Two communities in LA County received significant awards from the National Endowment for the Art’s “Our Town” grant intiative.

The following post originally appeared at Barry's Blog, a service of the Western States Arts Federation:

It was a long road that turned in unexpected directions, but last night's election brought Los Angeles County, California, and the United States to the end of a long and sometimes heated campaign season.

This November, Los Angeles County voters will be asked to support Measure J, a much-needed investment in our transportation system that would start up seven transit projects and eight highway improvement projects within five years and complete them within fifteen, providing traffic relief along with 250,000 good jobs. Measure J is a remarkable opportunity to put the county back to work modernizing our transportation system. It does this not by raising taxes but by extending by another 30 years the half-cent transportation sales tax voters approved in 2008.