A Gallery of Rogues

This is a summary of the role of each of several agencies complicit in the legal isolation of the Briggs Road community.

There are two routes from black top to our community. To landlock us, it was necessary to close both. The historical access started at Soledad Canyon Road, crossed the Santa Clara River over a pair of culverts, ran through Oasis Park on existing park roads, crossed the Southern Pacific Railroad (now used by Southern California Regional Rail Authority, i.e. Metrolink) on a paved at-grade crossing, and continued on dirt road to our neighborhood. 

The “Back Way” is on Southern California Edison’s easement road. It starts at Agua Dulce Canyon Road, crosses a small piece of property owned by Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, an agency created decades ago by the California Legislature, and continues on for five or six (depending on where one lives) miles over a miserable dirt road.

• ·         Rancho Agua Dulce LLC, new owners of Oasis Park, began the nightmare by blocking Briggs Road residents one day in August, 2004. Paul Novak, deputy for Los Angeles Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, appeared to save the day and managed to get the route open.
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• ·         That December, a flood wiped out the culvert in the Santa Clara River—not a rare occurrence. The owners of Oasis Park refused to allow residents to repair the bridge, and so we began to use the back way. Meantime, on behalf of the Briggs Road community, the title insurance companies took Oasis Park to court for a legal easement, and after a lengthy battle, won an Easement by Necessity in court. 
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• ·         However, by now the California Department of Fish and Game had decided that even if Oasis Park had to allow residents through, they were prohibiting replacement of the culvert, on the grounds that they were protecting an endangered species of fish, a subspecies of stickleback trout that lives only in the Santa Clara River. Other abuses, up and down the river, were ignored by Fish and Game. As far as we know, only the residents of Briggs Road were forbidden to cross the river. And…
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• ·         Just to make sure, Metrolink also barred use of the long-existing crossing, threatening handcuffs and jail. Dozens of other crossings remain open.
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• ·         The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy bought the last bit of acreage through which the back way crossed. It was a tax sale, but the County of Los Angeles somehow failed to notify the community of their chance to prevent themselves from being sealed off. When approached by the title companies to negotiate legal passage for Briggs Road residents, Conservancy representatives became abusive and refused even to consider accepting payment of some $700,000 for an easement.
  The Conservancy vowed that there would be no building permits issued in the area, easily enforced because no landowner could claim legal access to his or her property.
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• ·         All this time Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy was buying up properties as owners gave up on ever building their dream homes or just enjoying owning a piece of bare California land.
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• ·         The City of Santa Clarita also began buying properties, as the County of Los Angeles assisted with funding. Possibly embarrassed by the placement of Stevenson Ranch, a tract of homes just west of their western boundary, Santa Clarita may be intent on avoiding a similar humiliation to the east.
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• ·         Norm Hickling, deputy for Michael Antonovich, has been acting as go-between and some-time advocate, though it is increasingly apparent that the word “acting” is the most appropriate. Observers with experience of the man assert that Mr. Hickling is motivated only by the wishes of Mr. Antonovich, and we can be assured he has little intention of assisting this community.
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• ·         Further, again based on anecdotal reports from those who have seen him work in other contexts, Mr. Antonovich is widely believed to be working solely for his own benefit, and depends on Mr. Hickling to intercept any mud tossed his way. All we know about any of this is that in almost ten years Mr. Antonovich’s office has accomplished no visible progress in opening the Metrolink crossing, despite his position on the board of same. Nor has he or anyone in his employ made any headway in re-establishing the river crossing. Not to mention the back way.

So that’s the cast of characters, as best we know. If you go back into past postings, you can find more fleshed-out stories for most of these. There are a couple of stories yet to bring out.

If this were a bank robbery or some kind of street crime, and only one of these outfits held a gun and pulled the trigger, all would be charged with the offense. We learned that in high school. Readers have emailed their concern that a focus on one of the perpetrators of our nightmare might be letting others off the hook. No, every single member of the list above is an eager participant, should be regarded as such, and thus held responsible for the part it plays in this heartless collusion. A posting can expand on only one of them at a time.

It is amazing that among all these complicit participants, not one single person has had the guts or the simple decency to stand up for what is right. But I have yet to meet anyone outside of this issue who is not horrified by the actions of these Southern California public offices. I dare not begin to express the disdain of the larger community for those people.

Just as reprehensible, not one representative of any of those agencies has had the common courtesy to come forward and attempt to justify the actions of his or her office. Perhaps they realize that if they did so, the world would soon discover that their arguments are specious and absurd. We can only interpret their silence as voluntary participation in a self-serving scheme.

We would like to find one, even just one California public official with a sense of ethics evolved enough to support our righteous cause.

Do you know one?