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The page is called Animal Care Services of the San Gorgonio Pass — Found Animals. Photos are posted daily of animals picked up in the three cities. Beaumont Cares And for those who like to sit down with city staff and elected officials in a relaxed, informal setting, there are Beaumont Cares Awareness Team (BCAT) meetings. This year marked the three-year anniversary of BCAT. Many good ideas come out of the sessions, which take place the first Wednesday of the month at the Civic Center from 6 pm to 7 pm. Ideas raised so far include adding stop signs at certain intersections for greater safety, synchronizing stop lights along Highland Springs Avenue between Banning and Beaumont to keep traffic flowing, and spotlighting code enforcement issues. You're welcome at any BCAT meeting or you can ask to be notified about meetings by signing up on the city's website. Saluting law enforcement It was also a meaningful year for our city's Public Safety Memorial. The memorial, in a rose garden setting in front of City Hall, salutes the sacrifice, dedication, and hard work of local police We also have a new request system on the website called AskBeaumont.org for reporting potholes, asking questions, and firefighters. On July 4, nearly 70 names engraved on the and offering suggestions! So far, AskBeaumont has received granite monuments were unveiled in a solemn ceremony. Reflecting on these and many other accomplishments 1,025 contacts from the public, and more than 90 percent have been handled already. With response growing, we look forward this year, we know that with our continued strong vision and commitment, great things lie ahead in 2014! to hearing from you! Our new website also shows how much Beaumont cares for our furry friends. This year, the city created a "Found Animals" Facebook page to help residents of Beaumont, Banning, and Calimesa find their pets before they are taken to the Ramona Humane Society in San Jacinto. (Beaumont provides animal care services to its neighboring cities under a contract.) Staying in touch Shakespeare once said, "What is the city but its people…" and there couldn't be a more apt description of life in our hometown. For more than a century, Beaumont has worked hard at creating a bond with its citizens. In the early days, people chatted at town hall meetings and in the general store. We still cherish those tried and true forms of staying in touch, yet with today's Internet, we're also all connected through cyberspace. Because we spend more of our time online, Beaumont has updated the website, www.BeaumontCares.com, where you can find out everything happening in town. It's user-friendly with simplified menus, an easy-to-use calendar, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube feeds, a weather app, electronic postcards, and many other features. Sometimes, you have to look back in order to understand the things that lie ahead." ~ Writer Yvonne Woon BEAUMONT NOW | DECEMBER 2013 9

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