Presidents Message

Dear DRFA Members,

Last month I did not have very good news about our float barn, remember? I stated that we lost our electricity because of the homeless stealing the copper wire. I have been calling the L.A. Supervisors office and I wrote letters to the Mayor's office and the City Council. I wrote letters to the Downey Patriot Newspaper as well. Efficient Lighting (Robert Ciatti) of Bellflower offered to help us will the Edison Co. and got the ball rolling, he has made several trips to our barn with Edison. Edison finally said absolutely no electric will be brought back to our facility! After the Council was made aware of our problem and letters sent out to The Patriot newspaper our Mayor Dave Gafin started calling me and our Reps from the L.A. County Supervisors office ! The next day, I started receiving several calls from the L.A. Counties office and from the public with outrage over our problem. GREAT NEWS! I was told last week 4/21 that we would have power to our building in 6 weeks. I was told today 4/28 that we would have power to our building on 5/15 , can you believe that? I was so excited, I could hardly speak. After all the no's telling me we cant have electric, the City of L.A. told us YES we will be able to have a float this year! I want to thank a few people now for helping us. I want to start with Efficient Lightning of Bellflower, Bob Ciatti(who is a Downey resident), Mayor Dave Gafin, our City Council, Doris Patterson, Dee Bacus, Steve Sampley, Bill Greene and all the residents that called me with concerns, and last but not least Eric Pierce of the Downey Patriot. Eric rushed to our rescue and push matters aside to make sure we got in the paper right away. I can now finally sleep, I was praying every night that we would get our electric back or that we would find a place to move. Thank God I don't work anymore because of all the phone calls and trips I had to make, I probably would have been fired!

The Cost of this electric to be brought to our building is $106,000.00 ! The County of Los Angeles will pick up the tab. We are going to have to rewire our own building and bring it up to code. With new lights inside and outside and new 220 outlets at a substantial cost to the Downey Rose Float Assc. It will run Thousands. If you would like to make a cash donation, you can mail a check to our P.O. Box 765 Downey Ca., 90241 please write on the check that it is for the Float Building. We would appreciate any and all donations.

The Downey Rose Float has many projects this year, and we need to raise a lot more money. If you would like to volunteer for any of our events then please contact me @ 562-260-8503 or Susan Domen @ 562-824-7172 ( she is in charge of ways and means).

I am sure that there is a lot more things I needed to talk about but I have forgotten most of them because of our dilemma. So sorry if I did, I will mention them next month.

Have a great month,

Gary DeRemer DRFA President