Here’s a quick rundown of highlights from Tuesday’s ACONA meeting:
Altadena cell coverage: Representatives from T-Mobile, ATT, and Verizon were on hand to speak about Altadena’s cell phone coverage: RIch Roche of ATT said that the number of cell phones has doubled in the apst four years, and over a quarter of homes had only a wireless phone as of June 2010. ATT’s mobile data usage has gone up 8,000 percent in four years, so demand is growing, and carriers are still looking for cell tower locations.
But they’re hard to find: a contingent of neighbors from Loma Alta Drive, which persuaded the county Board of Supervisors to turn down a cell tower in their neighborhood, spoke to the location issue. Among their complaints was the height of the monopine (i.e. pine-tree-appearing) tower, which at 100 feet would have been the tallest object in the neighborhood. One resident said that, had the tower gone up, her home would be in the fall zone if it came down -- and that fact would render her house unsalable and uninsurable.
Post Office: Members and former members of postal workers unions accused postal officials of not being up-front about plans to close and downsize local post offices. Michael Evans, president of the American Postal Workers Union, California, and an Altadena resident, said that the Altadena post office location is under lease for four more years. They said that the plans to close the Mack Robinson processing center in Pasadena and downsize the Altadena office by moving mail carriers to other facilities is a “manufactured crisis,” that will not save money. Joe Brown of the Altadena NAACP and a former postal worker passed out copies of a sample letter to protest the planned closures
Altadena shake-out: Steve Reagan of the New York/Allen area Neighborhood Watch presented some ideas on a pre-disaster “shake-out” for CERT volunteers. Reagan said that he wanted to get 300 people CERT-trained and create teams to be deployed all over Altadena during emergency, working with the 37 Neighborhood Watch groups. Reagan said that it would be good to have a drill every year to identify problems and recruit new people.
