Parris touts city as a ‘Christian community’
Antelope Valley Press – Thursday, January 28, 2010
Mayor’s address focuses on crime, culture, green energy
By GERRY PRICE
Valley Press City Editor/Assignments
LANCASTER — Mayor R. Parris sees his city as strongly Christian, and he’s proud of that.
“We’re growing a Christian community, and don’t let anybody shy away from that,” he told an audience of 160 people, mainly pastors and their spouses, during his State of the City address Tuesday at the John P. Eliopulos Hellenic Center.
He said he wants the community’s electorate to validate a Christian stance in the April municipal election, in which a ballot measure endorses prayers at city meetings, specifically with permission to invoke a specific deity, including Jesus.
While Parris, who is running for a second term as mayor in April, said he didn’t care which candidates the voters favored, “I do want them voting for that prayer amendment,” referring to a measure asking voters whether or not the City Council should seek religious guidance before its meetings.
The council put the measure on the ballot after the American Civil Liberties Union sent the city a letter of warning that said allowing “sectarian” prayers, such as those that mention Jesus Christ, at government meetings is divisive and unconstitutional.
“I need them standing up and saying we’re a Christian community, and we’re proud of that,” he said, speaking as his multimedia PowerPoint demonstration flashed a big-screen picture with a large Christian cross and the phrase “2010 Growing a Christian Community.”
Asked afterward whether his talk of being a “Christian community” tends to leave out or anger residents who are not Christians, the mayor said he doesn’t mean to exclude anyone.
Noting that he had a meeting scheduled that evening with members of the local gay and lesbian organization, Parris said, “My vision of it is not a vision of exclusion. It’s a vision of attraction. I understand for so long it has an exclusionary feel to it. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We should remove the exclusionary aspect.”
Parris maintained in post-speech remarks that a Christian city had a better sense of community than what he described as an “atheistic city,” and said progress Lancaster has made over the past several years came about because of the sense of cooperation between the various elements in the city.
As a prime example, he referred to the recently announced 31% drop in the Lancaster crime rate in the past two years, commenting, “That 31% is the difference between a city that is dangerous to live in vs. A city that is safe to live in.”
Despite the best efforts of the Sheriff’s Department, that drop wouldn’t have occurred without the cooperation of all the city’s departments and its citizenry, Parris said.
“It was all of us coming together,” he said.
Parris praised the jump from 118 active Neighborhood Watch groups in 2008 to 192 in 2009, and an even greater hike in involvement in Business Watch.
Other city-led actions took a large step to reduce what he described as the “hyper vigilance” of youth, which led them to become more vulnerable to gang involvement.
Specifically, by allowing graffiti, truancy, roving pit bulls and gangs to proliferate, we were putting our children in harm’s way, Parris said.
To that end, the city: 1) Cleaned up graffiti in 18,114 locations in 2009. 2) Removed 1,034 pit bulls from city streets during that same time frame.
Parris also touted the planned Voyager Sky Sentinel project, which will allow a Sheriff’s Department official to keep an eye on crime above the city from some 8,000 feet above the ground.
He noted that, during one demonstration of the aircraft, the brainchild of aviation pioneer Dick Rutan, he was able to see every detail of an accident or crime in real time.
He discounted any idea of the plane infringing on the privacy of law-abiding individuals, noting, “This device will not do anything a current (Sheriff’s Department) helicopter can’t do.”
At the same time, by using the aircraft, “we’ll be able to utilize services like we’ve never done before.”
“I honestly believe we’re on the way to becoming the safest city in America,” Parris said, despite the many reasons that shouldn’t happen, including the city’s proximity to a state prison and the high number of parolees in the community.
The mayor also praised the introduction of Community Impact Homes in the community.
The first two, one near Piute Middle School and the other in the Trend tract, are run by personnel from Grace Chapel and Central Christian Church.
Parris said, “We’re not putting churches (running neighborhood houses) in every impoverished neighborhood. I’d like to put them in every neighborhood.”
The mayor also said he would like to have health workers operate out of the community houses.
He also said that on Sundays, church buses should be stopping at homes in all the neighborhoods to take children to church.
Another area the mayor praised was the city’s support for the arts, especially in the development of Lancaster Boulevard as a mecca for artists and patrons of the arts, and as a place for fine dining.
Noting the opening of Brooklyn Deli and Giannini Bistro and upcoming opening of BeX, the mayor bragged, “Pretty soon, when you go out to eat, you’ll be going to Lancaster Boulevard. They’ll have better restaurants than the (Antelope Valley) Mall, and more fun, too.”
Upon revealing a slide titled “Alternative Energy Capital of the World,” Parris said a Monday meeting between a foreign company and a “major home builder” will lead to the construction of 10 of the most energy-efficient homes in the world within the next year.
Touting the “best sun in the world” and the Valley’s nearly constant winds as wonderful sources of green energy, Parris said a planned trip to China will allow him to meet with representatives of a major company that builds batteries designed to store green energy.
The mayor also said the city hopes to be announcing that 6,000 to 10,000 new jobs will be coming to the city in the near future.
Other statistics cited by Parris were a 36% drop in fatal collisions from 2008 to 2009, the elimination of 5,421 illegal dump sites during 2009 and the repair of 24,129 pot holes in that time frame.
[Managing Editor Charles F. Bostwick contributed to this report.]
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