency room medical report.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigated the case and has turned it over to prosecutors, who have yet to decide whether to file charges. The officers returned to active duty soon after the shooting.

Newport Beach lawyer Jerry Steering has since filed a claim against the county for $20 million, stating that sheriffs detained Guy against her will after notifying her of her daughter’s death. Huntington Beach police identified Randell and Parker as the officers involved once the Sheriff’s review was completed and handed over to prosecutors in November.

2 Senior Center — Setting aside five acres in Central Park for a proposed senior center overshadowed a majority of city politics this year. It all began with Mindy White, who headed the Save Central Park group, who had no previous political experience. She and other Save Central Park members, including Councilwoman Debbie Cook, fought hard to prevent further development in Central Park.

The Measure T ballot passed in November by 1,313 votes. The campaign was an ugly one, as signs for and against the measure were torn down, stolen or damaged.

Scores of citizens addressed the issue at City Council meetings, forcing candidates to take a position on the measure.

Pacific City developers Makar Properties is set to build the senior center by 2009. The Council on Aging and city staff will oversee design elements.

3 Pam Houchen Sentenced — On Sept. 25, former mayor Pam Houchen and three others were sentenced in federal court for their roles in a citywide condo conversion scheme, which robbed the city of almost all of its low-income housing and placed a number of residents in near financial trouble.

Judge David O. Carter sentenced the former mayor to 37 months in federal prison at the U.S. Federal Court in Santa Ana. The sentencing hearing was six hours and included some tearful speeches from victims of the scandal.

Co-defendants Harvey DuBose, Jeffrey Crandall and Michael McDonnell all received prison sentences of two or more years and were ordered to pay restitution totaling $1.2 million.

Houchen’s lawyer asked the judge to consider home confinement for the former mayor, considering that she had four-year-old triplets to raise.

The judge denied the request, deciding that Houchen’s husband could look after the children. Carter added that had gender roles been reversed, the request probably would not have been made. He did, however, lessen Houchen’s sentence due to her cooperation after being indicted back in December 2004.

She pleaded guilty in September 2005 to eight counts of mail and wire fraud in the illegal conversion of 15 apartment buildings.

4 Bella Terra Opening — The Tuscan-themed outdoor mall opened this year, accompanied by lots of fanfare and big-name retailers moving in. The new center is a far cry from the former Huntington Beach Mall at Beach Boulevard and Edinger Avenue, and has become hugely popular with teenagers.

A 20-screen Century movie theater, the Cheesecake Factory, REI, Kohl’s, Barnes and Noble and the Burlington Coat Factory are only a few of the mall’s busy tenants. Bella Terra, which means “beautiful earth” in Italian, is expected to bring in millions of dollars in sales revenue for the city.

Former planning director Howard Zelefsky, who negotiated with Bella Terra’s new owners DJM Capital Partners and developer J.H. Snyder — a deal which some city officials thought gave too much away — exited City Hall but not without a big nudge from the city. Some of his boosters said they believed he was pushed out because of the deal he negotiated, which involved paying back some of the mall’s sales tax revenues to J.H. Snyder. Zelefsky walked away with a $126,550 settlement from the city after he resigned.

5 Poseidon Approved — Council members approved the $250 million project in March. It will be built behind the AES power plant at Coast Highway and Newland Street.

Plant developer Poseidon Resources still needs approval from the California Coastal Commission and the state Lands Commission and faces lawsuits filed by the Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation. The plant is expected to turn 50 million gallons of seawater a day into drinking water.

The water would help the city’s economy during a downturn, proponents say. On the other hand, environmentalists argued it would destroy fish and marine life caught in the plant’s pipes, among other reasons.

But in a recent setback for project opponents, an Orange Superior Court judge rejected a lawsuit by the Sierra Club and the Surfrider Foundation that challenged the city’s environmental report on the plant. . The Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation argued that insufficient analysis had been done on the project’s environmental effects.

The organizations plan to appeal the judge’s decision. The project is still a long way from breaking ground and faces many more obstacles.

6 Bolsa Chica — Aug. 24 was a joyous day for environmentalists when a portion of the Bolsa Chica wetlands was reconnected to the Pacific Ocean after more than 100 years. Activists, who worked for more than three decades to save the wetlands from development, and state officials watched bulldozers raze the last sand barrier before fresh sea water flowed into the wetlands.

The opening of the tidal inlet was part of a $120-million restoration project that began in 1997 for about 600 acres of the wetlands. Ocean water entering into the wetlands habitat will cause a tenfold increase in the types of birds nesting at the site, officials said.

The restoration efforts included building two bridges, nesting sites, dredging sand and dirt to build levees. Most importantly, the program called for cleaning soil contaminated by oil drilling on the wetlands that began in the 1940s and is expected to be completed soon.

7 Closing of Main Street — The proposal to turn Main Street into a pedestrian mall has been in the pipeline for more than a decade. Downtown businesspeople reluctantly agreed in November to a watered-down version of the plan. In March, city staff will try a pilot project to close the first three blocks of Main Street to automobile traffic for five festival weekends and 12 consecutive Tuesdays nights to attract locals.

A committee to study the Main Street closure was formed in June to study potential effects of closing Main Street from Pacific Coast Highway to Orange Avenue to automobile traffic.

The original plan to shut down Main Street for three months failed when Downtown Business District Assn. members raised issues such as lack of studies and a loss of 88 parking spaces on the first three blocks. Downtown residents were concerned about extra traffic gobbling up parking and making more noise.

Transforming Main Street into a permanent outdoor mall can be revisited once downtown development projects such as Pacific City and the Strand are completed, council members and business leaders say.

8 Barbara Mullenix — Rachel Mullenix, 17, and Ian Allen, 21, are facing murder charges after the body of the girl’s mother was found floating in Newport Harbor in September. Louisiana State Troopers later arrested the couple, and Huntington Beach detectives brought them back here. Barbara Mullenix, 56, lived in a Huntington Beach apartment with her daughter and ex-husband.

Mullenix has been charged as an adult, and prosecutors added an enhancement against Allen for use of a weapon. Mullenix’s attorney said the girl loved her mother very much and claimed that Allen took her against her will to Louisiana. A preliminary hearing has been set for both Allen and Mullenix on Feb. 1 in the West Court Justice Center in Westminster.

9 Barbara Boskovich Resigns — Ocean View School District school board Trustee Barbara Boskovich resigned April 10 after a controversy concerning Harbour View Elementary School Principal Roni Ellis

In May 2005, Ellis sued Boskovich, the Ocean View School District and former Supt. Jim Tarwater for sexual harassment and defamation, alleging that Boskovich spread rumors to teachers and other administration officials about an intimate relationship between the Harbour View principal and Tarwater. Ellis will receive $250,000 under the agreement after an investigation into the matter concluded that Boskovich started the rumors but could not determine if that amounted to sexual harassment.

Some parents rallied for a recall bid after Boskovich’s re-election in 2004, which failed. On the other hand, she was highly praised for her work on the sale of the Bolsa Chica Mesa’s surplus land to the Wildlife Conservation Board.

Trustees called on a county attorney to help lay out their options after Trustee Sharon Holland and Board President Carolee Focht walked out of the June 5 meeting because they disagreed with the appointment process in place.

Because an agreement could not be reached, a special election was held alongside the regular one on Nov. 7 to find a permanent replacement. The added name on the ballot cost the board thousands of dollars extra.

Karen Colby replaced Tarwater, but was suspended from her position on Dec. 7, just two days after the newly elected board trustees were sworn in.

10 Surf City USA Trademark — The battle over which city is the true Surf City U.S.A. continues, with Huntington Beach and Santa Cruz struggling for the ultimate bragging rights. Huntington Beach started off the year with a huge advantage: The Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau pulled off a coup in May by securing trademark rights over the Surf City U.S.A. moniker. The apparent end to the decades-long rivalry garnered worldwide attention for both cities. Not so fast, though.

Santa Cruz turned the tables on Huntington Beach with a lawsuit challenging the validity of its trademark in October. The Surf City U.S.A. mark is on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s supplemental list, which indicates that the office deemed it not worthy of being on the principal registry, according to the law firm representing two Santa Cruz businesses. The businesses sued in response to a trademark violation notice from the bureau.

Not to be outdone, the bureau shot back with its lawyer asking the judge to dismiss the case or change the venue to Southern California instead of San Jose. It’s a clash that was earlier marked by lighthearted banter and good-humored ribbing, but has escalated into something that has taken a more serious turn. In any case, the free publicity fits in with both cities’ plans to market themselves as a tourist destination.