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!

Not Corrupt!

The other day I typed “Los Angeles Second Most…” into Google, and Google, as is Google’s wont, finished my sentence for me.

Now Los Angeles might well be the second most populous, the second most affluent. Los Angeles has the second largest school district. Perhaps LA County is the second most prone to earthquake. 

No! Google says that the Los Angeles area is the second most…CORRUPT!

Ours has been named the second most corrupt area in the country, second only to Chicago.

Actually Google didn’t say that; University of Illinois at Chicago Political Science professor Dick Simpson and colleagues released a report that said so, back in February of 2012. The fallout continues twenty-one months later. Google presented me with hundreds of articles on the subject, far more than I choose to count. Some articles call out the City of Los Angeles, others the county of Los Angeles, and still others seem to indict practically all of southern California.

Is that true?! Well, then, no wonder honest public officials are not beating a path to our neighborhood. Could it be that there aren’t any straight-arrows in office?

I do not want to believe it! I do not want to believe that Michael D. Antonovich is out to collect all the loot he can. I do not want to believe that he is scheming to displace neighborhoods just to put his name up all over the region as a creator of green space.

I want to believe that the California Department of Fish and Game, Oasis Park, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA) just happened to close off our passage in the same year, just by coincidence. See, if I can believe that, then I can believe that they are compassionate and reasonable people, who, as soon as they realize the great inconvenience and losses they have caused, will act immediately to restore our right-of-way.

So NO! Don’t say CORRUPT, because then I can never convince any of them to move to the side of justice, no matter how carefully I write! If corruption was their motivation, then I would have to be fearful of my own government representatives.

Please somebody convince me that nobody has done squat to open our historical access to the world only because somebody made a mistake, somebody didn’t know, somebody is working on it.

Well, here, this feels good: Norm Hickling, deputy to Michael D. Antonovich, is working on it. Norm has been working on it for nine long years; but oh dear, Norm has not found a single correctible mistake.

Well, thanks for trying.

Here, let me try a logical argument on the railroad. Norm says the railroad is key.

A US Department of Transportation Secretary’s Action Plan (May 2004) advocates closure or consolidation of unneeded railroad crossings.  The emphasis is on “redundant” and/or “particularly hazardous crossings.”  The crossing in question is neither.  The report suggests closures “with no other adjustments to the road network,” or, “in other cases short extensions of access roads.”  Neither is the case for this closure.

 In 1994, the report states, there were 110,000 private highway-rail crossings, and “most private crossing accidents occur at industrial/business crossings.”  According to information in the report, the probability of an accidental death in any one year at a rural crossing is miniscule.   

In a logical discussion, then, we would assure SCRRA officials that we understood their desire to comply with that action plan, but that our crossing was not unneeded, not redundant, and not particularly hazardous. We need it, there is no other crossing we can use, and the crossing has been accident free since anybody can remember, except (to be fair) for one lady on foot who attempted to flag down a freight train fifty years ago.

The railroad guys say, “We have looked at that crossing and the curves are so tight you can’t see very far.”

Then we say, “And yet there have been no accidents. You see,” we say, “in the canyons, trains are forced to travel at a very slow rate, and the chance of an accident is correspondingly reduced. We may not be able to see far down the line, but we have more than enough time to see the train coming.”

And the railroad guys say, “Hmm. We see your point. It still makes us nervous, though.”

And we say, in the spirit of compromise, “Maybe there is a way to put up a flashing light. Would you like a flashing light?”

But apparently the railroad guys don’t want to talk to us. Michael D. Antonovich, who sits on the rail authority board, could, in light of the argument above, be extremely persuasive. We are beginning to face up to the fact that he will not do that, and we will need someone to persuade him.

But we still hold out hope. So don’t tell us anyone is beyond reach. Don’t tell us any of these people are corrupt!