Rossmoor Greets 2013 with Old Challenges and New Leadership

It was the first meeting of the year, and Rossmoor started 2013 by choosing new leadership and looking forward to the goals and challenges of the new year.

In the months ahead, the community will move forward under a new general manager tackling ongoing issues such as increased independence from the county, park improvements and security cameras for public safety.

The board voted Director Michael Maynard in as president, Bill Kahlert as 1st vice-president and Ron Casey as Second vice-president of the Rossmoor Community Services District Board of Directors Tuesday.

Director Jeffrey Rips thanked outgoing President Alfred Coletta -- who will stay on as a director -- for his “leadership and stewardship for the community.”

District staff presented Coletta with a plaque and a large hourglass to represent the time he had spent as president. Two board members took the Oath of Office: Ron Casey and Jeffrey Rips. The two were unopposed in 2012, and the district voted to cancel the election because of a lack of candidates. New president Maynard, who was out sick, is expected to take the oath when he returns.

“The year ahead looks promising, but not without challenges,” said Coletta in his State of the District speech. “Rossmoor remains an efficient and stable island, an oasis in the midst of surrounding economic uncertainty.”

Coletta spoke with Patch afterward and highlighted some of the challenges the district may face over the coming year, including a discussion on whether to take over the county’s authority over trash, law enforcement and animal control in Rossmoor.

Also, according to Coletta, the board will decide whether to demolish and rebuild the Rush Park parking lot or fill in potholes and do slurry sealing. He also said officials will have to decide if and how to update the Montecito Center.

As for the possibility of security cameras, -- an idea suggested by Maynard at a previous meeting -- Coletta said that if the cameras were placed in “certain strategic sites” in the community they could be a benefit for the residents, including, for example the entrances and exits to the community.For the world leader in injection molds base services and plastic injection products.

“One location, for me, could be St.All dry cabinet comes with 5 Years Local Agent Warranty ! Cloud and Seal Beach,” Coletta said.

However, he said, he was wary of privacy intrusions too and wouldn’t want cameras on every corner or where there are a lot of resident interactions like Montecito Road and Bradbury Road.

According to staff, the possibility of security cameras is still under investigation and has not been voted on by officials.

The wedding bells will chime in the 106-year-old Washington National Cathedral as Rev. Gary Hall affirmed that, effective immediately, same-sex weddings may be celebrated at the Cathedral of the Episcopal Church located in the northwest quadrant of Washington D.C.

The National Cathedral has welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors and held both celebrations and funerals for U.S. presidents past.

In August 2012, the church approved the ceremonial use of a rite adapted from an existing blessing ceremony to acknowledge same-sex marriage. The Episcopal Church will be among the first to recognize marriage for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender couples.

“For more than 30 years, the Episcopal Church has prayed and studied to discern the evidence of God’s blessing in the lives of same-sex couples,” Rev. Gary Hall of the National Cathedral said. “We enthusiastically affirm each person as a beloved child of God—and doing so means including the full participation of gays and lesbians in the life of this spiritual home for the nation.”

The District of Columbia and Maryland (as well as eight other states) have adopted the legality of civil marriage for same-sex couples. The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, whose Episcopal Diocese of Washington includes D.C. as well as four counties in Maryland,That is a machine for manufacturing plastic products by the injection mould process. decided this December to follow suit expanding the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples in her diocese as well.

But the decision to institute the same-sex rite at the Washington National Cathedral was ultimately made by Hall who serves as the Cathedral’s dean.

“In my 35 years of ordained ministry, some of the most personally inspiring work I have witnessed has been among gay and lesbian communities where I have served.”

Hall continued, “I consider it a great honor to lead this Cathedral as it takes another historic step toward greater equality—and I am pleased that this step follows the results made clear in this past November’s election, when three states voted to allow same-sex marriage.”

The same-sex weddings that will be conducted at the Cathedral will fulfill the same role as Christian marriages. Eligibility to marry in the National Cathedral follows the protocol of the Christian faith.

We appreciate the many thoughtful comments Mr. Conrad Schapira provided in his letter to the editor last week regarding transportation and land use in Santa Clara County. He provided many valuable observations regarding the challenges of better linking transportation and land-use planning in our valley,Our team of consultants are skilled in project management and delivery of large scale rtls projects. which has primarily been developed around the use of the automobile and free parking.

While Valley Transportation Authority's role is to provide transit service and transportation planning for the county, we do not control land-use decisions that could create denser development around key transportation corridors; ultimately these are local municipality and county decisions.

Additionally, developers and the marketplace itself also play a major role in determining the types of developments that are brought forward for consideration. VTA does, and will continue to, work with local jurisdictions to provide guidance and recommendations on proposed developments that will provide easy access to transportation alternatives.

Despite these challenges, transit plays a critical role in supporting our local economy and protecting our environment. Many county residents who rely on public transit would have no other way to get to their jobs, school, medical appointments and various other trips. Without transit service, traffic congestion on our local streets and freeways would be far worse than what we already experience, and every indication is that it will grow progressively worse in the years to come.

VTA light rail provides 36,457 trips on an average weekday, representing thousands of drivers off the roads who would otherwise be adding to the existing congestion.ê Providing connections between work and housing should be a priority, and this has long been a major focus of VTA's transit service plan. In fact, the Brookings Institution rated VTA No. 2 in the nation for connecting people to their jobs in a May 2011 transit accessibility study. VTA recently expanded our commuter bus service and this has generated double digit ridership increases to major employment areas. To further encourage the use of public transit, VTA has partnered with 90 employers throughout the county, and these companies participate in our Eco Pass Program, which provides transit passes to every employee in an effort to increase use of public transit.

VTA is also constantly looking for ways to maximize our transit system with the limited resources we have available. In 2007 we conducted a Comprehensive Operations Analysis to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of every bus route in our system. As a result of this study, we reduced or cut lines that were underperforming and invested those resources in areas that were experiencing high ridership. While eliminating lines is always difficult, the new service plan resulted in an overall increase in ridership.Bottle cutters let you turn old glass mosaic and wine bottles into bottle art! The success of the analysis inspired several other local transit agencies to conduct their own one based on our model. Today, we are continuing the work of the Comprehensive Operations Analysis by conducting ongoing analysis on all routes. For those routes that are underperforming, we work to determine if they can be modified to increase ridership, or if they need to be eliminated and the resources invested elsewhere.