My wife Hunter is also an Episcopal priest, and together we were a missionary team invited in 1999 to pastor among the Gwich’in Athabaskan people of Ft. Yukon and surrounding villages.
Normally, there would have been more intensive training and orientation than my wife and I received but, as I had been born and raised to my early teens in Fairbanks and had visited some of these villages, it was thought we could do without. Not so.
Long before Bobby Troup wrote (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66, and immortalized the Mother Road, and long before the Rolling Stones 1965 tour when they agreed to play Swing Auditorium at the Orange Show Fairgrounds, because San Bernardino was mentioned in the famous song they covered, there was a dirt path, that became a wagon and buggy trail, that became a gravel road, that became a state highway called Foothill Boulevard and eventually became Route 66.
Claremont is in the process of placing zoning overlays on parcels in order to comply with the state-mandated allocation of lands for low-income housing.
The Southern California Association of Governments has given Claremont a goal of 157 low-income units, and the city has been engaged in deliberations for over a year. Many documents have been prepared and meetings held
As we begin a new year, the city of Claremont continues to evaluate the potential acquisition of the Claremont water system. Unlike the majority of residents in California, our residents are currently required to obtain their water from a for-profit company, Golden State Water. As a result, Claremont residents and businesses are required to pay higher rates for water than those of our neighboring cities. In addition, Claremont ratepayers are subject to paying a surcharge if Golden State’s profits are reduced because of water conservation efforts.
Golden State Water Company recently hosted a customer meeting in Claremont to share information about water service and the cost of the city’s plan to take the water system by eminent domain. We detailed our quality of service, the characteristics that make Claremont a unique system to manage and maintain, and shared that the cost of a potential acquisition by the city is likely to exceed $200 million.
