MAILBAG - June 29, 2000

A LONG WAIT,

STILL NOTHING

I have been a resident of Huntington Beach for almost 30 years and never

had a reason to complain about our city management until now.

My neighbors and I live on a street lined with huge pine trees, the only

street in our huge tract to have this type of tree. For some time now,

the tree roots have lifted our sidewalks and cracked the curbs, causing

water to accumulate all along the curbs to the end of the street. In

fact, following a rainfall, water is ankle-deep in front of my home,

spreading up my driveway and covering a large portion of the width of the

street.

For the past 14 to 15 years, I have called the Huntington Beach Public

Works Department, spoke to Don Kaiser, the former maintenance operations

manager, and complained about the problem. He surveyed our street and

agreed we have a serious situation, but budget restraints prevented the

city from solving it. Each year, from time to time, I have called the

city yard with my complaint and heard the same story of budget problems.

In 1994, I spoke to Don Noble, the present operations manager. After

seeing the collection of water in front of my home, he advised me to have

a petition signed by all the residents of our block in order to have the

pine trees removed and replaced with smaller-root trees. The petition was

done, and we were told the improvements would be made in the year 2000.

Since then, we have been told our street was No. 15 on the list to be

improved, and then finally down to No. 6.

About two weeks ago, I noticed on the next block in our tract that trees

were being cut down. Excitedly, I told some of my neighbors that perhaps

our street was next. How wrong could I be? Noble informed me that our

street was not one of the 15 to be improved this year and added that the

decision was made to take care of other streets with “potential” problems

that were presently small enough and would cost the city less to repair.

We are outraged by this senseless decision, since our street problem has

existed since the mid-’80s. Budget problems, he said, prevented him from

giving us a date that work could begin on our street.

My neighbors and I are frustrated and thoroughly disgusted with the city

administrators who have continually ignored our pleas all these years

regarding the serious situation that exists on our street. Perhaps my

neighbors and I should refuse to pay our property taxes next time around.

FORGET THE MOSQUITOES,

WHAT ABOUT COYOTES?

Huntington Beach has a serious escalating problem, which I would

certainly like to be addressed in hopes that somebody will attempt to do

something to correct. The problem? Coyotes.

Coyotes in the wild are one thing. Coyotes in residential neighborhoods

are quite another. As the population continues to explode and

construction takes over every inch of land in Orange County, these

animals are forced out of their habitat, and the many flood controls of

Huntington Beach are serving as their thoroughfare. Our property backs up

to one of these, namely that just north of Warner Avenue, between Edwards

Street and Springdale.

Whereas we once only saw an occasional coyote, fox, opossum or skunk on

the outer side of our chain-link fence, now we hear almost nightly the

eerie howling of coyotes or worse, the awful sounds of the death of

smaller creatures. This morning, we awoke to the sight of bird feathers

littering our backyard, which means the coyotes do come into residential

yards. Consequently, our two Chihuahua are now deprived of the freedom of

their doggy door to sunbathe, etc., and we all feel like prisoners.

Our many phone calls to various agencies -- city, county and finally even

federal -- have informed us of the following: Coyotes are nocturnal, very

athletic and can be dangerous. Whereas they usually only appear at night,

we have seen them as early as 9 a.m. and early afternoons, which means

they are hungry. Indeed, the last two seen strolled nonchalantly by us,

without any apparent concern. We worry that a small neighbor child could

be attacked, especially if a pack multiplies.

The gentleman from the federal agency (and I’m sorry I can’t recall the

proper title -- we called so many) kindly explained to us that neither

Los Angeles or Orange County “contracts” with them for services to rid us

of this problem. To quote: “San Diego does. If you lived in San Diego,

we’d be right there to solve the problem.” His only other suggestion was

to get our city to clear the brush from the flood control, thereby

ridding coyotes of their dens.

My question to you, council, is when we see “mosquito abatement” fees on

our property tax bills, why can we not contract with the powers that be

to spend the money for an even more important service? Will it take the

death of a small child to get action? Surely we can match San Diego in

the protection of its citizens.

Ours is just one house near one flood control, but I dare say if everyone

affected wrote or called you about this problem, you would admit that it

is large and urgent. Please, may we have some action?