Duarte
renovates its high school football field. Goodbye natural grass.
Goodbye football cleats digging up dirt and grass. Goodby grass
stains. The bell tolls for the invigorating autumn aromas of grass and
nitrogen and oxygen and trees. Now, we have synthetic carpets imposed on
the kids and imposed on the home-owners through Measure E. The destruction of a quaint old
city rolls on. I saw a post on John Fasana's Facebook page, dated last year where he
wanted to introduce a biotech center at the northeast corner of
Huntington Drive and Buena Vista, completely destroying the small-town feel to
our beloved Duarte. The article said that Phil Reyes had a hand in
stopping that project. I don't know for sure. Maybe Phil is doing
some good for Duarte after all. What I don't understand is that Duarte
has recently declared a technical bankruptcy, yet local residents approved bond
Measure E at the tune of a $100 per property owner to finance the renovation of
Duarte High School's football field from natural grass to synthetic
carpet. Also, the city of Duarte is partnering with the City of Hope who
themselves recently received a 1.3 million-dollar grant from NIH to encourage Duarte
High School students to become scientists. But if the city of Duarte
accepts and receives grant money from the NIH, which is a federally-funded
department of the US government, isn't this effectively a federal bailout of
the city of Duarte?
