October 19, 2003 COPY OF LETTER TO CITY HALL Hi Lupe, I am writing you first as a heads up for what is to follow in every print and electronic medium I can muster. I would ask you to keep this particular correspondence confidential. Friends of Atwater Village and I are disgusted by Chuck Arnold's glib dismissal of his promises on behalf of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. And don't get me started on James Omahen, or, as we call him, Dr. No. We had a cleanup on Saturday, as you are probably aware. Our volunteers, who came to pick up trash in the channel, had been re-volunteered without consent by Mr. Arnold to spread mulch on behalf of the Mountains folks. Nice. I felt sorry for the Mountains people because they had been mislead and were severely understaffed for the project. They are legally obliged to maintain this park, they have not done so, and now they are facing huge problems. Bless them. Our volunteers cheerfully re-volunteered and helped out. We from FAV were also generous and human enough to share our food and refreshments with the Mountains crew, and it wasn't cheap, Lupe, but it's what human beings do for one another. They act responsibly. Apparently, Mr. Arnold was absent the days they taught that particular lesson in grammar school. During our January walk along the river, Mr. Arnold promised most passionately that he'd get irrigation so that the ground plants would not die. I watched as he scrawled this on his puny legal pad. Water, of course, is crucial to our neighborhood gardens. Which are dying Mr. Arnold told us Saturday that his new plan was to let everything die and then throw cheap mulch on it. (By the way, I don't know what nuclear reactor they get their mulch from, but I came home with caustic burns on my arms and legs. Liability issue? I may consider this if the blisters persist.) Now I can hear the squawks of morally-superior armchair environmentalists already: Your gardens are not native! The heck with that. Mr. Arnold said he planned to mulch over the native sage that his former organization had planted. Everything goes in this blue light special! The San Fernando Gardeners got water. They don¹t plant natives exclusively. Why is it that the city apparently feels that the only water Atwater deserves is a steady stream of piss? We run things as volunteers, without pay, and we do so gladly out of a sense of civic duty. For this, we receive the Golden Shower at every turn. I am betting that there are places along the fence where we could access water easily. We¹re not asking for miracles. Two faucets would do the trick, and we¹d buy the hoses and whatever else we needed to keep the flowers blooming. We have communicated this repeatedly to Mr. Arnold, but it apparently would require effort on his part, such as adjusting a verb to match a noun on a grant proposal. I think back to a morning not so long ago. Netty Carr and I were down by the banks of the Los Angeles River, hanging with Barbara Boxer and Antonio Villaraigosa. Senator Boxer gave a fine speech in which she singled out the Riverwalk as a model of community involvement. My humble name was mentioned. I felt a flush of pride unlike anything I¹d ever experienced, to know that a little person¹s commitment could make a difference. The Riverwalk was supposed to be the inspiration for many parks to come. If this is so, people need to be advised to STAY AWAY FROM THE MRCA AT ALL COSTS! Your neighborhood will go from dump to "demonstration project" back to dump in no time, and you'll be the "volunteers" upon whose back the whole fiasco will be carried. Lupe, I fought the Army Corp of Engineers, only to be undone by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. It doesn't take a literary expert to see the irony here, do you think? I will, however, make a pledge to you. If it requires that I channel Hell itself to make the MRCA publicly accountable for their hypocrisy and sloth, I will do so, even if I must go down into the fire itself and bring it up bucket by bucket. Buddy Roberts Little Person Home