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Community Corner

A Proposal to Improve Communications Among Altadenans

It appears that we have communication gaps in our ability to reach out into the community and get important information to the majority of the citizens in Altadena

Based upon the from a few of my columns it appears that we have a major communication problem--to sum up, too many of the same faces know about what is going on in this town, and too few of the rest seem to know or care.

So instead of writing another column about just the problem, I want to talk about the solution.

Primarily we have a problem in getting the word out to our citizens about important and upcoming issues and/or events happening around town. So many people have complained that they don’t really know where to go to find the latest information regarding things of importance and interest.

Find out what's happening in Altadenawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

As I am out and about in the neighborhood speaking with the people it is so amazing that most do not automatically turn to the Altadena Patch or the Altadenablog. Perhaps this medium of communication has not taken hold as a mainstream means of acquiring news.

Traditionally the local news media broadcast the current activities that happen around town, but in unincorporated areas such as in Altadena many times there is no central broadcast or print news source that specifically covers our immediate area.

Find out what's happening in Altadenawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Pasadena Star-News doesn’t adequately cover the current activities in Altadena, and certainly the Los Angeles Times does so even less. The local television news stations don’t report on activities specific to Altadena unless it is something very tragic and worthy of headline news.

So our main two resources in getting the most localized information to you currently are the Blog and Patch. That leaves us with another problem. Too many of our citizens, especially the elders, do not have or know how to use computers in order to access these resources.

I'm working on an initiative to create a means of teaching those who do not know how to use the Internet for basic communication purposes, such as in sending and receiving email or just reading the news blogs. Once we bring everyone that desires to learn the basics up to speed then we would be better connected as a community.

I've learned that efforts like exist already at the and I've met with the librarians there to see what myself and others can do to help them increase the number of people they serve and bring additional classes that will help people get connected online to others in the community.

Putting something like this into action would not be very difficult, but it would require the assistance of many of you from a volunteer standpoint. Those who could teach would be asked to teach and those who don’t know how to perform simple functions on the computer would be asked to identify themselves so we can get you the training.

There are programs as such in place already, but still most may not have heard about community-sponsored computer literacy classes. Rather than reinventing the wheel, all we need to do is let you know  where, when and how. 

Although the details on how to help those programs aren't clear yet, we will need volunteers, ideas and possibly sponsors as well in order to get plan into action.

While I'm on this conversation I'd also like to work with my fellow Town Council members to see if we might improve upon communicating with the public as well.

The intent of this community initiative is to bring us together as a unified community so when crucial issues are proposed we can work together as a group of citizens and vote on what is best for our community. If we do not organize as a community then there are many things that could happen that are not in our best interest.

We already see and with other hot topics that people found out in hindsight. That will continue to be a pattern if we don’t do something to change what is or is not currently in place.

So much is happening that requires our participation but far too many ordinary citizens are not aware of the issues. We need to change that. We need to find better ways of making you aware of important issues concerning your neighborhoods.

Even though some have written down a few good ideas as to how we may get better connected and bring many of our citizens into the information highway, I would love to hear your ideas about what you think is needed in Altadena and how we might more effectively communicate our important issues and events to the public.

Good people of Altadena we need your help. If you have ideas about how this could work this please share them in your comments. This is about creating more community in Altadena.

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