About 15 years ago when my family moved to our current house on First Avenue we were puzzled by a missing stretch of a couple hundred feet or so of sidewalk alongside the field at the Arcadia Christian School. It was an uneven patch of dirt between two sections of nice sidewalk that made it so difficult for the many walkers in the neighborhood that most stepped out into the street at that point, creating many dangerous situations with so many cars coming and going from the popular field for kids soccer and baseball practice.
by Scott Hettrick
My wife called the main City of Arcadia phone number and was switched to Public Works. They didn’t know either of us from Adam — I was years away from starting this web site and becoming involved with community groups. So, we were greatly impressed when a few days later we saw City crews installing a beautiful new sidewalk to cover the entire missing stretch.
More than ten years later in 2003 the City installed new street signs around town. They look great, but we were puzzled at the one on our street and all the streets between Santa Anita and First Avenue that listed a block number of 100. None of those streets are the 100 block — that block designation is the block between First Avenue and Second Avenue, which the street signs also list as 100. It seemed erroneous and confusing to me, so I imagine it would be the same for delivery people and friends trying to find your home (this was many years before GPS, mind you). I called the City to ask about the signs and was again switched to someone in Public Works. The man could not have been more polite. He immediately understood my point and asked what number I would suggest putting on the signs — there is only room for one number, he said. Since house numbers between Santa Anita and First carry numbers between 1-99 and that was too many digits to put on the sign, I suggested maybe the number 99 to indicate it is lower than the 100 block. The next day all the signs up and down First Avenue south of Camino Real were changed to feature the number 99.
Now it’s eight years later and I got an e-mail early one recent Monday morning from my friend and ArcadiasBest.com blogger Larry Stewart. He and his wife had arrived home late Sunday and noticed a large limb had broken off from a curbside tree in front of their house in south Arcadia. He asked who he should call at the City. I gave him the number to Public Works. That was about 8:30 a.m. By 10:30 a.m. he e-mailed to let me know that he was in the back of the house and that the next time he looked out front he saw that the fallen tree branch was gone and the mess was already cleaned up. “Very impressive,” he said. “City government at its best.”
Indeed. Kudos to Public Works under department head Tom Tait and City Manager Don Penman, as well as their predecessors for the past 15 years.
— By Scott Hetrick