The Northeast Valley and the CRA

Even though I still work and was raised in Pacoima, I must be one of the outsiders against the CRA [Community Redevelopment Agency] that Councilman Alex Padilla referred to at the last meeting held at the Boys Club. Yes I’m an outsider; I’m an outsider to the process. Padilla is my voice in community matters, but he can’t hear me. He seems to hear only what the CRA mandates. I work seven days a week in my market located in the heart of the CRA target area. I wasn’t invited to ride on the buses the day the PAC [Project Area Committee] was elected. I wasn’t given a pro-CRA sticker to display on my chest. I didn’t even get the sample ballot with the candidates checked off that Padilla needed to push this project down our throats.

Mr. Padilla, let’s take a good look at the track record of the CRA. I believe it speaks for itself: waste, incompetence and mucho dinero for the privileged insiders of the project. I also feel that, in your honest desire to make Pacoima a better place, you’re willing to make this deal with the devil. You would be wise to deal with the insiders and outsiders of Pacoima in an aboveboard manner. . . . We don’t need the CRA to dictate in Pacoima.

When my parents settled here 50 years ago, they developed an olive grove into a home and means to make a meager living for five children. My seven children were also born and raised here. We’ve been here ever since. How much longer, I have no idea, since the CRA’s attempt to alleviate the community of its property rights.

Paved streets and sidewalks look great, but don’t forget the roots that run deep underneath the streets and sidewalks.

SALVATORE DEL GAUDIO

Pacoima

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I am a businesswoman in Sylmar who was raised in Pacoima. I went to school in San Fernando and had picnics at Hansen Dam. I am 36, and in all that time there has been no other councilperson who would lay his or her reputation on the line to speak on our behalf.

Prior to Padilla’s involvement, our district had been ignored and ignored and ignored financially. It is my personal, nonpolitical opinion that Padilla’s “political agenda,” as put by news media, is to improve his district.

He speaks on our behalf. He listens to our concerns and speaks them to the dissatisfaction of the outsiders who have never lived, shopped or worked in his district.

It is the people who voted him in and it is the people who support him. No good change has ever been easy or without challenge. We applaud Councilman Padilla.

VIVIAN HARTMAN

Sylmar