STILL TIME TO RUN FOR TOWN COUNCIL

Do you live in the unincorporated area of La Crescenta, basically between Briggs and Pennsylvania?

If so, your Town Council needs you to step up and represent your town. Anyone can run as long as you’re a registered voter in our town for at least one year. You will be amazed at how much you will learn about every aspect of your community. It is really an eye opener and a wonderful experience to get to know your sheriff, fire, highway patrol, [and] all our great schools. Meet the pastors of our great churches, know your Allied Waste rep and Edison rep and the list goes on and on.

The benefits and knowledge you receive are great, but so is the satisfaction that you are giving back to your community. What things have you always been thinking of doing, be it traffic safety or buildings on Foothill Boulevard? The Crescenta Valley Town Council gets involved with everything and did I mention the water district and our most needed asset: our water? We keep informed of water issues as well.

Once a year, Nov 7 in 2009, three voting seats and three alternate seats on our Town Council are up for election. It’s not that hard to win. Look at me – I’ve been involved with this council for most of its 20 years of existence, but we need you to run this time.

Go to our website www.thecvcouncil.com and download an application. It really is a lot of fun to get to know your community and only requires one evening, the third Thursday of each month. You can do this!

We really would like many residents to run, so if you have been interested, consider this your personal invitation to get involved.

If I can answer any questions or “talk you into running,” just call.

Application deadline is Oct. 18.

Danette Erickson

(818) 249-9577

La Crescenta

ENDORSES SHOPPING LOCAL TO PRESERVE

My family and I would like to congratulate the Crescenta Valley Weekly for offering us a wonderful addition to our community. Your thorough coverage of our local fires was quite impressive, and your color photos and advertising are very tasteful and interesting. Everything about your paper seems to be vibrant and quite alive, so keep up the good work! We look forward to each issue and we will happily support your efforts by signing up for an annual subscription. We’ve been disappointed in the coverage our area receives from larger papers, so we appreciate that this paper is all local news.

As a family that is very concerned about our way of life and the sustainability of our community, we prefer to patronize local businesses and always try to “Shop Local” first, before patronizing other businesses. We appreciate the truly friendly, personal service and attention that we get from our small local businesses and it saddens us to see more and more shops and restaurants going under in these tough times. Mike Leum’s letter from Sept. 24 is such an inspiration; we hope more families will follow suit and patronize at least one local business each week. We have unique offerings here (did you know that Once Upon A Time is the oldest children’s bookstore in the entire country?), and so no visit from out-of-town guests is complete without a visit to Montrose. It’s like stepping back in time to when this is how shopping used to be conducted. Discover the wonderful things our local shopping has to offer, like Mike did.  Our local businesses are a treasure, and if we don’t support them now, they won’t be here tomorrow. And while you’re at it, subscribe to this little gem of a local paper so they can be here for us too.

Cynthia and Keith Teruya

La Cañada

WATER NEWS FROM CVWD MEMBER

The Governor and the Legislature are working hard this week on a comprehensive water legislative package to solve our statewide water crisis. I strongly support their efforts to craft a compromise bill to solve our water shortage problems. In the water debate all interest groups agree that increased water conservation and developing new local water supplies through water recycling and capturing more stormwater are critical elements to solving our statewide water crisis. In addition, the legislators have agreed that new State grants are needed to fund the proposed CVWD water recycling and stormwater type projects throughout southern California. The board of directors of the Crescenta Valley Water District are working hard to ensure that these new local water supply projects are funded with state and federal grants to avoid future water rate increases.

The District is also offering free water conservation classes for all residents. On Saturday, the Cresecenta Valley Water District, in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, will be hosting a “Smart Gardening Class” (Oct. 17 from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.) at our CVWD Glenwood water facility, 3730 Glenwood Ave.

If you would like more information about our efforts to conserve water and develop new local water supplies, please do not hesitate to contact me or the staff at the Crescenta Valley Water District or go to our web page: www.cvwd.com.

Richard Atwater, Director

Crescenta Valley Water District

WARNS NEIGHBORS TO BE AWARE

On a very hot night last month, a week after the fire, an intruder entered my house at 2:00 a.m. I woke up, saw the light from a flashlight moving down the hall outside my bedroom, turned on my bedroom light and yelled. He left the way he came in, by an unlocked screen door in the dining room.

I climbed out a bedroom window and ran across the street to my neighbors.

Sheriff’s deputies came, searched, found nothing, and determined that “no crime had been committed.”

I certainly did make a mistake in forgetting to lock the screen doors, but I think some uninvited creep coming into my house at 2:00 a.m. with a flashlight is a crime, even if I didn’t see him, only his flashlight, there were no “witnesses” who could identify this person, nothing was taken, there was no “forced entry,” and I was not attacked, raped or murdered.

This is the second incident in as many years: my house was burglarized in 2007. Now, my neighborhood is going to establish a Neighborhood Watch program.

I hope that with a heightened awareness of what is happening in our neighborhood and noticing who is coming and going, we can help each other, and ourselves. By being observant, we protect our property values as well as our own personal property, adding to the benefit of living in this wonderful community.

Anne McNeill

La Crescenta