By Mona Raskin

January, 18th, 2012, Monterey Park’s city council, unfortunately, reopened a can of worms by reconsidering another study on whether Monterey Park’s Fire Department should go county or not! This situation has been offered to our city council several times before and the people of Monterey Park’s response has repeatedly been a negative one. We truly wonder why the council does not understand any part of “no”!

The problem that arises which is an important and serious one concerns the welfare and the history of our city. When Monterey Park was founded, the residents invested in developing their own Police and Fire Departments, which included their own Firehouse and equipment, etc.  The main and most urgent issue has always been, the response time in reaching any emergencies, fire, injuries and critical health issues! The response time should be 3 to 5 minutes only! Should we go “County” it is likely response time can be much longer!

It is true our city has changed over the years!  Some of which has not been for the best! Recently, Edison Sub-station has extended their electrical system.  We now have extra electrical towers built over existing ones, which now includes a variety of electrical lines including big cable lines that can be seen throughout the skies of Monterey Park! The one big concern, we may now have, is, if, we should have is either a huge firestorm or earthquake that our fire department be near enough to respond as quickly as they had before they went “County”!

We the people do not want to take the chance of up above. Should the Ad Hoc Study succeed in reaching the ballot box unfortunately, we cannot rely on our city council to take care of this Ad Hoc study!

City council should be there to represent their city’s wishes and not just their own!   It is rather suspicious to this behavior, especially when there was an overwhelming negative response from their community to not take time and money to even consider the Ad Hoc Study!

Now that the year of the dragon has apparently appeared, we truly hope the negative atmosphere at city hall will disappear, so that our city can once again return to it’s less stressful and normal self!

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY