KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
Ok, the tree. This one’s easy. Who doesn’t like trees? The city has trees everywhere. There is a dedicated staff that works day after day in our city trimming, planting, and watering the trees and bushes that are all around us. They work hard to ensure that we live in a beautiful place and if you don’t believe me, call Robert Sartain at the city and ask him what they do.
Also, mind you, this city was not built to be forgotten. That indeed may be the most poignant statement the oak tree makes. This city was beautiful in 1979. It was beautiful in 1992, it’s beautiful now and it will be beautiful twenty years from now.
I’d like to take everyone on a field trip to the corner of Victory Blvd and Laurel Canyon in North Hollywood. I spent a year living in that very section of town and what you see there is dirt soccer fields, boarded up businesses, and maybe three mal nourished trees. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure people there are doing the best they can, but everybody knows that it is not the North Hollywood it once was.
Santa Clarita has always planned for the future. Developments that are being built usually include a massive section of their land for use by the public, meaning that we at residents get that back. We’ve got one of the biggest Chamber of Commerce in the entire state of California. We’ve made it nice to do business under the oak tree because it’s an investment that will last a long, long time. Which leads me to my next point.
How about that commercial building just over the hill?
I don’t know who drew the seal, or when they did it, but my first impression was that it signified our border with the 2nd largest city in the United States. We were a commuter city, that’s understandable, that’s what people bought into.
Again, this little city may not stand for that so much any more. The industrial center’s twice the size it was, there’s another business park by the I-5/126, and yet another off Hasley Canyon in Castaic. Our auto dealerships are united and actually working with the city to keep shopping local, we’ve got nearly every restaurant any other town has, and a ton that are small and unique to our town only.
Maybe that building isn’t over the Santa Susana Mountains after all. Maybe it’s right down the street.
I don’t know for certain why I wanted to dissect this town so fully. I suppose maybe it could be the fact that as a reporter I get to know this city. It’s what I’m paid to do. I lived here all my life with the exception of that one year in North Hollywood, and yet everyday I see another little piece of this city that I didn’t know before.
I’m happy here, and I’m proud of my town.
Jon Dell
KHTS AM 1220 News
12-29-06
