In the study of logic two statements are said to be logically
equivalent if they are both true (or both false) under the same set of
circumstances. And if one statement is the contrapositive of the other, then
the two statements are logically equivalent. In symbolic terms, the statements “If
A then B” and “If not B then not A” are contrapositives.
Let me give you an example from real life. The statements “If
you are granted a building permit then you must have legal access” and “If you
do not have legal access you will not be granted a building permit” are
contrapositives. Therefore the two statements are logically equivalent.
Our legal research assures us that Los Angeles County has the
right to deny a Certificate of Compliance, and thus a building permit, for a
plot of land that does not have legal access. We have called the county offices,
without identifying ourselves, and been assured that absolutely no Certificate
of Compliance will be issued without legal access.
Any office that issued a building permit for any parcel along
Briggs Road must have believed that Briggs Road had legal access.
Mr. Novak says, in that peculiar email: “One point about
access that is important to bear in mind:
according to Building & Safety records the property-owners you
represent have “official” access off the back (other) road, the one that is essentially
impassable. Our building officials checked the records, and all of the owners
pulled their permits identifying the other road as their access.”
You see, in order to be logically consistent, he had to say
that. Otherwise there is a big problem about having issued all those building
permits. But in order to say that, he had to say something else that was even
more untrue, and imply yet another untruth after that.
Whatever kind of access Mr. Novak imagined the Department of
Building and Safety imagined the property owners had, and whatever the word in
quotes “official” is supposed to mean, the Briggs Road community does not have legal access out the back way.
We have very tentative physical access, but have been informed rather abusively
that our access is not legal.
So whose mistake is that? Building and Safety when they
approved the permits? The alleged researchers at Building and Safety when they
informed Mr. Novak that we had access the back way? Or could this all have been
a convenient fabrication?
And, again my question: suppose all of this is simply a web
of unfortunate but innocent errors. This email was sent less than a month after
the first closure of our access. Mr. Novak is gone now, but why would the
County of Los Angeles perpetuate the error and even compound it with other
obstacles?
But wait! There’s more!
Mr. Novak admits that the back way is “essentially
impassable.”
WHAT ABOUT THE FIRE DEPARTMENT?! The Fire Department would
never ever ever sign off on an access
road that was “impassable.” In fact, their requirements are very explicit and
quite strict—and the back way fails because there are many hairpin turns, many
grades are too slippery and steep, and the road is too narrow almost the entire
way.
And you don’t get a Certificate of Compliance without the
Fire Department.
There is NO WAY our neighborhood acquired building permits
based on the back way. In reality, one of our first neighbors to successfully
land a building permit remembers very specifically riding back and forth with a
fire department official over the front, traditional route. That official
declared our front access adequate for fire protection and it was on the basis
of his approval that subsequent Certificates of Compliance were issued. There
was none of this nonsense about the back way being official. It was probably
never even mentioned.
So we are the victims of a big shift in policy, it would
seem, but with no explanation, no redress, no compensation. How can one explain
that? I wrote a poem:
L is for the land that we have learned to love so well,
I is for our isolation,
A is for the access that we crave, legally implied, and
R is for the railroad and riparian crossings in our way.
***
I hope you are all reading the many comments we are receiving.
Apparently there are a lot of people out there with knowledge and experience
and ideas that surpass our own. And I have to say this: if the officials of Los
Angeles County and the State of California are ever able to stand up and admit
that a wrong has been done and to actually correct it, I, for one, want to be
one of the first to acknowledge their courage and conscience. It must be an
extremely difficult thing to do; witness how few in politics are able to concede
errors in judgment.
But it would be so much more pleasant to have things go that
way than into some of the other outcomes our readers have suggested.
