Dear Darryl,
A friend of mine passed on a link to your column titled “Stooge of the City Council Gives up His Title” in which you partly give a critique of what it must be like to be on the local town councils. I realize that much of your veiws are from the “wayback machine” you like to ride. You did make several statements that I do agree with whole heartedly and other statements I don’t agree with at all.
Being on a local Town Council is a thankless job! It is also thankless volunteering in an area where there are many armchair quarterbacks (local and out of town critics) constantly throwing stones at everything you do. Most of those folks don’t participate in the betterment of the community. In fact, most of them don’t attend the local community meetings like the Town Councils or the community association meetings that usually happen on a monthly basis. Instead they just cause problems after the fact with misinformation, false accusations, and generally attempting to better them selves at the expense of the community as a whole.
Why do these Council volunteers endure? It’s simple, because all of the members care deeply for their families and for the betterment of the community, for creating a safe community, and for working towards a better tomorrow. Most people don’t want to get involved though because of the time commitments and the potential ridicule, harassment, and possible liability.
You are dead wrong though, on the assertion in your column, that some how “It has to hurt those town council members emotionally when they hear the annexation offers from Santa Clarita.”Won’t we get a say in the future?” “How do we know the City Council will care as much about West Ranch, Castaic, Agua Dulce, Acton — fill in the blank — as we do?”
Trust me; it will not hurt “emotionally” or otherwise one bit to see the governing issues of the West Ranch Communities get resolved as long as they do get resolved fairly. I would be happy to see the West Ranch Communities annex into the City of Santa Clarita or a new city formed or stay in the county! In fact, I would happy to no longer be involved in the political aspect of the community. Frankly, I would much rather continue being a community volunteer with the Stevenson Ranch Civic Committee doing events like the 4th of July fireworks show.
If you had attended the local West Ranch Town Council meetings you would have heard, on a monthly basis, that an elected group of volunteers has tried to investigate properly all the options available in regards to the communities self-determination. As recently as last summer a group of West Ranch Town Council members, myself included, embarked on a series of meetings with the City of Santa Clarita to investigate annexation. We had several meetings and the City was supposed to propose a second series of meetings that would have taken place in the fall. Our town council has not heard back from the City, they have not followed up. By the way, gathering all this information was intended to educate ourselves, our community and to be able to open up meaningful negotiations about a possible annexation into the City of Santa Clarita.
Darryl, you have to realize, there have been no “offers” from the City of Santa Clarita to annex! The City has taken the stance that we (the West Ranch area) would be lucky to annex into the City. In fact, a red faced and yelling Frank Ferry made that perfectly clear to me during his child-like outburst at a City Council meeting. By the way, City Councilman Ferry has done an enormous amount of damage with the rhetoric that has spewed from his pie hole.
I don’t, however, think that it would be fair for the community to just give ourselves away for free. If an annexation were to happen it must happen through a thoughtful and intelligent negotiation. If the City doesn’t want to participate in such a dialogue than an annexation of the West Ranch area isn’t going to happen anytime soon, if ever. You should know that if the City of Santa Clarita had been respectful of the West Ranch Town Council and taken us seriously a deal on annexation could have been done 5 or 6 years ago. It would be much tougher to forge a deal now, although not impossible. It is the Santa Clarita City Council and City management that have faltered on this issue due to the tactics and bad advice they are following.
Currently, the City has embarked on yet another bad tactic of once again circumventing the community and West Ranch Town Council by recruiting a person or two to run in this July’s West Ranch Town Council election. The City is trying to get an individual on the West Ranch Town Council that will happily push for an annexation with out any negotiation. That would be a disservice to the entire community. But hey, that’s politics right? Wrong! It is just another example of the complete disrespect and arrogance the City of Santa Clarita seems to have for the outlying unincorporated communities.
You are right when you said, “Santa Clarita must recognize the value of the town councils. It won’t work any other way.” Trying to circumvent the council by cherry picking a community or an area has not worked and will not work. Trying to stack the Town Council with stooges won’t work either! I am, however, all in favor of your suggestion that we “clear everything on the table right now and start fresh” which has been done now several times over the years. Unfortunately, I am not sure that the City folks are willing to do that based on their current activities.
The “One Valley, One Vision” is a great concept but the City clearly has viewed it as a “One City, Our Vision” program. That attitude speaks volumes of how the City operates and for the complete disregard the City has for the unincorporated communities in the Valley. Don’t worry, no one is planning on burning you at the stake as it would be a waste of some fine firewood.
-Dave Bossert