I love living in Livermore. It's not a small town as its population is around 80,000. Yet it has the feel of a small town.
There have been major improvements lately to the downtown area. Renovation and construction has been the norm for about a year now. They changed First Street parking from parallel to angled. The city council re-directed the commute traffic away from First Street to other, smoother traveling roads. I think the results have been appealing to the locals.
At the same time, the people of Livermore are voting for limited, controlled growth. We don't want our town to become a "bedroom" community where the majority of residents go elsewhere during the day, clogging up our freeways and roads in and out of the city each morning and evening. Communities near Livermore have been more accommodating to the commuters by building tall condo apartments for high-density housing, in addition to the tracts and tracts of former ranchland have been converted to a high tax-base of gated communities. I'm sure that those communities will fill their tax coffers with lots of funds that will be the envy of Livermore city government, but I am willing to live simply without attracting thousands of people into our quiet hamlet for the sake of grabbing taxes.
We are lucky to live in a community with good people, good schools and a great community spirit. Walking into the grocery store we will easily see two or three families we know. I haven't experienced that sort of familiarity since growing up in Washington State.
And then there are the libraries. There are two neighborhood libraries plus a new main library where the girls see their class-mates on nearly each and every trip. The library has at least 20 computers with which a patron can access the Internet. Such community support I have not seen before. I think the town has its priorities in the right order.
I suppose this post sounds like an advertisement for our city, but I'm just in love with the place. I'm a bit wierd, but there you are, proud of my community. I am so glad that we are raising our daughters here, and that we have so many wonderful friends. We couldn't ask for more.
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