More than Drums Beating in the Sierra Madre UPDATED

Getting you caught up on the Sierra Madre drum beating...

Molly R. Okeon of the Pasadena Star does her best to serve up the recent politics of the Sierra Madre:

In the last few months, residents who once likened their town to the idyllic Mayberry have set about lambasting each other with the kind of venom usually reserved for "The Jerry Springer Show."

What began as a policy debate over a proposed initiative to limit downtown development has deteriorated into name-calling and personal attacks.

The divisions may be behind several acts of vandalism in the neighborhood of Acacia Street and Valley Vista Drive, where on Monday yard signs were stolen and mailboxes damaged - the latter resulting in calls to the FBI, according to resident Leslee Hinton. On the same day, a truck window was shattered by a large rock on Valley Vista, she said.

Sierra Madre city councilman Kurt Zimmerman gets a longish letter in the Pasadena Star refuting the Star's editorial against Measure V, other letters against include one by Lisa Spigai-Perez, Foothill Cities blog commentator.

Over at Sierra Madre News (.net), there are a few interesting op-eds against Measure V—see city Planning Commissioner John Hutt's argument, for instance. More here from inSierra Madre (.com), which also announced the hiring of Lt. Larry Giannone. We have some questions for him here.

If you want to know what was happening going into this weekend, see my post below.