We’re Not Done!

It looks like things have slowed down. The word according to Norm Hickling, deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich is that negotiations are moving along at last, that someday soon the Briggs Road Community will be free from the landlocking perpetrated by a private LLC, Los Angeles County, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

Whew! What a cast of characters! And to think that all these agencies just happened to deny passage to the residents of our little community all at virtually the same time—supposedly independently of each other!—between 2004 and 2006.

If you are a new reader of this blog, please skim through earlier posts to get a more complete story.

What is happening right now is that a permit for Briggs Road residents to cross the Metrolink tracks was found, after nine years of being lost, somewhere in Los Angeles. Trouble is, the permit was lost for long enough to endanger our court-mandated easement across the LLC Property. If everyone is telling the truth, and the several parties involved are independent of each other and wish to accomplish what they say they wish to accomplish, it really is in the best interest of all involved to unlock this landlocking. Now.

If, on the other hand, this whole issue is as laden with secrecy and malevolence as it would appear, anything is possible. It could well be that the game is being delayed while the obstacles to our access are being reinforced. There remain several ways that our community could be played for fools. Though we are aware of that, we must be very careful with our accusations at this point, for reasons that are easily understood.

Shortly after the errant railroad crossing permit was unearthed, the word came down that Fish and Wildlife was open to the creation of an affordable Arizona crossing of the Santa Clara River, and that Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority was ready to discuss granting an easement across their holdings at the other end of Briggs Road. Also, plans to improve the road out the back way were revived.

That was three months ago. Since then, nothing.  I am not aware of the production of a single document, or even a hand-shaken agreement, that takes us any further with either of the two remaining access blockers: California Fish and Wildlife or Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

If my intuition is at all valid—and it often is—I just get such a strong sense that something is dirty. I smell dirt. I suspect that if the human beings behind this effort to choke a good neighborhood to death are successful, they will likely finish their lives content in the knowledge that they killed a community for their own profit. I also suspect that their own grandchildren will correctly despise them, as do the offspring of several recently exposed perpetrators of corruption. I would be delighted to be wrong and, as I have said earlier, proud to be one of the first to admit my error and celebrate the great goodness of those I have maligned in my heart.

Until that happens, I am keeping my eyes open.

I wish to make three entreaties of you, dear reader:

1.       Too many have been coddled into complacency by recent assurances that have produced nothing. Please urge your friends to keep up with us, to keep up the communication with us. Please let’s all keep the light on.

2.       If you have connections, if you know of an honest government official or a compassionate member of the media, please put us in touch with each other. We are already developing a surprisingly extensive network, but until something real happens with our access, it is not enough. Yet.

3.       Stay focused and steadfast on this issue. Granted it is a local issue, fought at a local level against local opponents, possibly outside of your sphere of concern. But have you heard of the Broken Window policy that has been so effective in curbing crime? [Not to be confused with the Broken Window Fallacy.] The theory is that if blight as minor as a broken window is left unaddressed, criminals get the idea that more brazen acts will also go unnoticed. Conversely, repairing windows discourages crime. It does work.

We must discourage corruption and victimization by government in the same way. You may feel that our issue does not touch you, that our broken window does not let freezing air into your home. But if you fight in whatever way you can—by writing letters to Governor Brown or Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, or by spreading the word about this blog, or sending us your ideas—you will be joining us in sending the message to all public “servants” that the People will not tolerate mistreatment. And that may well matter a lot to you one day.

One last point. We are seeing more and more allegations about Agenda 21 these days. Agenda 21 is a 300-page document produced twenty years ago by the UN. Its intent is ostensibly to address the ills of the third world, but the Glenn Becks and other reactionary conservatives have chosen to read it as advocating the shoveling of all of us into urban high-rises. I don’t know how many of the Agenda 21 alarmists have actually read the thing, but I don’t share Glenn Beck’s vision.

Anyway it doesn’t matter. Our local problem may or may not be related to this strange and dire theory. But I fear that if we ascribe all of our troubles to an Agenda 21 or other massive faceless oppressor, we are going to collapse into a soggy, passive muddle, unable to face so large an opponent. Remember the Broken Window policy.

Turn on the light. Focus on the issues at hand.

We’re not done!

Faith

In reading over the preceding blogpost I worry that it may not have been clear about the true significance of recent events. It sounds too critical of Los Angeles County and the other agencies involved with us in this access battle. I failed to emphasize that our greatest obstacle right now is us. We are full of fear and suspicion and, though a modicum of that is well advised under the circumstances, our anxieties are doing us more harm than good right now.

We are afraid to stand up and take leadership roles. We are afraid to take on the financial burdens for projects that will bring back our property values—restoring our fortunes to an extent far greater than the cost of any road or culvert. We are afraid to let our names be known. We are afraid to act.

Are we a bunch of pussies? I don’t think so, not really. We have good reason to be a little shy about stepping out into the light; but right now we need to put on our sunglasses and step forward.

Throughout the twentieth century our little neighborhood came and went with faith that we had access to our homes, regardless of whether all the i’s were dotted or the t’s were crossed. Perhaps that was foolish. In any event, we can never go back there. We cannot sink into catatonia and ignore the opportunity to put together a new and much stronger access. We cannot pretend that we can get along indefinitely with the residue of the old way of doing things. The handshake, the kindly smile, the benign neglect—gone.

This is where the County of Los Angeles has a significant role to play, one which will bring dignity and honor to every office that contributes. Our community needs encouragement. There is no such thing as lifting oneself up by one’s bootstraps. That’s just an old joke, you know. We, and especially the more timid among us, need a boost of reassurance before we can assertively move on.

We need to be confident that our old permit to cross the railroad tracks of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority has been properly and permanently restored.

We need to be confident that the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority is working in good faith and expeditiously to provide an easement for our neighborhood across lands that they have controlled for only a tiny fraction of the time that the Briggs Road Community has existed. Norm Hickling, deputy to County of Los Angeles Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, assures us that this easement is in the works. Some of us really are from Missouri and need to be shown, willing as we are to believe it.

We need to be confident that the City of Santa Clarita, another relatively recent landowner here, will provide an easement across its land. We have no reason to doubt the city will do that, but what a difference it would make to see it!

We need to be confident that the State of California Department of Fish and Wildlife is working in good faith and expeditiously to permit an affordable crossing over the Santa Clara River. Norm Hickling assures us here, as well, that such is the case. Some of us need to see more concrete results.

Are you impressed by the number of public agencies that once collectively denied us legal access to our homes? And even now are only at the lip-service stage? You should be, and don't doubt that the power of these agencies has made quite an impression on us, for ten unbelievable years.

You see, some of the folks up here are broken. They need faith. We can ask each other to join up and be the first or second to sign this or that agreement about an easement passing near their property or pledge this or that amount of money to build a culvert crossing. But here is a radical proposal. Let’s fix it so that they are last to sign, after the City of Santa Clarita, after the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, after the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, after the State of California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Let’s allow our more timid neighbors to be the holdouts for a change—but not for too long, please.

And, certainly, that may not be necessary. It may take only one or two government agencies to take the lead and actually produce something tangible to jog the more intransigent among us into action.

Taking care of the people is the primary purpose of our government. That is the fact that emboldens me to thank the officials of Los Angeles County for their truly inspiring efforts, and to urge them to redouble those efforts to persuade their fellow agencies to do the right thing—and thereby also stimulate our neighborhood to resume its former brave and proud demeanor.

Many believe that I have a knack for prediction, so let me predict this: the officials of the County of Los Angeles who help create our real access are going to be huge winners in the future. You'll see. I'll explain my thinking in a blogpost to come.

And neighbors, if at any time the mood possesses you, please don’t hesitate to come forward and show those governmental agencies that we are made of stronger stuff than they are.

Balls

Every Tuesday night I sit down with a cluster of pill bottles and parse out my daily meds into a plastic box featuring seven lids labeled with the initials of the days of the week raised on top.

When I attempt to pour one pill at a time into each little cubicle, all too often out come tumbling two, sometimes three. Skilled as I am, after all these years, at dispensing pills, I just do not have enough control at it—and that is not because I am uncoordinated. Each pill bottle has a shoulder at the top, from which rises the drum-shaped, threaded outlet. The pills jam up inside the shoulder and will come out only when I gently shake the container; and sometimes I shake just a tad too hard for the pile-up to release a single tablet.

You know all of this. The same thing might happen to you. But here is my point:

When the industrial designer, all proud of herself and imagining herself to be so superior to all of us because she could design things and we could not—when she, I say, sculpted the pill bottle for the first time, then cast the prototype all lah-de-dah and full of herself, she was not thinking about what it would be like to use that bottle as a consumer. She was just “doing her job.”

Someone who does think about what it feels like to pour medications from a bottle, me for instance, would design the inside of a pill bottle with one side—at least—ramping up from inside the body of the container to the outlet. No shoulder. The ramp would also narrow as it approached the top, so that a single file of tablets would line up. Such a dispenser would allow one to tip a single pill with control to spare.

Thoughtless designs that ignore the user are everywhere. The windshield wiper lever is so close behind the steering wheel in my truck that when I have to make a sudden move—like driving on our hairpin-infested “back way”—I frequently nick the lever with my little finger and the wipers spring to action smearing back-way dust back and forth in front of me. Thanks moron auto designer who drives his pickup truck only to the mall.

I can lock my cell phone so that I pull it from my pocket without activating a button or swiping the touch screen. But when the phone rings, everything on there comes live and the act of extracting the phone from my shirt pocket now changes several settings in ways that it takes half an hour to figure out and change back. It also hangs up on my caller. Thanks a lot you programmer who thinks you’re so clever to build all that software into our phones with no regard to how they interfere with actually using the damn thing as a phone.

Last example: I spent twenty-five years teaching mathematics to the youth of Los Angeles County, and very proud of it. During that time my colleagues and I survived twenty-five and more “reforms” and improvements to the art of teaching. These reforms were instigated by mayors and captains of industry, ivory tower teachers of teachers and psychologists who sent white mice through mazes, parent groups and school administrators  whose sole teaching experience might be three years as a gym teacher—no foolin’. Never, not once, in all that time, ever, was a teacher consulted. And we teachers had a pretty darn good idea of what was wrong, because we lived it every day.

I have two points, and I believe I have made my first one: the world is full of meddling know-it-alls who have no clue what effect their pet projects are having on the people they supposedly serve. I want to suggest that a Los Angeles County Supervisor, with two million subjects—er, constituents—can be grossly out of touch with lives on the ground in the same way. Like, say, allowing a small community to be land-locked for ten very difficult years.

My second, and more important point, is that these screw-ups can be fixed. It may take more work to fix something than it did to set it up right in the first place, but if it was possible to screw it up, it is also possible to fix it.

But that takes EFFORT. And BALLS.

BALLS. That’s right. I said BALLS.

We applaud the staff of Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich for having the courage to right the wrong at the railroad crossing, and for shoving his Deputy Norm Hickling out into the lights to face our community. They could not have chosen a better or more graceful ambassador. But now let’s finish this thing, thoroughly and expeditiously.

It will require intelligence, compassion, and BALLS.

Which Crossing is Okay?

We need a bridge!

            It’s time for another guessing game here on Save Briggs Road! Which of the river crossings shown below have escaped condemnation by the powers that be?

            All but one of the photographs below were taken in Soledad Canyon, not far from the location of our desired crossing.

      1. It is not unusual for a culvert-based crossing to wash out during a period of heavy rain. This photograph depicts the remains of such a crossing. Prior to the washout, what was the status of this crossing?

      2.  This bridge enjoys a bit of notoriety for its novel construction. It features the traditional culverts, with a garnish of railroad ties marinated in creosote. The crossing has gone the way of all such structures after a heavy storm, with the culverts slipping and rolling downriver, and the railroad ties steeping in the wet sand.

      3.  Is there such a thing as over-building a crossing?

4.  Here vehicles cross over the frothy flood via a railroad car bed. Note the safety railing at the sides.

5.  This picture was taken during construction of a culvert bridge, four days after its predecessor was wiped out. (We've been waiting almost ten years for the privilege.)

6.  Is it more environmentally sound to anchor the culverts in concrete, or is it better to allow the swollen river to push aside all obstructions? We know of a case where the river undermined a concrete barrier and left it buried forever at the river bottom.

Another View

Now for the scoring. If you judged only one of these bridges to be allowed to stand until the next flood, you get only one point, for not understanding how things work in Soledad Canyon.

In fact, however many of the bridges you judged to escape censure by the authorities, that is your score. Yes, the perfect score on our quiz is six. Not one of the photographs presented here represents a forbidden crossing.

What, then, constitutes a forbidden crossing? A crossing to be used by the residents of the Briggs Road Community is, by some strange definition, in violation of the edict set by the people-in-charge. We are not aware of any other type of crossing to run afoul of the authorities.

You may have noticed that I did not divulge the location of any of these bridges. That is because it is not our wish to have any of them or their descendants condemned. The point is this: What’s the Big Deal? If every one of these bridges is allowed to stand until Mother Nature takes it out, what is so special about a crossing accommodating the Briggs Road Community? Over the years we have cooperated in the creation of several such crossings, none worse than the worst on display here.

One last thought: Allowing the Briggs Road Community to cross the Santa Clara River benefits every single party involved in this struggle, be it a governmental agency or private interest—assuming that each is being honest about its intentions. I am not at liberty to spell out each of those benefits, but certainly there is no harm in suggesting what a bundle of good will and good press would settle on the shoulders of every involved member of Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich’s staff. 

It should be all right to point out that re-opening the much shorter access to Soledad Canyon Road takes our traffic off of the many more miles that run directly through Conservancy holdings. 

And surely there is no need to mention the importance of having a secure and reasonable access route for Briggs Road residents. That's only right.

Yay for LA County!

The railroad crossing that has been landlocking Briggs Road residents for the past ten years has been recognized by Los Angeles County as a legitimate crossing. Norm Hickling, deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, made the announcement at a community meeting in Agua Dulce Monday night, February 10, 2014.

Sunrise at the Three Sisters

It is the first encouraging move toward the result for which our community has been struggling, namely to be able to drive to our homes by a legal route of reasonable distance and construction. For a decade our path to our properties has been neither legally our own nor of a truly manageable length or condition.

Is the End in Sight?

I promised I would say it and now I will. My hat is off to you, Mr. Hickling. From where we sat it appeared that Los Angeles County was locked into a position from which it could not gracefully extricate itself. We do not know enough about the actions of other players, but Norm Hickling is exhibiting the kind of grace and sophistication that seems to elude so many public figures—and thank you for that, sir.

I want also, at this point, to give Norm all the credit he is due. And I most certainly do not want any undeserved credit given to this blog. Norm Hickling was making promising statements before I made a single post. It was his remark that he was working on the railroad crossing that first encouraged me to begin this blog. You see, we had been bitterly disappointed before, and I decided to do anything I could to prevent that from happening again. Others in the neighborhood pitched in with the same resolve.

One Giant Step for LA County

But stay with us! Things have looked almost this good before, then come to naught. And, though we are inclined to believe that this time it could actually happen, we have determined that it isn’t over until it’s over—until we are actually driving out over the lovely concrete railroad crossing and the beautiful Santa Clara River.

Our Next Hurdle: Crossing the Santa Clara River

There are kinks still to be worked out. Our drive home is not yet guaranteed. We will report on our progress as fully as we can in future posts.

Stay with us! And we love those comments! Keep ‘em coming!

More on the Peculiar Email

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.