Torrance’s ‘Butterflies’ Rose Parade float is caught in a net of cost cutting.

RECESSION WILTS ROSE FLOAT: Cost cutting has hit the float Torrance intends to enter in next year’s Tournament of Roses. The City Council on Tuesday approved a contract with a parade float design firm for an entry that will cost $60,000, down $20,000 from the cost of this year’s float.

The Torrance Rose Float Assn. solicited bids from several float builders “with the sole intention of getting the best possible product for the least possible amount,” said Rick Sampson, association president.

While that goal has been achieved, Sampson said, the association nonetheless must chip in $10,000, the proceeds from many years of fund raising, to help pay for next year’s float. The city will pay the remaining $50,000.

The 1994 entry, “Fantastic Flight of the Monarch Butterflies,” will be 40 feet long, depicting monarch butterflies hovering among rose-covered “trees” 50 feet high.

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BUCKLE UP: Harbor-UCLA Medical Center will celebrate Mother’s Day today with a safety theme. It’s launching a new program to lend car seats to parents of infants and small children.

Organizers hope the program will enhance the safety of young patients following discharge from the South Bay’s 553-bed public hospital near Torrance.

“We have enough business. We don’t need any more,” said Sandie Shiry, director of the Harbor-UCLA Child Life program to assist hospitalized children.

In 1991, nearly 455 deaths and 49,000 serious injuries to children could have been avoided with the proper use of car seats, according to program organizers. The hospital is receiving 25 child car seats as a donation from Project Safe Baby, sponsored by Southern California Midas dealers. Another 10 seats are being donated by Volunteers for Children, part of the hospital auxiliary.

In a onetime event to mark the program’s start, two seats will be given away to two new mothers who lack car seats. The remaining 33 seats will be loaned for a few weeks or months to families until they can afford to buy their own.

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DAY AT THE DUNES: California sunflowers love it there. So do El Segundo spine flowers. You will, too. Bring sunscreen, gardening gloves and a picnic lunch to the El Segundo Dunes next Saturday. Help pull weeds and pick up trash, then, plant a few native species.

The event is part of an ongoing effort to help restore about 200 acres of the dunes near Los Angeles International Airport in Westchester to their original habitat. Volunteers will work from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The sponsors are Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter and the Los Angeles Environmental Affairs Department.

“The dunes belong to everyone,” said Lillian Kawasaki, general manager of the Environmental Affairs Department. “We’re sending flyers and making phone calls for volunteers throughout the city.”

Kawasaki said that through Galanter’s efforts, the city last year received $430,000 from the state to hire experts to help with the restoration. And volunteers from two local environmental groups, Rhapsody-in-Green and Heal the Bay, already have devoted hundreds of hours to restoring the area.

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GRANTS TO CHARITY: The Assistance League of San Pedro-Palos Verdes, a charitable organization serving children, has been awarded $125,000 in grants from several foundations. The Weingart and Ahmanson foundations both gave the league $50,000 and the Crail-Johnson Foundation gave $25,000.

The grants will help pay for the renovation of the league’s building at 1441 W. 8th St. in San Pedro and enable the league to expand such projects as its child dental care program.

The league’s dental center provides low-cost dental care four days a week to more than 2,000 kindergarten through high school age children from low-income families. The expansion will allow the center to serve another 1,000 children.

The league’s other major philanthropy, Operation School Bell, provides 1,152 children from more than 50 area schools with new clothes, backpacks, jackets and grooming kits.

LAST WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS

Rancho Palos Verdes: The City Council introduced an ordinance that would ban smoking in restaurants and city-owned buildings and would restrict smoking in bars to designated areas. The final vote will be May 18.

Hawthorne, Lawndale, Torrance, Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes: Twenty-five intersections along more than 10 miles of Hawthorne Boulevard will undergo traffic signal synchronization improvements. A $430,285 contract for the work, which will begin next month, was approved Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Traffic lanes in some areas may be reduced during daylight hours while work is under way.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Our concern is that the meeting will be transformed from what is an informational event for the benefit of the doctors to a political event. Our primary concern is the doctors’ privacy.”

--Eric Altshule, press secretary to Rep. Jane Harman (D-Marina del Rey), explaining why he abruptly canceled a meeting with doctors to discuss tactics used by anti-abortion groups to target physicians who provide abortions.

THIS WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS

Inglewood: Cities in Schools, a national, nonprofit group dedicated to preventing dropouts, will hold a fund-raising “read-a-thon” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Morningside High School. Students are rounding up financial pledges for the event, at which they will read silently all day with some breaks for readings by celebrity guests such as Charles Dutton of the hit television sitcom “ROC.” Cities in Schools has a local group based at Morningside.

San Pedro: The Harbor Area Gang Alternative Program is sponsoring a Mexican fiesta from 6 to 10 p.m. Thursday at the Los Angeles Police Department Pistol Range at 2981 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro. Admission for adults is $20, children $10. Information: (310) 519-7233.

CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS THIS WEEK Gardena: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, 1700 W. 162nd St., Gardena. (310) 217-9565. Televised live on Channel 22 (Paragon) and repeated at 7 p.m. on the next two Sundays. Hawthorne: 7 p.m. Monday, 4455 W. 126th St., Hawthorne. (310) 970-7902. Televised on Channel 22 (Paragon) at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday and 6 p.m. Saturday. Hermosa Beach: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, 1315 Valley Drive, Hermosa Beach. (310) 318-0239. Televised live on Channel 3 (Multivision). Inglewood: 7 p.m. Tuesday, 1 Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. (310) 412-5280. No cable telecast. Los Angeles: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 200 N. Spring St., Los Angeles. In San Pedro, (310) 548-7637; in Wilmington, (310) 548-7586; in Harbor City/Harbor Gateway, (310) 548-7664; in Westchester, (310) 641-4717. Televised live on Channel 35; meetings repeated individually at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and collectively on Sunday starting at 10 a.m. Palos Verdes Estates: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, 340 Palos Verdes Drive West, Palos Verdes Estates. (310) 378-0383. No cable telecast. Rolling Hills: 7:30 p.m. Monday, 2 Portuguese Bend Road, Rolling Hills. (310) 377-1521. No cable telecast. Rolling Hills Estates: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, 4045 Palos Verdes Drive North, Rolling Hills Estates. (310) 377-1577. Televised live on Channel 3 (Dimension). Torrance: 7 p.m. Tuesday, 3031 Torrance Blvd., Torrance. (310) 618-5880. Televised live on Channel 22 (Paragon), and replayed at 10 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, and at 10 a.m., 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.