It has been my honor to serve as your Mayor this year, and, as the year comes to a close, I wanted to share some of our City’s accomplishments with you.

This spring, the City worked with the Auto Dealers to form a Landscape Maintenance District and completed the Creekside Road streetscape project, adding landscaping, traffic calming measures and benches to “auto row” to allow for enhanced safety for pedestrians as well as vehicles. Also this spring, we celebrated the completion of our first community garden project at Central Park. All 80 plots are full and surplus vegetables grown there are donated weekly to the SCV Food Pantry. In May, we gathered as a community to dedicate the Fallen Warriors Memorial Bridge at Golden Valley. The monument at the bridge displays the names of fallen warriors who gave their all for their country during the War on Terror.

Perhaps one of the biggest events of the year for the City was the grand opening of our new Santa Clarita Public Libraries. The City now owns and operates the three local libraries: Canyon Country, Newhall and Valencia. During the first week of July we held grand opening festivities and library patrons now enjoy increased hours of operation, a $900,000 infusion of new books and media, upgraded facilities, and new technology. To date, the City has distributed over 34,000 City library cards and is welcoming over 2,000 patrons per day at the three branches.

This summer, we dedicated over 500 acres of open space called the Haskell Canyon open space. This area was originally proposed as a housing development and now will be preserved forever as open space. In August, we held our “Topping Out” ceremony for the new, 30,000 square foot library in Old Town Newhall. The event commemorated the final steel being added to the new, state-of-the-art library. We also dedicated a 50-year time capsule that will be buried at the new library site. Also in August, we hosted Senator Barbara Boxer at the Transit Maintenance Facility, dedicating our federally-funded new solar panel project that is providing 97% of the energy needed to power that facility.

In October, we kicked off two projects in Old Town Newhall at a groundbreaking event. The projects will add 93 spaces to the Newhall Metrolink Station as well as a new half acre passive park to the adjacent Newhall Community Center.

In November, we joined with the West Ranch Town Council and area residents at a groundbreaking event to begin a landscape project at Lyons and Interstate 5 that will greatly enhance this gateway to our City.

So what’s on tap for the near future? If you are a commuter on the west side of town, we’ve got great news for you. The City is beginning construction of a 285-parking space park and ride lot at the McBean Transfer Station (McBean and Valencia Boulevard). In addition to the 285 new parking spaces, the project will include bike lockers, benches, low impact lighting and public art exhibits, plus information kiosks, and a plasma screen television for bus arrival information. The project is being funded through two grants from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the Federal Transit Authority (FTA), along with marching Proposition A funds provided by the City.

If you are interested in learning more about the programs and projects offered by our City, check us out on line at www.santa-clarita.com. You can sign up for email alerts on topics of your choice, and you can receive our online blog City Briefs.

It has been a privilege serving as your Mayor this year. I want to thank you for your support of our City.