Boxer tours Garcia center, promotes youth funding
FAIRFIELD — California Sen. Barbara Boxer stressed the need to continue to support youth programs during her afternoon tour Tuesday of the Fairfield Police Activity League’s Matt Garcia Youth Center on Travis Boulevard.
While Boxer was pleased with the center’s programs and what staff are able to do with Fairfield’s youth, she said “we have more work to do and funding will always be an issue.”
“I believe that millionaires and billionaires can afford to pay a little bit more,” said Boxer, the state’s junior U.S. senator and a Democrat. “Preventing kids from going in the wrong direction is always cost-effective.”
Police Activities League Coordinator Will Bible took Boxer through the study rooms, activity centers, boxing gym and basketball gym, explaining how the center offers youth a host of programs ranging from its Student Council Leadership Program to its Cooking with Math and fitness classes.
“A lot of kids consider this their second home,” Bible said.
Boxer’s visit to the center was part of her ongoing effort to stress the need for after-school and youth programs that she has supported as long as she has been in Congress, according to Mayor Harry Price.
“I was very glad that I was able to do something to help. We need to be fighting back. We lose too many of our kids,” Boxer told Bible during the tour, alluding to her work to gather federal funding for programs and facilities such as the Matt Garcia Youth Center.
Boxer said she was privileged to be at the center and had wanted to tour it for some time.
She told a dozen participants that the center will make them more successful, kinder people, and tasked them “to take that learning to another person who is going the wrong direction.”
Boxer told Raymond and Teresa Courtemanche, Matt Garcia’s parents, that she was honored to be in their presence and lauded Garcia for his work with youth in the community and as one of the youngest City Council members.
“It is good that what he believed in would live on,” Boxer said. “We are not going to allow his name to be forgotten.”
Reach Ian Thompson at 427-6976 or ithompson@dailyrepublic.net.
Short URL: http://www.dailyrepublic.com/?p=80092
Posted by Ian Thompson
on Aug 23 2011.
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