Closer?

At a community meeting with Los Angeles County officials last Friday, April 11, 2014, Briggs Road residents learned of the progress the county has made toward restoring their traditional access to Soledad Canyon Road. 

Briggs Road Community Cherishes and Maintains the Natural Terrain

But first, bottom bottom line: we are not there yet. We cannot drive any closer to Soledad Canyon Road than we could after the last meeting a month and a half ago, nor do we have an easement by the other, long and tortuous “back way.” I do apologize for starting off with this downer disclaimer, but after the last meeting newspapers and friends had the impression that we were finally freed from government forces besieging and land-locking us. That was not the case then, and it is not the case now.

On to a more positive slant—

Norm Hickling, deputy to County of Los Angeles Michael D. Antonovich, listed these encouraging developments [comments in brackets are mine]:

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority is now willing to give the Briggs Road Community an easement through that last parcel where “the back way” emerges onto Agua Dulce Canyon Road. [I cannot tell you what the time span is between “willing to give” and “has given.” In the opinion of this very naïve observer it should not take long at all, but in the lengthy experience of this very jaded casualty of callous government, who knows?]

  

The Dust Trap

The once celebrated straightening and shortening of the back way, such an encouraging promise eight years ago, is back on the list of possibilities. This time, though, the community will have to pay the several tens of thousands of dollars—maybe even a hundred thousand—for the grading. [Until we can do that, even with an easement at the end we still do not have a decent access for fire and emergency vehicles. However, it seems to this very naïve observer that establishing the easement, even without the new road, would go a very long way toward restoring our devastated property values.]

California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Los Angeles County engineers are working toward creating an expedient access across the Santa Clara River. [A low non-obtrusive Arizona crossing would suit the Briggs Road Community best, but Oasis Park may have commercial intentions and need a higher crossing which would cost more and possibly wash out more frequently.] Since it is the users who will bear the expense of construction, Los Angeles County counsel is fully engaged in working out how the Briggs Road Community and Oasis Park will share rights and responsibilities.

Low Crossing Would Suffice for this Typical Low Flow

We will meet again in 40 to 60 days, unless something wonderful and positive occurs, in which case Norm will contact us.

Now here is the sad part. Our trust has been badly damaged. As I have said before, I want to believe what I hear from the office of Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, as do most of the rest of us. And so I choose to believe that these developments are actually occurring. But my neighbors and I find ourselves unable to fully commit to believing anything any official says about our access any more. Some just don’t believe any of it. Others are compelled to append the phrase, “if they are really telling the truth,” to any discussion of what a Los Angeles County official says. This may be deserved, or it may be an artifact of government indifference and neglect. Whatever the cause, speaking only for myself, this loss of trust is very unfortunate and an additional complication we do not need.

Downtown on Briggs Road

Let us all—officials, residents, and any others involved—make a sincere effort to be worthy of trust, and to trust generously but judiciously.  

Shrewd or Soft-hearted?

Intelligence without Sympathy

A friend tells me that he respects the people who have maneuvered our little neighborhood out of legal access to the world. They are intelligent, he says.

I disagree.

To my way of thinking, an intelligent person is evolved in three primary arenas: head, heart, and guts. To pull off the kind of trick that was sprung on the Briggs Road community, as strong as the perpetrators might be in two of those forms of intelligence, they have to be severely deficient in a third.

They have to have guts, you gotta give them that. This was a gutsy—you might say brazen—thing to do.

Perhaps their second strength is mental. I find that intelligence of the brainy persuasion, especially when coupled with guts but deficient of heart, is more in the category of the shrewd, clever, cunning, or conniving. On Briggs Road our first inclination has been to assume that we are dealing with an intelligence of this nature. Throttling a powerless little neighborhood certainly appears heartless. And how do we persuade someone with lots of brains and little empathy? Well, not by appealing to their sympathy.

My purpose in pointing out the cruelty of cutting off an access that would hurt no one is not to persuade the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, California Fish and Game, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, or whichever of the conservancies to which Norm Hickling alludes. You see, if in fact their hearts are atrophied, our appeals to their higher feelings just go unnoticed. The Golden Rule is just words to one without compassion. They might care for their own families and tribes, they might even go to church, but they are incapable of following the dictum of the Dalai Lama: Be Kind. Or of Christ: Love thy Neighbor.

No, I am appealing to your ethical capacity. Those of you who have a balanced intelligence will have the brains to understand what is going on, the heart to care, and the courage to do something about it—even if all that you do is post a comment here or urge others to follow this blog.

There is a plethora of historical figures whose deficient sentiment allowed them to perform beastly acts. And many of their acts were beastly—which means not so intelligent after all. The tripod of intelligence requires all three legs. If any one leg is missing, the structure topples. I hope to show in a future post that cutting off the Briggs Road community is ultimately a dumb thing to do, even by the standards of the cunning.

Sentiment without Cognition 

 It is entirely possible, on the other hand, that our fear and inconvenience—and great loss of property value—are the result of the actions of extremely caring people. We do not often consider that, but it could be the case. 

We have daily experience in California of the ill-conceived products of the do-gooders who care so much about us. They erect a traffic light at every intersection where some unfortunate hurried soul might venture into danger. Then, when some mean people run those lights, they install cameras to protect the rest of us. There are so many regulations whose purpose is to thwart unscrupulous businesses that not only those businesses have been chased out of the state, but so also have many of the good ones. And how many entrepreneurs have been discouraged from even starting up?

An actor, who may even be involved in one of the conservancies, has boasted in interviews about building part of his house with soda bottles or some such. True, this keeps those bottles out of landfills, but then so would recycling them. And now those bottles are out of the cycle, and more resources are required to replace them. The net result, when you factor in the better good that might have followed an appeal to recycle, is actually negative.

To have heartfelt concern without a brain can lead one to thoughtlessly callous acts.

Does our fate lie in the hands of thinkers such as these? Is the whole close-access-to-Briggs-Road scheme just a debacle of dumbness?

Well, you decide.

We have heard two explanations for the actions of the State of California conservancies: 

1. A developer was planning to fill the area with houses, and 
2. Wildlife needed a migration corridor. 

            In an earlier post I quote County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich’s deputy, Norm Hickling, as emailing: “That issue [of development] no longer exists, as the City of Santa Clarita, along with large financial support the County of Los Angeles, purchased the developer’s property.” 

             So forget the threat of wall-to-wall houses. If California persists in turning our homes into bare land, it is not out of kindness.

What about the migration corridor?

Take a look again at our non-copyright-infringing hand-drawn map—which you can verify elsewhere:

The area in which we live is a cul de sac as far as roving animals are concerned. Fleet-footed animals are hemmed in by Soledad Canyon Road and the railroad to the south, and by the California 14 freeway to the north—not by a few isolated houses. These two barriers to animal migration continue in parallel from their western point of intersection in eastern Santa Clarita (not shown) to their eastern point of conjunction east of Acton (not shown). Some animals roam freely in this area, and we do not stop them. But what, we wonder, would migrating animals do? Would they run laps from one end of this “preserve” to the other?

Antelope Valley, so named for its former occupants, is today devoid of those animals because the railroad was built through the middle of the plain and the antelope would not cross the railroad. There are no antelope in our region either. We’ve got the railroad and the freeway.

Could any public official really be so dumb as to imagine that our houses or our dirt road pose the real obstruction to these animals? And if the habitat of a smaller animal is not inhibited by the railroad or the freeway, there is obviously plenty of room for both them and us.

But is there any point to trying to persuade someone who is all heart that theirs is a flawed approach? No matter how carefully thought out, a logical argument makes no sense to some people. I’ve taught math for many years. I know there are people who just cannot think—or, more likely, refuse to make the effort.

We are appealing to your cerebral intelligence. Those of you who have a balanced intelligence will have the brains to understand what is going on, the heart to care, and the courage to do something about it—even if all that you do is post a comment here or urge others to follow this blog.

There are many hundreds of you out there—I see the numbers. But we need our oppressors to see your strength, and a simple comment “I’m on your side!” would serve that purpose.

What Does the Man Say?

As promised, I emailed Norm Hickling to request more specific information about who was behind the push to landlock the Briggs Road community. “What is not clear,” I wrote, “especially now, is who or what agency now opposes our acquiring legal access to our homes.”

Mr. Hickling replied on November 14:

“One conservancy has had concerns in the past because one of the largest single properties was owned by a developer. That issue no longer exists as the City of Santa Clarita, along with large financial support the County of Los Angeles, purchased the developer’s property and have assigned it to another conservancy to keep it open as open-space. This was a major step in mitigating this issue.

“However, a rep from the original conservancy still required a submittal payment to provide access. I understand that person is no longer with that organization, so based on a meeting I had with my colleagues yesterday, will be approaching the conservancy again to try and work through this issue and change minds. I should have an update on that very soon for you.

“Crossing the Railroad is another issue that I am addressing and trying to find a solution, if one exists.” 

Norm Hickling

We want to be open-hearted, trusting people, but it is very difficult to know whom to trust or believe. We have been lied to and yanked around so much over the last decade, that we find ourselves distrusting everyone. My motivation in asking the question above was to narrow down the range of some of that suspicion. Losing so much trust is quite painful, so if I could have a better idea of who the good guys and bad guys were, I would be more comfortable.

The information about the conservancy and the thousand acres, if true, is encouraging—but we’ll believe it when we see it. We have been encouraged before, and led to anticipate a solution. We let our guard down, only to be dropped with no real progress toward an easement.

Actually it was the railroad crossing that I was most curious about when I wrote to Norm Hickling. Recall that our very own Los Angeles County Supervisor, Michael Antonovich, sits on the board of the very railroad in question, and that Norm Hickling is his deputy. These men have had almost a full decade, ten long years, to address the railroad crossing question, so we find it difficult to believe that they may find a solution soon. Reinstating that century-old crossing may have turned out to be too difficult for Mr. Antonovich to accomplish, even though he is one of the main players and his deputy is working diligently in our favor.

We would prefer to access our neighborhood by the much nicer and much shorter road that crosses the railroad.

So why might Mr. Hickling have reason to suggest that at long last he and Mr. Antonovich have an idea of how to open the railroad crossing? Unfortunately, I asked too broad of a question. I wanted to know just who was thwarting the efforts of these gentlemen, but I still do not have an answer.

I do have a theory, which I will post soon. I don’t really believe either of these men to be so incompetent.