Neverland Ranch State Park, Huh?

When I first heard that state assemblyman, Mike Davis had proposed that Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch be turned into California's newest state park, I thought it a joke. I know that I'm in a vocal minority that thinks Michael Jackson will be a forgotten figure in 30 years, (Remember Eva Tanquay? Fame is fleeting. Look her up, she's a great story.) but shouldn't we wait awhile to see if I'm wrong. Too, while Michael Jackson's supporters seem to attribute a god like quality to the man, the taint of possible child molestation can stink up the place.
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But, then I began to give the idea some thought. The first thing I did was look up Neverland Ranch. Its 2, 676 acres is a significant piece of open space in a state that has a habit of putting real estate development on a sacred plane. Turn the house into a Michael Jackson Museum and restore the remaining 2, 670 acres to it's natural state. Hiking, bridal, and perhaps some bike paths, crossing a near natural bit of the Santa Ynez Valley sounds like a pretty good thing to me. Paying to buy the land could be problematic, but not impossible. Rather than pass a bond initiative, take out a bank loan, slap a $10 admission fee to the museum, and tell the bank all the money is theirs until the loan plus a reasonable amount of interest is paid. I would be surprised if initial visitation was under a million visitors a year. I'm willing to put up with crying Michael Jackson idolaters in the parking lot if I can walk away and into a piece of old California landscape in 10 minutes.

On the Beach

Well, it's happening again. There is a long tradition in California of developers trying to steal public land by blocking access to the general public. The beach may be free for anyone to use, but if builders block a way to sea, for all intent and purpose, that public land becomes private property.
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Today's Los Angeles Times reports a more subtle attempt at a land grab. In order to get building permits and permission from the states coastal commission, developers of a high end, gated community at Orange County's Dana Point, offered up a plan with multiple access points to the beach, as well as an inclined railway to the sea. Seems like the money men were bending over backward to insure that swimmers, and surfers could easily get to the water.
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But, things are not always what they seem. The fly in this particular ointment is an attempt to limit the hours that the public can use the beach. "Ah shucks, it's just a matter of privacy. Isn't it unfair that surfer dudes might loose their way on paths after dark and stumble onto people's lawns?" My guess is that if Headlands Reserve, the developer, is allowed to restrict access to certain hours, as time goes by, those hours will become even more restricted, with flimsier and flimsier excuses given until only the residents of the north strand gated community can get to the ocean. I understand that people who are paying millions of dollars for a home in a gated community might not want someone walking by their kitchen window with a surf board tucked under their arm, but the law has always been that public access to beaches is a right in California. It's not like the home owners didn't know, ahead of time, what came with those great ocean views.
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California has a conservancy, set up by the state, to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains; a conservancy that has been so successful that it's been able to expand its reach to other local mountain ranges. It's time that California had a similar conservancy to preserve ocean beaches, river fronts, and stream banks. It would have been far better if the Dana Point headland had been preserved as open space by such a conservancy. Too, river and stream banks, when developed, have a tendency to prevent public access and free navigation in favor of a property right that, quite often, is nothing more than a de facto land grab. I know that proposing that all ocean front property and river and stream banks should be owned by the state sounds insanely ambitious, but I would remind readers that a sizable percentage of such lands are already preserved in California's many state and federal parks, and forests.

Santa Monica Mountains National Park

There was a simple story about a land dispute in today's issue of the Los Angeles Times. Judge Charles F. Palmer ruled in favor of Harry Mansdorf, a retired airplane manufacturer. Mr. Mansdorf maintained that Michele V. Giacomazza, a former business partner of his brother, Lee Mansdorf, had tried to cheat him out of ownership of 1,291 acres of land. Normally I wouldn't care about such a story, but the land is in the Santa Monica Mountains; it's still semi-wild; now that the land dispute is ended, it's in danger of being developed.

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The Santa Monica Mountains are a unique ecosystem represented nowhere else in the United States. A Mediterranean type environment, not found outside of southern Europe, is so rare, that further development should be stopped, and the land preserved in a new national park. A survey should be done identifying the reasonable extent of that ecosystem, borders should be drawn around it, and all land within those borders should, over time, be purchased and added to land already under park jurisdiction in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, combined with state, local, and Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy holdings to create such a park. The business districts, and the most heavily populated areas along the ocean in Malibu, and along the 101 freeway, as well as the long established Topanga Canyon Community of Fernwood should be excluded from purchase, but all other private holdings within the Santa Monica Mountains as well as Pacific Ocean beaches should be part of such a park.

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While preservation of a unique ecosystem should be enough, there are other reasons for the creation of a Santa Monica Mountains National Park, and one of the biggest is fire. The earliest Europeans to see southern California noted that fires were common in the Santa Monica Mountains. Whether it's dry lightning, an untended camp fire, a wind downed power line, or a discarded cigarette, the Santa Monicas burn. And when a fire starts during the Santa Ana winds, flames can travel from one side of the range to the sea in a matter of hours. Allowing people to build in an area that is prone to wild fires, and when the rains come, mud slides ,makes no sense. In the more densely populated beach communities, there is at least, the possibility of creating a defensible perimeter, but within the mountains themselves, individual homes or small clusters of buildings, built on ridge lines or canyon sides, accessible only by winding and narrow roads, presents an extreme danger to both home owners and fire fighters. And, the cost of protecting individual homes is prohibitively expensive. The cost of saving one building with fire trucks and, more often than not, helicopters or flying tankers, can cost millions of dollars, and from time to time, it can cost the lives of firemen. Several years ago there was a fire in San Bernardino county. A group of firemen died while defending a single, isolated home. The fire was set by an arsonist, and when he was captured, he was tried and convicted of murder. Had that fire been caused by a dry lightning strike, we might have asked ourselves if those fireman's lives were lost because someone wanted to live in a picturesque, though dangerous area. In the Santa Monicas, with an alternative to development, we can ask that question before the fire fighters die, rather than after.

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Our national parks are meant to be the legacy of all Americans, but as gas prices get more expensive, as admission fees increase, as the economic disparity between the rich, and, well, everybody else, widens, those parks are becoming places for people of a certain income and above. A national park, adjacent to a large urban area, returns the park experience to all. The poor, and the economically stressed middle class, may have to get up early to catch the bus or subway, but a national park in the Santa Monica Mountains, would allow them access to a natural world that is becoming a rare experience for far too many of our citizens. The idea of an urban adjacent national park is not a new one. In Ohio, Cuyahoga National Park is bordered on the north by suburban Cleavland, and on the south by suburban Akron. A Santa Monica Mountains National Park would serve citizens of the second largest urban area in the United States. From mountain ridges to Pacific Ocean beaches; from Sunset Blvd. to Point Mugu, the Santa Monica Mountains stand as one of the last great wilderness areas, close to a large city.

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We don't need to buy all of the land within the Santa Monica Mountains all at once. As land comes on the market, the federal government can establish a right to match the selling price, as the budget allows. Special tax zones within the mountains can allow people to donate land, with tax deductions worth 110, 120, or even 150% of assessed value. The creation of a new national park doesn't have to be done all at once. As soon as boundaries of what should be the park are established, we can begin acquisition, and if it takes twenty years to finish the job, so what. What matters is that a commitment be made to the preservation of a unique and valuable ecosystem.

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Santa Monica Mountains National Park, an idea whose time has come. Tejon Ranch National Park, an idea whose time has come. The expansion of Death Valley and Redwood National Parks, an idea whose time has come.

California State Parks Seized!

Our own Governor Action Hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been warned by the federal government that some of our state parks could be seized should he follow through on his plan to shut all the nonprofitable units of our parks system.

It seems that Angel Island, Mount Diablo, Point Sur, Fort Ord Dunes, Point Magu, and Border Fields were all once federal properties, and when they were deeded to California for use as parks, part of the deal was that they be kept up and running in perpetuity. That's got to hurt. Action Hero has positioned himself as the tough, fiscal conservative willing to do anything to bring fiscal responsibility to the golden state. Every time he turns around, he finds out that some pesky law is tying his hands.

Of course, his biggest problem isn't with the state legislature, unions (a favorite whipping boy for Action hero), or the feds. His big problem is us, and while I think the Gov is, to put it mildly, in way over his head, I kind of feel sorry for him.

The people of California have used the initiative process to cut taxes, make it almost impossible to re-raise taxes, while passing all sorts of social programs, and expensive bond issues, all with no way to pay for them. We've even gone so far as to use the ballot box to dictate to the state government how to allocate funds. And let's not forget, we didn't like all those evil professional politicians, so we passed term limits to guarantee that our state will be run by amateurs, the worst of the lot, governor Action Hero himself. It's time to put the gov out of his misery. The amateurs in the Sacramento legislature should impeach the amateur in the governor's mansion.