The Good, The Bad and the Pug Ugly is one way to describe the events of this past year. And to be honest with you, none of them were foretold. The good is that we got rid of our councilmember that really didn’t care about what happened to our community. The bad is the controversy that the land use committee (LUC) members created by calling the city and complaining about “Illegal” signage. The pug ugly is our local machine, that by using her influence and attacking people behind the scenes, almost destroyed our community. Things are changing for the better while bringing out the worst in people.
December 12 is the anniversary of Michelle Joeen Wincentsen’s tragic death on La Tuna Canyon ten years ago. That’s when I started a crusade of public awareness on careless/distracted driving. I couldn’t believe that people would see the accident photos and not think about their actions behind the wheel. And more than that, I couldn’t believe the amount of “haters” on the social media that would attack the Foothills Papers efforts to stop this carnage. Yep boys and girls I truly made a mistake. But on the other hand, I received such positive response from the LAFD that I continued posting the pictures. But what we really need is better planning for Foothill Blvd and La Tuna Canyon Rd. Having police increase isn’t going to do much more than put a band-aid on the problem. We need to re-think what we can do to stop the illegal U-Turns on Foothill Blvd.
The STNC Safe Streets Committee came up with a couple of good ideas. One is the placement of medians in the center of Foothill Blvd., or maybe those plastic posts called Bollards, where traffic tends to go crazy. One of our major accident sites is between Oro Vista and Floralita. Another one is at Mt Gleason, where people cross the double-double yellow lines to go north at that intersection. This is just an idea. But we’d be doing something besides cleaning up the bodies and wrecks.
Yes, things are changing for the best. The Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club are going through their own kind of changes. But it’s for the good. Nietzsche made the statement “That which doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger.” So it’s going to be a real toss-up of which way we’re going. 800 new homes coming our way. Traffic killing our citizens. Homeless getting more aggressive and attacking each other and us. These are what the future holds, and it is up to us to work together and make sure we’re all pulling in the right direction.
These next couple of months are really going to be interesting. And you may still be able to say “It’s the water.”