COMPLIMENTARY COPY
MONROVIAWEEKLY.com
Thursday, february 21 - february 27, 2019
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MONROVIAWEEKLY
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Vol. 23, No. 8
Monrovia Duarte Black Alumni Teach Black History at Bradoaks Elementary Terry MILLER tmiller@beaconmedianews.com
O
n Tuesday afternoon, KGEM host Ralph Walker spent several hours with students at Bradoaks Elementary School sharing his personal knowledge of the Civil Rights movement, as well as struggles and anguishes AfricanAmericans endured at the hands of slave owners. Walker, well-equipped with personal memorabilia and historic artifacts, held Miss Littlefield’s third graders’ attention throughout his half-hour lecture. The bright Bradoaks students were well-aware of Rosa Parks and the importance of her refusal to give up her seat on the bus. On Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to relinquish her seat in the "colored section" to a white passenger, after the whitesonly section was filled. The United States Congress has called her "the SEE BLACK HISTORY PAGE 10
Monrovia’s Local Access Television host, Ralph Walker, shares his knowledge about Black History with third graders while poking fun at himself holding a vintage Monrovia Weekly newspaper, “when my hair was black…” – Photo by Terry Miller/Beacon Media News
Foothill Unity Center Plans Tribute to Betty Sandford Susan motander motander@yahoo.com
Foothill Unity Center (FUC) will host a reception in honor of Betty Sandford on Thursday, Feb. 21 from 3-5 p.m. at their facility in Monrovia at 790 W. Chestnut. This celebration of all the kindnesses of Betty is open to the public. Betty’s decision to sell her Monrovia home and move closer to her children has prompted the center to celebrate her. One of Betty’s greatest
talents is her ability to inspire others. In this regard she was instrumental in formalizing the organization that is now the Unity Center. In the early 1980s Josephine Anderson began the Center working out of a closet at Immaculate Conception Church. Betty was inspired herself by an editorial written by Dick Singer (at that time he was the editor of the local paper) in support of the Center. Betty brought Josephine into the committee SEE BETTY SANFORD PAGE 11
Conditional Approval for rEWMP project in Monrovia Area Susan motander motander@yahoo.com
Betty Sanford. - Courtesy photo / Facebook, @FoothillUnityCenter
The reaction to that headline should have been a resounding “What?”. This is an important issue as it may affect your taxes and water rates. But first you will need a few explanations and definitions. An Enhanced Watershed Management Plan is an EWMP (pronounced E-Wimp – appropriately). A rEWMP is a revised EWMP (pronounce Are-E-Wimp). All of this “bureaucrat-speak” is the result of the Regional Water Board demanding more stringent cleaning of our local storm water (which you will note in “bureaucrat-speak” is now one word) than any other water board in the state
and as far as we know the nation. The first numbers for the projects required by the Water Board were staggering; they were in the billions for the county and the millions for each local community. The amount required for some cities could equal a decade of their entire local budget for the entire city. Potentially, if this went through, cleaning the storm water would be the only thing a city could fund and it could bankrupt them (and we all thought funding the employee retirements was a problem). The original EWMP for this area was up to $1.4 billion to clean up storm water to achieve compliance with the mandated MS4 Permits SEE APPROVAL PAGE 10