BEAUTIFICATION COMMITTEE

Contributed by: Karen Moran, Chairperson

Since completing the improvements to the City parking lot on Chino across from the Catholic Church (block wall repair, trash removal, weeding, and a complete painting of both sides of the wall) the Beautification Committee has focused on a goal of improvements to all the medians in Old Las Palmas, beginning with the four medians on Chino west of North Palm Canyon Drive, which the Committee felt needed the most help.

First, neighbor contributions were received from Joel and Joanne Douglas, Bob and Sylvia Cook, Harold Matzner, Bud & Barbara Hoover, Steve Pougnet, Tim Evans for La Sierra University, the Henry Frank Family and Shaul Mezrahi, owner of the Corridor Retail Center, which totaled $8,500. At the same time, the City Parks Department agreed initially to contribute $5,000 to the project. Also during this time the Committee was successful in arranging for Bennett Puterbaugh, a well respected local landscape architect, to volunteer his time to prepare a landscape plan.

Next, Karen Moran, Committee Chairperson, and concerned neighbors Bob Cook and Joel Douglas met with the new head of the Parks Department, Sharon Heider and Assistant City Manager Troy Butzlaff to get the plan approved and to have the City get bids for the planned construction. The City came back with an estimate of $400,000 to do all four medians, which was way over budget. Next the Committee and City staff asked the City Manager to increase the City’s financial contribution to $21,000 which was accomplished. A scaled down landscape plan was prepared by Bennett Puterbaugh and presented to the City in an attempt to fit within the new budget of $29,500.

At the next meeting with the City, two concepts were discussed: completing only the first median adjacent to the City parking lot with boulders, cobble, gravel, improved irrigation and extensive desert landscaping, or doing all four medians with only boulders, cobble and gravel. Although the City preferred the first alternative the Committee was quite adamant about wanting improvements on all four medians and was able to prevail. The Committee and the neighbors felt the desert landscaping could be done at a later date after additional contributions are collected. The work on the four medians began on May 29th and is expected to be completed by June 15th.

In the meantime the Committee has worked on the two medians on West Mountain View Place: Neighbors Jackie Autry, Louise and Hank Hampton, Blair Alexander and Dan Belair, Mike and Eula Harris, Matt Bousquette and John Jacobs, Walt and Linda Haaka, Theo Gund and Carmen Bradley, Sherrod Turner and Jim DiBella, and Rick and Karen Moran together raised over $12,000 to move five large Washingtonian Palms contributed by the Morans to the medians to replace five undersized existing palms. The contributions also paid for lighting of all the Palms in the medians which should be operational by June 15th.