Books

Downey again rejects library renovation bids

WAVE NEWSPAPERS — Renovation of the City Library, expected to take 15 months, has been delayed as the City Council May 14 again rejected all bids for the job. New bids are due June 11, Assistant City Manager John Oskoui said.

Published

7 years ago

May 24, 2019

Arnold Adler

By Arnold Adler

DOWNEY — Renovation of the City Library, expected to take 15 months, has been delayed as the City Council May 14 again rejected all bids for the job.

New bids are due June 11, Assistant City Manager John Oskoui said.

Oskoui said the apparent lowest of nine bidders, TELACU Construction Management, which bid the project at $4.94 million, was challenged by the second lowest, AWI Builders, which bid $4.99 million.

AWI, the apparent lowest of 11 bidders, at the March 26 council meeting, was challenged by Cal-City Construction.

The library is slated for extensive interior renovation as well as exterior remodeling and will be closed for 15 months.

During the closure, some library services and programs will be conducted at other locations, including a temporary fire station at Bellflower Boulevard and Washburn Avenue; Downey City Hall, 11111 Brookshire Ave.; and the First Baptist Church of Downey, 8333 Second St.

In a second major project May 14, the council approved plans and directed city staff to seek bids for two projects at Wilderness Park, 10999 Little Lake Road.

The project, estimated at $875,000, includes removal of water and sludge from two ponds and relocation of wildlife, Oskoui said in a written report to the council.

Oskoui said prior to upgrading the park, 2.5 acres of wetlands and animal habitat at the ponds must be drained of water, cleaned and the native wildlife must be protected and relocated.

The drainage project calls for removal and disposal of about one million gallons of water and one million gallons of sludge — plant and animal waste. The contractor must work with a wildlife relocation specialist to ensure animals, fish and bird safety, Oskoui said. He estimated the cost of the project at $800,000.

The second part calls for working with wildlife, bird and turtle rescue organizations to either adopt or release them, possibly to turtle and bird sanctuaries. The ponds must be aerated to ensure fish safety as the water levels drop. Food must be provided for the water foul. Estimated cost is $75,000.

Work on the two projects, financed by a $1.6 million grant from the San Gabriel Rivers and Mountains Conservatory, is expected to start in August and be completed in October, Oskoui said.

Once those projects are completed, work can start to upgrade the park, including the replacement of invasive plant species with native plants, installing a naturalized hardened shoreline plus a new aeration system to improve water quality and return animal wildlife including migratory birds, he said in the report.

The upgrade includes access to the 28-mile San Gabriel River Trail, running along the park, and educational signs for wetland and native habitat awareness, he added.

Funding of the upgrade will come from the 1% sales tax hike approved by Downey voters in November 2016.

That tax will raise about $7.5 million annually. Of that amount, $4.5 million a year has been leveraged to sell and pay off $50 million dollars in bonds to upgrade city buildings and parks.

Bond funds are being used to upgrade and expand all four fire stations, a number of parks and other municipal buildings including the library.

Arnold Adler

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Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

Published

2 weeks ago

June 20, 2026

Oakland Post

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Book Review: Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me

Though sticks and stones and words are weapons, as in the new memoir, “Something We Said” by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, they can also hold people together.

Published

2 weeks ago

June 17, 2026

bpusa-syndication

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Copyright: c.2026, Publisher: Simon & Schuster, SRP: $29.00, Page Count: 304 pages

Sticks and stones may break my bones.

You know the rest of that childhood rhyme, and you know it’s not true: words have meaning, and they can cut like a knife. And yet, though sticks and stones and words are weapons, as in the new memoir, “Something We Said” by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, they can also hold people together.

The college lecture was supposed to have been about the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

It was supposed to be a lively discussion, but unintentionally it quickly veered off course. When a White student quoted a movie line featuring the “n-word,” the room went quiet, and Professor Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor panicked.

She’d grown up hearing that word, and seeing it, and she’d experienced the painful feelings attached to it. She knew who wrote that movie line. It was her father, Richard Pryor.

In her first few years, Pryor spent most of her time in a White world, hearing her mother’s tales of her larger-than-life father, and trying to grasp meaning in her father’s albums, peppered as they were with a word that was off-limits to her.

When she was six, she met her father for the first time. She began to visit him regularly.

It was fun at her Dad’s house; though he was sometimes moody, he taught her to fish and play dominoes. She became close with her siblings, fearful of her great-grandmother, and confused about a word that her father’s uncles threw around like a beach ball. It was a forbidden word at her mother’s house, but her father used it. Differently. Often.

The word hurt. She knew first-hand that it did.

“The word became a degrading slur that shackled all Black people together into a single, inescapable tribe,” she says.

So why was it okay for certain people to say it?

Knowing that, in the years since Richard Pryor’s accident and his death from multiple sclerosis, he’s become somewhat of a legend. It is a very satisfying thing, isn’t it? So is reading about him, especially from the viewpoint of one of his seven children. But his is not the only story you get inside “Something We Said.”

Wrapped around the life of Richard Pryor is the life of a word that straddles a line between danger and provocation, a word that author Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor refuses to say or even print. As she tells readers about her father and her loving-but-difficult relationship with him, she warily circles that word, as if it might bite. You may cringe, but she weighs it carefully, helping readers see it as a chameleon before always bringing us back to her father, his work, and his life before and after her and that word.

It’s a push-pull balance that holds readers fast, and keeps them there. It’s perfect for fans of this genre, or Richard Pryor, or of language – and it’s going to make you think. If you want a good memoir this week, one that may send you to your old album collection, “Something We Said” is rock-solid.