OPINIONS ON COMMUNITY ISSUES |
Contact John by Email at: [email protected] Ken Dyda's recently sent a letter to the Editor of the Peninsula News concerning Eastview. That letter contained inaccuracies. In response, I attempted to send a letter to the editor to be printed in response. The Peninsula News refused to print my letter because it "didn't want to have a printed 'dialogue' between Mr. Dyda and myself." Below is my response to Mr. Dyda's letter. February 28, 2006 To the Editor, PV Peninsula News The revisionist history lesson that Mr. Dyda gives us is a very self-serving picture and demeans the hard working people in Eastview who worked to help incorporate the city of Rancho Palos Verdes. The only portion of Eastview that was threatened by annexation to Lomita was the Peninsula Verde Homeowners area. Activist residents tell me that the RPV City Council never asked them if they wanted to annex to RPV after the Lomita border change. It was Dyda who came to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Advisory Council with the supposed survey that apparently exaggerated the high negative in Eastview if included in the “Fourth City” (RPV) incorporation. Dyda acted as a go-between for the SOC Steering Committee and the PVPAC, the new city’s incorporating body. Eight years later when the MORGA annexation occurred it was after only about six weeks of collecting signatures prior to filing. They had waited years for the PVPAC promise to be kept by a city council that finally had Bob Ryan and Ann Shaw as their main supporters. Dyda calls that “impatience.” The fact is that they could not trust that an annexation item on the RPV agenda would be voted in their favor with councilman Buerk so adamant against it. One wonders if the item on the agenda was spurred by the signature campaign itself and not just the threat of being annexed by Los Angeles and the loss of sales tax revenue. It seems that the fact that the council only took a neutral position on the annexation is proof that the Eastview activists did the right thing by going it alone. Dyda claims that SOC worked with LAFCO to revise the boundaries. SOC was not a residents’ organization representing only the incorporation area and was funded primarily from members outside the RPV boundary. The five active homeowners groups in Eastview were also members of the PVPAC and they had to agree to drop out of the incorporation boundaries. Hence the agreement was made by the PVPAC that I have referred to in a previous letter. The fact that the residents of Eastview voted overwhelmingly to annex to RPV really shines light on the supposed negative numbers reported to the PVPAC years earlier. Only a small group opposed it then and again at annexation time. I have always been thankful for the efforts of Leo Connolly, Dick Brunner, Andy Bonacich, Bob West, Jay Hodge, and the rest of the Eastview Goals Committee for working with the PVPAC to achieve the RPV incorporation. I don’t remember a moment of weak support from them. By the way: Perhaps it is high time that we refer to Eastview as the eastern portion of RPV. These people and their kids need to be 100% a part of RPV. John McTaggart Before you exit this site, please click on “THE
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