Yorba Linda Residents Lose Bitterness After Getting Their Way

From the very beginning, Raymond Mayuga had serious doubts about moving to the Yorba Linda street called Via Amargura.

To Mayuga, 32, the name, which in Spanish means Way of Bitterness, was just a bad omen.

“I almost didn’t buy the house because of the street name,” said Mayuga, who is of Filipino descent and whose wife, Ana, is of Spanish descent.

“I always felt uneasy about that street name. When we were ready to sign the papers, I came down with the flu and became disabled for a month,” Mayuga said. He thought at the time: “Boy, I have to move into this house on Via of Bitterness and things are happening already. . . . Probably when I move in, I’ll die.”

So Mayuga, with the backing of his seven neighbors-to-be, who also have not yet moved into their new homes in East Lake Village, complained to the City Council and sought a name change for the street.

To appease the prospective residents, the Yorba Linda City Council Monday night voted to approve their request to change the street name to Via Belleza, which means Way of Beauty.

The soon-to-be neighbors--most of whom don’t speak Spanish--walked away happy that they would not have to live on the Way of Bitterness. But there was a hitch in the proceedings: The resolution listed the street as Via Amargurra, which has one R too many. The proper spelling in Spanish is Amargura.

Mayuga admitted Tuesday that he is to blame for the misspelling in his group’s council petition. “Since I started using two Rs (in letters), I figured what the heck. Nobody will notice. You caught me,” Mayuga said.

The city’s Community Development Department, city clerk’s office and City Council did not notice, either. It won’t be a problem to change it, though, City Clerk Diana Higdon said.

“If it’s just a typo, we can just change it. If it’s a difference of substance, then the council would have to vote on it again,” Higdon said.

Some like Mayuga wonder how a street comes to be named Way of Bitterness.

Hannah Howes, the office manager for the project developer, S & S Construction Co., said she didn’t know how the street came by its name. “Amargura? I don’t even know what it means,” she said.

She said it is the engineers who often pick the street names. “Sometimes, they choose names according to some development, their children or friends. Marwah, for one,” Howes explained, speaking of another street in the development, “is one of the engineers.”

That isn’t supposed to be allowed, said Phil Paxton, Yorba Linda’s community development director and the one responsible for approving all the new street names in the city. “You can’t name a street after your own family” unless it’s one of the city’s founding families, he said. When told of Via Marwah, Paxton replied, “That’s one that slipped by us.”

As for Via Amargura, a block ending in a cul-de-sac where homes have not yet been completed and the street sign hasn’t gone up, Paxton said the name probably was approved about two years ago.

“In this case, I don’t know how the Way of Bitterness got in there,” he said. “Whatever explanation they gave me was OK at the time.”

Since then, however, Paxton said the city has hired a Spanish-speaking staff planner who checks the Spanish names.

For Mayuga and his neighbors, the story--confusion and all--ended happily with their new street name: Way of Beauty. Mayuga said it may even bring him, his wife, two children and in-laws good luck when they move into their new home in the hills next month.

In any case, he added, “omen or not, I feel better.”