Comittee for a Clean and Beautiful Rosemead

The next time you leave your house, take a look up and down your street.  Are you proud of your neighborhood and how it looks?  Does your property make a positive contribution to the block?  Is it apparent that people who live there care about their homes?  Is your own home well-groomed and does it reflect your feelings of pride in your neighborhood? 

This is what this site is all about.  As a Rosemead resident,  I believe one of the key roles of our government is to provide a safe and enjoyable environment in which our citizens can live, work and play.  But government can't do it all.  Citizens must be involved every single day in the fight to maintain and improve the quality of their neighborhoods.  Aiding citizens in their efforts to keep their neighborhoods safe and clean is what this site is all about.

This site is not paid for by The City of Rosemead and this is not a political website.  Its purpose is to encourage homeowners to exchange ideas and strategies, promote their successes and -- most importantly -- learn how to be involved.

The Committee for a Clean & Beautiful Rosemead (CCBR) is comprised of Rosemead residents and business owners. It shall serve fellow residents of Rosemead by assisting in the development and implementation of effective public education and community volunteer  projects, which enhances the overall quality of life in our neighborhoods by:

1.     Instilling and fostering a sense of neighborhood pride among those that live and work in Rosemead;

2.    Addressing community and neighborhood issues such as community beautification, graffiti, code enforcement, residential and commercial property maintenance, parking, littering, recycling and proper solid waste management; and

3.    Assisting in the development of educational  programs and citizen involvement projects to enable Rosemead residents to take personal responsibility for ensuring that their neighborhoods are safe, clean and of a consistent high quality.

The members of the Committee for a Clean & Beautiful Rosemead are committed to the successful implementation of these goals.

The germ of the idea is simple and compelling. A broken window--or a littered sidewalk, graffiti, or what you like--does no great harm to a neighborhood if promptly addressed. But left unatended, it sends a signal: that no one cares about this neighborhood, that it is a safe place to break things, to litter, to vandalize. Those who engage in such behaviors will feel safe here. And once these minor miscreants have become well established, perhaps it will seem a safe enough neighborhood in which to be openly drunk, in which to beg for money, and possibly extort it. In short the smallest symptoms of antisocial behavior will, left to fester, breed greater and greater crimes, all the way down to murder.

This is the theory famously expounded by James Q. Wilson  in an article entitled Broken Windows. They make the consequences of small-scale neglect very clear and very direct:

A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.

There is an accessibility, and a sense of reasonability, about all of this. From our personal experience we can find examples--at least, of litter fostering more litter, and suchlike. Whether that extends in an unbroken chain all the way to violent crime is a little more abstract, but it seems plausible enough.

Graffiti's Impact on Community


•    Destroys property and reduces property values
•    Undermines residents and visitors sense of security and safety
•    Promotes an undesirable image of our city to visitors
•    Looks as if "nobody cares" about the area

Action

•    To remove graffiti as quickly as possible as a deterrent;
•    To encourage preventative techniques as a deterrent to graffiti;
•    To involve the business community and community organizations.