Editorial from July 27th

"Too much confusion at the CSD"

By Danielle Seckler

   At the East Valley Community Park (EVC Park) meeting held on Thursday, July 26th, the entire process has been put back to square one. Rick Ollila created the committee at the end of his term in October 2006, as chair of the Big Bear City Community Services District (CSD). The ad hoc committee, with board members, John Day and Bob Colven, plus three citizens were asked to see if something could be done with the 160-acres of land for a park in the east end of the valley. Many of the public applauded Colven and Day for their stance that the County’s park district had done nothing for their citizens, while taking their tax money to support other parks. By March 2007, at a town hall meeting with the public they had come up with a plan, gotten many different groups involved, and were ready to do the technical study to determine if a full environmental impact study had to be done. All they had to do to keep the ball rolling was to get the technical study completed by the end of spring, when biological plants would be in full growth.

   Since then, the EVC Park has floundered like a fish gasping for air and flip flopping on the shoreline. NO technical study was done by a real biologist, so no one knows if there could be problems anywhere on the Paradise Way property. Instead the committee has been side tracked with possible old studies done years ago, multiple people discussing issues with no reports back to the EVC Park committee, and back room discussions with the County’s park district and their proposals.

   In an effort to try to bring the committee back to the heart of the issue (getting a park for citizens of the east end) Day decided he should be chair of the EVC Park due to a conflict of interest with Colven’s personal property being too close to the Paradise Way. Colven disagreed, but Day replaced Colven with Ollila. Another distraction in the purpose of the committee, as more discussion has been made if Colven should or should not be on the committee, CSD board members falling into the pit of personal disparagement of each other, including one of the citizens on the EVC Park committee. The final decision of the creation of a committee, who will be on the committee, and its setup is up to the CSD chair, which is Day. He decided that the committee would no longer be an ad hoc committee, but a standing committee with the citizens to reapply. Several citizens did so by last Thursday, everyone hoped that the EVC Park committee would get back on track.

   The meeting had an agenda with only two items on it; committee citizen’s advisory and park design. Day started the meeting with his evaluation of standing committee and those people who had been side tracking the goal of the committee, then rambled on about the County’s park district taking Big Bear City taxpayer money, hope of the new County park district general manager, onto geographical and environmental issues on different parts of the Paradise Way property. Defining that both he and Ollila believed that the entire area should be broken down into three sections or phases, starting with the easiest to the hardest area to develop; first the area directly in front of the Paradise Way, behind the CSD work yard on Paradise Way, and the area along Highway 38 going to Lucerne Valley.

   CSD General Manager, Mike Mayer stated that the County park district had sent a letter wanting to discuss their proposal for the front part of the Paradise Way at the next CSD board meeting on Aug. 20th. Denise Proffer stated that Reese Troublefield should present the County’s proposal to the EVC Park committee first and then to the full CSD board, with a recommendation from the EVC Park committee. By then the discussion went back to old feelings about the County park district and absolute confusion occurred. Bear Valley News has no idea how this will be done, since the rest of the meeting evolved around how the committee would be set up.

   So here it is about a year afterwards and the committee has gone from an ad hoc committee, to standing committee with citizens on it, to no citizens on the committee and just a regular committee like the ‘Employee of the Year’ committee. Somewhere in all the discussion, Proffer asked “Who’s on first?” and like everyone else leaving the meeting, we had to wonder how could such a great start lose all momentum and decay into chaos. Several of the public asked by us on what they thought the outcome of the meeting was; most only looked bewildered and said nothing will ever come of it.

   Marge Mc Donald, who was not in attendance and only heard about the meeting, called us to tell us what her feelings were about the EVC Park committee. She stated angrily that “John Day signed the death warrant for the Paradise Way Park. He is the weakest leader I’ve ever seen, since I’ve been on the mountain. It is terrible that the board got together with the general managers to undermine some of the members of the board.”

   To be honest, the EVC Park meeting reminds us of the cartoon of a dog with two heads on both ends of its body; which is only to say that so many people have thrown into the mix the issues and agendas that there doesn’t seem to be a unified direction. The pile of “possible” problems has grown so high that no one seems to be able to organize the pile and just pick one or two problems facing the committee at one time to prioritize anything. The EVC Park committee is losing their support, which is exactly what some people want. This is an organized attack on them. Mayer doesn’t want the CSD to get into any park system and would like to see the County park district take it over. Colven, who started out shaking his finger at the County’s lack of support for a park in the east end, has had many discussions with the County about the Paradise Way property. He seems to walking the political fence, trying to be something to everyone so he can get re-elected in 2008. EVC Park committee member, Al Ziegler, has been all over the map, while at the same time throwing darts at Day and supporting Colven publicly and behind the scenes. The County park district has no interest in having another agency show them up on a successful park and that would mean that they could lose money and power. Supervisor Dennis Hansberger who wants to get re-elected in 2008 wants to show that he’s done something for the east end. Then there are just those people who are afraid of anything, so doing nothing works just fine with them.

   Ever watch a dog chase its tail? This is one big dog running around in circles. However, for all of those who have voiced their discouragement, remember one thing. Every dog running after its tail gets tired and sooner or later it walks in a straight line.

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