Letters

Have Our Gangbangers

So Judy from the Big Kitchen bemoans the loss of the gangbangers in South Park (“North Park vs. South Park,” Cover Story, July 22). Well, you can have ours here in North Park. That’s why no matter how hard people try to fix up the area, new paint, etc., it gets ruined by the gangs on the other side of 805. They have no care for people’s personal property. We were walking along University a week ago, and every store had all its windows etched. Graffiti was painted on the walls after the nice new paint jobs people labored over and spent their hard-earned money paying for. It’s like a dog piss-marking its spot. It is a major hub for bus transportation, and trash is thrown everywhere. Ahh, you gotta love the culture influence, though.

Todd Gilbert
North Park

Looks Like A Conflict

I’m looking at the July 22 cover of the Reader, “North Park vs. South Park.” And I have to say that it should have said “South Park vs. North Park” because the gentleman on the cover closest to the word “North Park” is on the south side of the street. So it looks like a conflict, if anyone knows the area. It’s an illusion. It’s not true. And they’re looking dead west, so how can the north be on the south side of the yellow line?

Lorraine Delrose
via voice mail

Could Give A Rat’s Tail

Re “Tale of Two Corners,” July 22 (“Stringers”). Departing from the idea that areas don’t make a “ghetto,” but people do. It is the behavior and attitude of the residents, business property owners, and business operators from within the area that creates a ghetto. So Mr. Sandoval knows what type of community he has helped to create at the corner of Euclid and Dwight, where his business is located, and such recognition is an improvement. But if everyone pulls together to maintain a community that’s cohesive, healthy, clean, and out from looking like a ghetto, we have an emerging community in which well-managed businesses will thrive.

In response to this article, I will say the following: on a personal basis, I could give a rat’s tail to what Mr. Sandoval does with his business, and I am not personally determined to close his operations.

But as president of the Fox Canyon Neighborhood Association, I must do as my neighbors require me to do on their behalf to maintain and improve the neighborhood. About two decades ago, Barrio Logan had the biggest fight in history among its own people while closing the yonquerias (junkyards) from the midst of their residential neighborhood. Vivid are the arguments raised, the mudslinging, how ugly the debate was, and all the nastiness that went around. But in the end, the community leaders and neighbors prevailed, and the junkyards are no more in Barrio Logan. Leo’s situation parallels the analogy.

The issue here is that it is not good for the health and well-being of children, the elderly, the disabled, and the entire population of an area to live right next door and back-to-back to industrial uses. The blight produced by these types of businesses will not be cured by simply erecting a fence for screening. It is the quality of the air, the smell of chemicals and spray paint, the dust; the noise, the banging of metal parts, the machinery, the loud talk and music; the storage of contaminants, car fluids, and motor oil; the storage of old/used tires and automobile parts and junk cars; the hours of operation; the graffiti, the lack of property maintenance, the lack of care; and also the removal of a street tree at the bus stop and the disregard for the host community that makes the operation of Leo’s a blight and a detriment to our community and environment, and it creates a ghetto.

In addition, Leo’s junkyard has outgrown its business location. Many are the complaints about no available customer parking and cars being worked on on the street, requiring the storage of overflow cars on the public right-of-way. This situation results in blocked driveways and hot tempers. Frequent, ugly, and dangerous near misses are the norm as a result of delivery trucks and tow trucks that park near the stop sign, blocking visibility or backing up from Leo’s lot. Such a tight traffic situation makes it very dangerous to make turns onto Dwight. These obstacles suddenly stop traffic and interfere with visibility, creating havoc and endangering flesh and property at this busy corner.

The actors at play here are a totally dislocated and irresponsible property owner and a business operator that for the last five years have been forewarned of the adverse conditions created at this corner by a poorly managed business. Many letters to Mr. Sandoval were sent by the previous property manager with the end result that his business and this corner continue to go downhill, pulling with it the community.

The community definitely wants to see a change of business use for this corner, the process by which this can be achieved has not reached consensus yet.

During the last three years, the “Fox Canyon Voice Newsletter” has circulated with a list of complaints and articles about Mr. Sandoval’s business. Responding to one such complaint, Leo’s secretary attended the association’s meeting of December 2009. The April and May issues contained some short examples of what the neighbors’ issues are.

Jose Lopez
President
Fox Canyon Neighborhood Association

Little Balance

How much more one-sided can you get? In your “Under the Radar” column in the July 15 issue it is about as one-sided as you can get.

Are we to believe that not one single Republican official received anything from a PAC? There are not any Republicans listed with what they received.

Put a little balance into what you print.

Jay Gedanken
Rancho Bernardo

Pope Type

Not one person sent in the typo on page 78 of the July 15 issue (“The Lord”)? Or has Josef Ratzinger actually been Pope twice?

Dominus Vobiscum
via email

The piece identified Josef Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XIV. He is Pope Benedict XVI. — Editor

Debt Queen?

Paul Richard’s letter (July 8) is full of rhetoric but completely devoid of any facts. This is not surprising because he really doesn’t have any evidence to back up his claim that Congresswoman Susan Davis is a so-called debt queen.

The reality is that when President Bush and the Republicans were doubling our national debt, mostly with tax cuts for the rich, Davis was fighting them all the way. She opposed the Bush economic policies that squandered a budget surplus in 2001 and brought our economy on the verge of another Great Depression.

Davis has championed pay-as-you-go spending rules for Congress and supported creating the current debt commission to find ways of reducing our national debt. It is quite a stretch for Mr. Richard to pin our current economic crisis on Davis.

John Taylor
via email