Mon 10 May 2010
Commentary: Lining up the Troops against Cherry-picking; with some fiery comments!
Posted by admin under Annexation , Castaic , City of Santa Clarita , County of LA , Dave Bossert , Opinion [6] Comments
On Thursday, May 5, 2010, The Beacon published a Guest Editorial by Los Angeles County 5th District Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich in which he reiterated his stance on annexation. In no uncertain terms the Supervisor reinforced his long standing, consistent and unwavering view that he will not support “any annexation that divides established communities.” Thank goodness we have a County Supervisor who is listening to all of his constituents and not just a small minority. Antonovich is governing the unincorporated communities with a fair and even hand which looks at the whole picture. He is considering the views of the local area Town Councils which he set up and are elected by the local residents as well as other community organizations. The Supervisor clearly stated that he will not support “…those annexations that are opposed by local town councils, chambers of commerce, and other community associations.”
And opposition is exactly what you have in Castaic with the proposed Hasley Hills annexation. This is a relatively new enclave that has a small group, 1500 out of area population of more than 25,000, looking to annex into the City of Santa Clarita. It has been led by a malcontent with a chip on his shoulder against the County and who has apparently not been completely forthright with disclosures and all of the facts that his group has disseminated to the Hasley Hills, North Bluff and Live Oak residents.
Now, couple that with the fact that in order to create a land bridge to connect the City to these communities the City of Santa Clarita is grabbing at the Valencia Commerce Center as well. They are using a vacant piece of land in the commerce center owned by Newhall Land and Farming as the justification to connect between the city’s north western boundary and the Hasley Hills, North Bluff and Live oak neighborhoods.
Just recently, Newhall Land and Farming sent LAFCO a letter reiterating its view; “Consistent with our past position on this issue, Newhall Land is opposed to the inclusion of our undeveloped Valencia Commerce Center property within the annexation area proposed by the City of Santa Clarita.”
Add to the equation that the Castaic Area Town Council is fully against this annexation and have clearly stated that; “These mere 1500 residents should not be allowed to destroy a century-old community. Nowhere in the history of the country have we allowed a minority voice to rule over the wishes of the majority. Don’t start now. Deny this application as presented.”
The Castaic Chamber of Commerce, which represents over 80 businesses in the Castaic area, took a different tact on the Hasley Hills annexation application by suggesting that; “it would be more appropriate and in the best interest of the future, as a whole community, to include all areas in the annexation, not only specific tax?generating areas.” In other words if LAFCO is gong to approve the proposed Hasley Hills annexation then the City of Santa Clarita should be given all of the greater Castaic area.
The bottom-line is that there is opposition on multiple fronts to what the City of Santa Clarita is endeavoring; proposing to cherry pick prime areas and attempting to divide established communities in the Castaic area. The City’s dire to grab tax generating areas at the expense of the rest of a community flies in the face of the State’s Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg legislation which governs annexations and incorporations.
Supervisor Antonovich, the Castaic Area Town Council, the Castaic Chamber of Commerce, the West Ranch Town Council and many unincorporated residents all are clearly against dividing any established communities. There is a concerted effort now to oppose this lasted salvo in the City of Santa Clarita’s ill guided growth strategy.
The City of Santa Clarita’s futile attempts at expansion against the will of the majority of residents will no doubt result in failure. City leadership appears to have never heard the old adage that you “get more with honey than you do with vinegar.” Instead they continue to behave like a bull in a china shop displaying a clumsy leadership style that persists in alienating and angering many in the unincorporated areas surrounding the City.
I wonder how much money, time and effort the City will continue to waste before they actually realize how pointless they’ve been with their bullying and arrogant tactics. The City leadership’s actions to date have been divisive, disruptive and are disenfranchising too many in the City and Santa Clarita Valley. It’s been well over a decade and they still have no toehold west of I-5 and their ham-fisted actions have only fueled mistrust, suspicion and wariness of City management.
The saga continues………….
Dave Bossert- Commentary
Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
May 10th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Good for you, Dave! It is a damned shame that we over here in the City of Santa Clarita don’t have the caring, protective representation that Westside residents get from their Town Councils. Instead, Santa Claritans get conniving tyrants that couldn’t care less about how they are destroying this city, neighborhood by neighborhood, just so City Manager Ken Pulkskamp can retire and move on to consulting, leaving with a hefty portfolio showing how he can get monster, inappropriate developments approved right on top of existing communities in spite of overwhelming opposition from community coalitions. And our weak, worthless, corrupt City Council is only too happy to abandon us while they happily hand this city over to their rotten city manager.
Live the dream, you lucky folks on the West side – DON’T ANNEX INTO THIS NIGHTMARE CALLED THE CITY OF SANTA CLARITA!
May 11th, 2010 at 10:01 am
[...] sad that I can’t tell whether this commenter on WRB is serious or being sarcastic about City vs County Leadership: It is a damned shame that we over [...]
May 12th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
I can assure you, I am damned serious!!! The entire city of Santa clarita is totally disenfranchised with the corrupt leadership we now have! Last night at City Council, our city attorney Carl Newton actually told residents that they should NOT be commenting at City Coumcil! OF COURSE they don’t want to hear from residents who are bringing the truth about large-scale, high-density developments proposed ON TOP OF LOVELY RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS, with the proposals full of lies and misrepresentations, to City council, where residents will be heard BEFORE Planning Commission. Our City Council does not want these residents appearing before City Council because this is where the lies and misrepresentations will be heard by many more people because most don’t even tune into Planning Commission, but most do see City Council.
Also, the multi-million square foot high density project from nighborhood destroyers Jay and Joyce Rogers proposed for the Smyser Ranch, right on top of a residential area, went belly-up when Calgrove area residents, as the Calgrove Corridor Coalition, stormed City Council, meeting after meeting, with their unhappiness about that huge, inaapropriate project that would surely destroy their community. And City Council complained then, too, that these residents should not be appearing before City Council! Is that the kind of leadership you people want, the kind that DOESN’T WANT YOU THERE BEFORE THEM???? Watch Tuesday’s city council meeting to see how residents are discouraged from speaking to our elected representatives. Also, what city staff and City Council are afraid of when residents “jump the gun” and start complaining at City Council about these monstrosity developments proposed on top of neighborhoods is that these new neighborhood coalitions will be as successful as the Calgrove Corridor Coalition and manage to stop the project BEFORE it gets to Planning, where such projects are always approved no matter how destructive they are to our nighborhoods.
And all the library discussion at last night’s City Council meeting occurred because Paul Brotzman tried to get the Newhall library design approved without any input from the actual Newhall Redevelopment Committee or the Newhall business committee, committees that had to go before City Council a few weeks ago to complain that their input had been ignored by city staff. So, because an election was looming and they had to look concerned to voters, City Council had to listen, and they are now forced to cooperate.
Your residents on the West side are now getting far superior representation from their Town Councils than we get over here from our corrupt city staff and our corrupt City Council. Neighborhood by neighborhood over here must form coalitions because residents are forced to fight to save their neighborhoods from a corrupt city manager and city staff and a corrupt, worthless City Council that have all sold their souls to developers. We residents have told them over and over, we are not anti-development! We will welcome REASONABLE developments that do not destroy existing communities. But City staff and City Council continue to shove monster developments on us and we are forced to go to war time after time.
And even though we are told we don’t belong at City Council meetings, WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!
May 12th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
I would be very interested to see the relationship with the last City Council election’s PAC money and the contractors and subcontractors who are involved in Santa Clarita’s development explosion that has for many years now made Santa Clarita the fastest growing city in Los Angeles County.
May 13th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Check out how much G&L Realty PAC money went into keeping the incumbents in their seats and it will make you sick. And Casden is a major player in the PAC market, also. SCV incumbents owe their seats to PAC money and how do you think they will be voting when any Henry Mayo and Casden construction is before them? Same way they have always voted for developers who get large sums of PAC money to them – an AUTOMATIC NO QUESTIONS ASKED, ANYTHING YOU WANT, IT IS YOURS vote!
David Gauny WILL win a seat in the next election, but technically, Gauny won this election, and TimBen made an amazing showing also. This is how much we over here worked to rid ourselves of the garbage incumbents. We broke from L.A. County to prevent what is happening to us now. A CUP and PAC money means anything goes over here.
What can you say about elected representatives that do everything in their power to make it as difficult as possible for SCV residents to appear with their concerns before City Council? Moving public comment to the last portion of council meetings proved that our City Council does not want to hear us. They know fewer people will show up to speak at this later public comment time, and fewer people will stay tuned in to listen. And always, Carl Newton discourages residents from speaking at all, telling us we should not be speaking before City Council with certain issues. This is because they don’t want our comments being admitted into the record at City Council meetings!
As for elections, PAC money determines who represents this city, and it is not the residents benefitting from all the PAC money. Think you want to try to win a seat on this City Council? You’d better be prepared to be threatened out of running, as Frank Ferry threatened David Gauny. Frank Ferry should be hauled out of seat just for that alone, and Ferry’s raging temper is a matter of record. What kind of lame-brained City Councilman would actually announce from his seat that “Our city staff is above reproach!” Talk about job security, bosses who believe you are above reproach, but that is the opinion of all our incumbents when it comes to city staff – they can do no wrong. What chance do we have with a City Council that gives all their loyalty to city staff, and none for us?
Why would anyone want to be a part of a government that is owned by developers and their sleazy lobbyists? Yeah, I know, you think these lobbyists are good guys, but they are paid to do just that, MAKE PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE GOOD GUYS WHILE THEY SELL OFF AS MUCH OF OUR CITY AS THEY CAN TO PROFIT THEMSELVES AS MUCH AS THEY CAN! Yeah, good guys my ass. These “good guy” lobbyists keep the PAC money flowing to their incumbent puppets while they fool folks like you into thinking they are “good guys” that will actually care about you once you annex into our little slice of hell.
How much PAC money buys your seats on Town Councils? None, which is why representation from Town Councils is the best kind of representation. Don’t give up what you have with your Town Councils, it’s a hell of a lot cleaner and kinder than what we get over here. And even when our garbage incumbents try to sound nice, we still end up on the losing end, because PAC money and our sleazy city manager are always the determining factors in every vote. Anything bad our governemnt officials have to say about L.A. County can also be said about themselves. So why make a change? Stick with the devils you know, as the saying goes, because you have far fewer to keep an eye on over there than we do over here.
May 13th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Yes, I call myself a City Planner, but that is because I was on this city’s formation committee when we decided we would be better off forming our own city, a city free of L.A. County’s “evil” rule.
SCV Resident, I am almost in tears reading what you have to say here, because I cannot aregue with a single thing you have to say. All these many years later, SCV’s leaders have indeed become so corrupt and so far removed from what we first dreamed of for ourselves when we finally became the City of Santa Clarita that I can no longer support annexation for the West part of this valley. In the past I was very supportive of this annexation, but now I can only warn these Town Councils to stay put and never join us.
G&L bought the first Council seat when they bought Laurie Ender. She has proven herself to be a most corrupt, unworthy representative, but we knew that of her going in when she ran such a dirty campaign. Ender is rude and haughty and is about as worthless as they come. Marsha asks a bunch of questions all the time, but will always vote with big developers. She will always “give” the residents a crumb of consideration, like with all her concern about power pole noise, and that is how she is able to fool enough of the people enough of the time while she continues to support the big developers she once promised to protect us from. Marsha continues to take credit for “saving” Elsmere Canyon, but she was not a selfless volunteer as he leads voters to believe, she on the city’s payroll! Laurene Weste was “reprimanded” by the FPPC for all her dirty tricks regarding her property’s connection to Newhall Redevelopment, but a slap on the hand was all she got, even though the FPPC clearly considered her guilty in their findings. Weste claimed at a City Council meeting she wasn’t on the city’s Newhall Redevelopment Committee when a resident complained of the obvious conflict of interest, yet she is listed on that sub-committee with Marsha McLean and attended most meetings giving much “advice” that would benefit her financially.
Besides his temper tantrums and dirty connections to developers, Frank Ferry gave an illegal donation of $12,000 to Laurie Ender. A slap on the hand by the FPPC and Ferry was told not to do it again, even with a clear finding of guilt. Now, Ender, Ferry, McLean, and Weste all sit in seats bought by G&L. And yes, Casden is certainly a major player, too. I agree, that business with Ferry threatening David Gauny certainly should have been enough to get Ferry removed from his seat.
I watch City Council meetings and I see the blatant corruption, I hear Carl Newton telling this city’s tax-paying citizens they shouldn’t be there taking up Coumcil’s time, after all, as you say, they certainly don’t want the lies of city staff in City Council records. I see the public comment period moved to discourage speakers, I watch a city staff and city manager with way too much power and arrogance, I see greedy lobbyists taking over this city, and I just shake my head and wonder when it went so wrong. Towering, high-density development is exactly what we wished to avoid when we became a city. Sure, we have Central Park and a Sports Complex, but that is no reason to expect us to accept huge developments that have no place here. They aren’t even developments that will bring high paying jobs. Casden will give us inner-city type appartments and all the crime and negative issues that go along with low income housing like that (like Jake’s Way) and G&L can’t even find renters for the office space they have here now. And we simply do not have the traffic grids that it will take to support huge developments.
No, I no longer encourage anyone to join us. I can’t think of one good reason why that would be a good idea, but I can come up with plenty of reasons why it would be the worst possible thing to do.