The West Ranch Beacon - News & Commentary for the Santa Clarita Valley

America’s deepening divisions over the war in Iraq were put on show on Wednesday as an embattled President George W. Bush defended his decision to send more troops and insisted he would veto any bill from Congress that set a timetable for US withdrawal.

Mr. Bush drew cheers at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association when he derided Democrats for inserting million of dollars of requests for “tree assistance”, expense accounts and visits to the Capitol into an emergency war spending bill, as well as deadlines for pulling out of Iraq. Read it here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a51df0c2-dd51-11db-8d42-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=5aedc804-2f7b-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html

The economy grew at a 2.5 percent pace in the final quarter of last year, healthier than previously thought but still largely caught up in a spell of sluggishness reports the

Associated press from Washington.

The new reading on gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department on Thursday, was an improvement from the prior estimate of a 2.2 percent growth rate for the October-to-December period. However, it marked the third quarter in a row where the economy’s growth clocked in at a lethargic 2 percent or better, reflecting the drag of the crumbling housing market on overall business growth.

Read it here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070329/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/economy_46

Local property owners who nixed an earlier measure might soon have a say again about paying an annual fee so the city can buy raw land to create a green woodland around the valley writes Judy O’Rourke for the Daily News.

On Tuesday, the Santa Clarita City Council approved a plan to draft a measure to form a special assessment district with the goal of saving some open space from development. “This is a very simple district - very straightforward,” said Councilwoman Laurene Weste, who has long championed the concept.

The wording of the measure would be finalized in late April after an engineer’s report is released, but the guiding principles are a $25-a-year assessment for the owners of single-family homes, no more than a $1-a-year adjustment, a term of 30 years and a mandate to buy and conserve undeveloped land. Read it here: http://www.dailynews.com/santaclarita/ci_5543971

Capt. Anthony LaBerge, Santa Clarita Valley Sheriffs Station writes that the City and Sheriffs are recommending using the local Sheriff station’s phone number for emergencies.

Did you know that more than 8 million people in the United States currently use a cell phone as their only phone service?  Public-safety agencies report that wireless calls make up about 30 to 50 percent of all 9-1-1 calls. Until recently, when someone called 9-1-1 from a cell phone, no information appeared on the call-taker’s screen even in enhanced 9-1-1 systems, and the call wasn’t always routed to the nearest Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) to the caller’s location. It could be that your emergency call made from your cell phone to 9-1-1 could end up at a remote vicinity, thus delaying help.

(more…)