Pasadena DFA Takes a Stand for Light Rail

Written by: Patrick Briggs on Apr 13, 2008 5:52 PM EDT

Pasadena DFA had their Chapter meeting last week and used it as an opportunity to get behind a local issue. It's progressive, community-oriented, and will make a lot of people's lives in the San Gabriel Valley better - light rail.

This past Thursday Pasadena DFA got together to hear Susan Hoder, Director of Public Affairs, Metro Gold Line Foothills Extension Construction Authority. She explained how their group needs to generate public comment and support before 4/24 - when the LA Metropolitan Transit Authority Board meets to decide if the San Gabriel Valley's Gold Line light rail extension gets put on the Long Range Transportation Plan.

It makes accounting sense to do this because the $80 million involved for this extension will buy us $320 million in federal support. It makes community sense because we have a growing traffic problem on our 210 freeway that runs across the whole San Gabriel Valley.

Our group wrote up about 20 hand written letters of support on the spot for this and committed to sending members to that board meeting later this month!

To learn more about this issue and get involved:

http://www.metro.net/projects_studies/lrtp.htm

and

http://www.iwillride.org/

Our agenda wasn't limited to this though. We talked about Russ Warner's congressional campaign for the 26th CD here in California and got 10 people signed up to volunteer for our upcoming DFA day at campaign HQ on Saturday April 26th 10-4 p.m.!

http://www.warnerforcongress.com/ - for more information on his campaign

and

http://tiny.cc/AvDdm - for more information on how to get to his HQ and join us 4/26

We discussed our tabling event at the Rose Bowl on Sunday 4/13. It's our first one for this spring and thanks to Patrick Burns' leadership it will no doubt have been a good action in our community. We'll post more on this in a separate blog entry.

We concluded the meeting with a couple of additional issues that are on the horizon for our community.

Altadena Town Council elections June 8th

(more info on the Town Council - http://www.altadenatowncouncil.org/)

and

Propositions 98 and 99 are on California's June 3, 2008 ballot and we need to educate voters on how to vote on them

(more information here - http://www.no98yes99.com/)

We have a lot to be proud of as a group. We need more of our membership's involvement if we want to make a bigger impact and take on more issues. If you've not been to a meeting, think about joining us in May. Feel free to reach out to our chapter leader - Patrick Briggs - pbriggs@greeneggsandham.org , if you want to find out more about us.

Thank you Maddie for doing such a fine job organizing our April DFA chapter meeting. Thanks also to our fine steering committee. Outstanding work!

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Location: Pasadena, CA 91104