May 25, 2010 – Daily Brief

Picking on HOA swim teams? What is next spying on Little League practices? Glad I do not live in the Summit….

I am a Stratford HOA and very concerned about the boards attempts to ‘eliminate the swinmteam’. As a Stratford HOA I have to pay for both HOA fees, Straftord and Summit, so I am in the ridiculous situation of paying legal fees to fight myself! Ultimately, this is a local tradition running for 20 years, and the community and their support of local initiatives like this for our kids, is one of the main reasons I moved here. It seems wrong to stop such a positive intitative for our kids. Especially when there appears to be no substance to the Stratford’s claims. It’s a shame squabbling adults are the ones who spoil it for our kids.

Jeff: The link to the PDF is not working on my HP.

Audra and Tony Strickland sicken me, as do all of the other wife-husband tandems that hand off legislative seats to each other when they are term limited. It is sad to see couples who are so completely unemployable that they can’t get non-government jobs and who would be broke without elected office. With people like this in the legislature, it’s no wonder California has fallen to pieces.

I was a charter member of the Summit Seals and swam on the team from ’87 to ’96 (when I aged out). The Seals remain one of my most cherished childhood memories. It gave me an opportunity to exercise, make friends, and do something with my summer besides “hang out” and watch TV. There are friends I made back in ’87 on the team that I am still in touch with today. As a teenager I spent my days there, not only as a swimmer, but also as a junior coach. With teenagers getting into all kinds of trouble these days, junior coaches dedicate part of their summer to teaching and encouraging other kids. I swam Varsity at Valencia, something I may not have accomplished without the training of the Seals. I became a teacher as an adult, a love for teaching I learned while coaching younger kids how to swim. I look forward to the day my daughter is old enough to be on an HOA swim team. It saddens me that a small group of people want to strip away a program that has been a significant influence to so many people.

I am an original owner on the Summit and the Seal’s have been part of this community long before there was a Stratford HOA. Both my children learned to swim, learned team values and loved to get fit and have fun. It is terrible that a few are doing this, I am saddened that this is happening, this team was here long before they moved in. It is a value to our community and I urge all Stratford people to rise up and stop the few from this senseless persecution.

On Summit: Aren’t there laws about photographing and videotaping minor children without their parent’s consent? Filming them in swimwear is especially creepy.

THE GREAT CHLORIDE TAX SCAM Please join me in protesting the unneeded, unwarranted, and unacceptable $200 million dollar plus tax grab being proposed by our Sanitation District.Come to the City Council meeting tonight. Our elected officials must stand up to this scheme which is entirely based on junk “science”. Our Sanitation officials have caved into special Ventura County agricultural interests who want the citizens of the Santa Clarita Valley to pay for water which we will buy from Kern County to bank for them in drought years, to supply clean water for the Oxnard strawberry fields (although they won’t say how much), and to pay for a desalinization plant to take chloride out of the water we buy from the State. The State water project says that the level of chloride in the water that they sell us is fine, and yet our local State appointed Regional Water Quality Control Board says that we must take out the Chloride so that it is at maximum 117mg/L as measured at our County line as it goes into Ventura County. The federal drinking water standard is 250mg/L. So why does The Sanitation District say we must take down the Chloride levels? It is because Regional Board has been convinced by the downstream agricultural special interests that high chloride levels are creating crop damage in “salt sensitive” crops. The Sanitation district did not fall for this ruse in 2002 as evidenced in the Feb 6, 2002 Daily News. Vicki Conway, the head of the treatment monitoring section for the Los Angeles districts stated that “The proposed standard is scientifically unfounded, “and that “There’s no evidence that this is needed, based on the history of this area.” In addition in 2002 our “City Council pledged … to fight a proposed plant to reduce the amount of chloride…the council members unanimously agreed that the new treatments were not necessary and could cost some residents their homes” Alas though, a culprit was also identified as the main reason why there was too much salt “Ninety percent of the chloride in the water system, and therefore in the river, comes from self-regenerating water softeners like those used by many homeowners, water officials said”-Daily News 2-06-2002. Never underestimate the power of special interests when there is money and water involved. By 2003 our City Council was convinced that we needed to remove our salt based water softeners in the SCV. In the Daily News Mar. 26, 2004 Mayor Bob Kellar said “We have a choice when it comes to the salt-in-the-river problem, and the answer is clear: Let’s get rid of these polluting machines once and for all.” And Councilwoman Laurene Weste said. “If we put in salt, then we have to spend money to take it out.” In 2008 we passed an ordinance to make the softeners illegal and removed by June 30th 2009. So we have been taking those softeners out, and indeed the Chloride levels have been falling. But way before the full impact could be felt (there are still bootleg softeners in place), last year the Sanitation district was pushing for a $250 million tax increase. They were doing so because in 2005 a literature survey was done to justify the outrageous tax. Not a field studies mind you, only a review of studies done elsewhere. The contention by the agricultural interests, was that the “salt sensitive” crops of strawberries, nursery crops and avocados were being “harmed” by our salt levels. Here is what the study actually says about evidence of chloride levels that would harm strawberries “…they did not provide sufficient data to determine an appropriate Cl threshold for irrigation water”; nursery crops “ …does not provide sufficient evidence upon which to base a recommendation for a Cl threshold for nursery crops”; and avocados “Therefore, although there is clearly not enough evidence to propose an absolute threshold with the literature presently available, the best estimate of a Cl hazard concentration ranges from 100 to 120 mg/L.” That’s right folks, they are going to tax us a couple of hundred million dollars on a guess. Three of the six “experts” that comprise the panel that makes this guess, work for the agricultural interests in Ventura County. One of the panelists who do not work for the farmers of Ventura County, John Letey, Jr. Ph.D. a Professor Emeritus from Riverside, states that if a threshold had to be estimated, there would need to be at least 178 mg/L before any damage was done to the avocados. So assuming that there is some threshold that would damage avocados, how many farmers are affected by chloride levels above 100 mg/L? One. According to the Sanitation District, between our county line and where the Piru creek dilutes the water down to around 50mg/L there is exactly one farmer with about 100 acres in avocados. Our government wants to tax us hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit one farmer, based on junk science. And here is the kicker. The Sanitation District stated last year that they needed to meet a 150 mg/L level for Cl as the water left the treatment plant and 117 mg/L as it crossed the County Line. The measurement for the last 14 months coming out of the Valencia plant has been below 150 mg/L. The measurement for the last 20 months has been below the 150/mg threshold for water coming out of the Saugus Plant. And for the last six months the level at the County line was below the 117mg/L. with the April 10 measurement at 91 mg/L. The average Cl level has dropped 6% for the last year compared to the prior year average. To put in one penny for the design of a chloride removal plant, while the levels are still falling would not only be a travesty, but a misuse of public funds. The Sanitation District laid out the whole plan last year, and the people were rightly shocked with the hundreds of millions in tax increases, but this year they are only talking about the costs to design the plant. They want our officials to commit us for the design and then tell us the cost for the building of the plant later, after we are committed to this robbery of our citizens. Our officials put this off last year until after the election, but this boondoggle should not be an election issue. This tax scam should be fought as the great injustice that it is. It should be fought legislatively at the State level, and if necessary in the courts. I call upon Mayor Weste and Councilmember McLean and the entire City Council to fight this tax scam. At Your Service, Former Councilman TimBen Boydston

I am saddened to see that the Summit swim team is in danger of being shut down. As a resident of Northpark HOA, I was thrilled when we formed a team several years back. My daughter was 5 going into Kindergarten and she was so excited to start the first day of school and see friends from the swim team at her school. Our team was shut down after 1 year. It was UGLY! And the saddest part about it for me was to see how tense and nasty our once friendly and lovely community became. HOA meetings became vindictive and mean spirited. Neighbors were making nasty threats against the team and members. It shocked me that a community full of educated, normally classy people, began to act like street thugs. In the end, the swim team lost, mainly because of a personal dislike of the swim team leadership in my opinion. I tried to re-enter the scene 2 years later as a neutral party, after some of the ugliness had died down, to work together and re-open our team, but I was immediately shut down. Our HOA attorney who also represented Northbridge and their swim team, refused to help us legally with fighting this. Instead I was told to pay several thousand dollars for a legal opinion and since the swim team had no money, that was impossible. Same management company and same attorney, but Northbridge got a swim team and Northpark didn’t. I still don’t understand that one. I am grateful that the Paseo Club had a swim team for me to put my daughter on. But it was in no way the same. No friends from our community were in it and no lasting friendships were made as a result. It surprises me how many people want to be right instead of wanting to be happy. People in every area, politics, religion and even a swim team on a HOA would rather be right than happy. I guess they think being right will make them happy. The truth is, being right destroyed the closeness of our community. Time has healed some wounds, but there are still fractured friendships as a result of this battle several years ago. It is my prayer that the Summit residents will not do to their neighborhood, what Northpark did to ours. Work together and figure out a way to make everyone happy and not just right. Everyone will be much happier that way in the end. Good luck Summit Swim Team. I’m cheering for you!