There've been some interesting reactions to an item in Michele Zack's Golden Poppy awards story.
Winner Michael Gregory told the story of receiving a letter from State Sen. Carol Liu, complaining about a lack of front yard maintenance (Gregory and Michael Howard tore out their lawn to replace it with a drought-tolerant landscape of succulents and decomposed granite). Steve Haussler reported looking at the letter, which came from an "Altadena Betterment Committee" that no one had heard of, with a return address in Pasadena that did not exist.
Tahra Goraya, district director at Sen. Liu's office, told Altadenablog that they read the story and were stunned to find that someone was throwing around the senator's name in a letter about yard care. "The senator's obviously not too happy," Goraya said. "It did not come from my office." Goraya agreed that Sen. Liu was so busy with official business that she couldn't check up on local landscape maintenance as well.
Our guess? Someone didn't like or didn't understand what Gregory and Howard were doing, and, rather than asking questions or complaining about it directly, fabricated an organization with letterhead and signed it with Sen. Liu's name to seem like it was official. Goraya said that they were trying to get a copy of the letter, as it was rather serious to forge a legislator's name to anything. Stay tuned!
UPDATE 7/2: Tahra Goraya has sent us this:
As a point of clarification, the Senator does care about the lawns in that she is happy they have xeriscaped and are saving water - consistent with her program to Green the 21st District. We congratulate all of the Altadena Heritage 2010 Golden Poppy Award recipients. To learn more about the Senator's greening initiative, please visit www.senate.ca.gov/LIU and Greening the 21st District in the 21st Century under District tab.
