Even after nine and a half long
years, it is truly astounding that decent legal access remains out of reach for
this tiny neighborhood. All we in this community want is the legal right to
drive to our homes over our traditional, historical route—a little over a mile
of dirt road—that we and our predecessors had been continually using for close
to a century.
That’s all we want: to drive on a
road that had been in common, constant use since before any of us were born, to
our own houses. I need to state that over and over again, because the fact is
so basic and we do not want it buried under a lot of verbiage.
The consequences to us of this
injustice are dire, and the spoils to those who block us may be enormous, but I
want to review just the appalling nature of our predicament in this post.
It is appalling that our route home
is almost indistinguishable from that of several other communities along
Soledad Canyon, but only ours is blocked.
It is appalling that the organizations
blocking our route home are public agencies that should properly have no
interest in bedeviling us or depressing our property values.
It is appalling that a deputy of Supervisor
Michael Antonovich of the County of Los Angeles will tell contradictory stories
according to what suits his office at the time, and continue to pretend to be
truthful.
It is appalling that Los Angeles
County would place a property in the hands of an aggressive player in this
drama, a player that would then withhold legal access at our only other point
of entry, albeit an astonishingly rough and difficult drive of five and more
miles—a drive that has already killed one of us. (His car was found aflame down
a short ravine. Maybe he died of a heart attack and not the crash or the fire.
His body was too charred to tell—but struggling on that bad road did not help.)
It is appalling that a public
official—again Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich—who represents more than two million
people in the most populous county in the United States of America cannot find
a way to allow us across a legal obstacle created in large part by a commuter
rail line, Metrolink, on whose board he sits with his fellow supervisors.
Whoa! Read that again!
Michael Antonovich sits on the
board, he has power only a handful of people can even imagine, the unfairness
of the blockage is obvious to everyone to whom any of us has spoken, and in
almost a decade he has produced zero results. We cannot legally cross those
tracks, though our crossing is just like all the others. That’s a zero. All
that power, all that posturing, all that time, and all Michael Antonovich and his deputy Norm
Hickling can accomplish is zero.
Appalling.
I hear it all the time, and I heard
the accusation again just the other day, that Mr. Antonovich just wants to see
his name on a sign. We really struggle to be more decent about it, but it is
very difficult for us to quell suspicions that Mr. Hickling’s and Mr.
Antonovich’s motives are far more nefarious. But hoping that fame will please
the gentlemen, we are proud to offer the following:
This blog, and hence the names of
Michael D. Antonovich and Norm Hickling, have been viewed well over 3000 times,
and you know how they say that any publicity is good publicity. We expect our
numbers will continue to grow faster and faster, and are looking forward to
10,000 page views soon. You can erect signs all over our properties after we
have been squeezed out, but they cannot compete with these numbers in such a
short time.
Furthermore, only people who drive
by the signs with Michael Antonovich’s name will see them. This blog, on the
other hand, is viewed worldwide! True, the thousands of page views come mostly
from local citizens of Los Angeles County, but hundreds of others come from
other countries. Think of it! If Mr. Antonovich wants fame, his name is now
being seen and read by hundreds in
France
Malaysia
Indonesia
Canada
Australia
United Kingdom
Czech Republic
Germany
Belgium
Netherlands
Isn’t that cool?!
You’re welcome.
