Chino Champion from Chino, California • Page 14

Saturday, July 31, 1999 B-4 Champion Commentary Opinion Thinking People read the Champion An innovative approach Al McCombs Rolltop Roundup A taste of Alpine heaven violations the city has faced over the years as its premier apartments deteriorated. At the same time, the city needs to encourage higher class apartments for people who seek this type of living. To encourage owners and managers to keep up the standards of their apartment units, the Chino Police has established a program called Crime Free Multihousing. Somerset Apartments on Ramona Ave. was the first to win this designation this spring.

To earn it, management attended a course which taught tenant screening, crime prevention and how to provide a safe environment. Tenants are provided safety features, requested to sign no-crime pledges, and encouraged to team up to maintain a peaceful, law-abiding atmosphere. The city and police department are commended for inaugurating such a positive and innovative program. All multi-housing owners should get on the One of Chino's aging problems has been the deterioration of its apartment housing. Because voters put a lid on multi-residential zoning, there have been no new apartment units built in recent years except for senior citizens.

Premier apartment complexes in some cases have sunken to almost slum-like conditions as ownerships have changed. Restrictions on new apartment building came about in 1988 when the city council and citizens felt that low income apartment housing was getting out of hand. Statistics pointed to some apartment areas as creating the most police problems, far out of proportion to the average city residence. It remains so today. It is a paradox that city policy on industrial development has resulted in the creation of more jobs that require low income housing.

The problem is to maintain an adequate stock of such housing the police problems and code Our 2 Cents Heaven is where you find it, and Monday we found it in the clear air, green forests and sparkling blue lakes in Alpine County. You, a true Southern Californian, ask what and where is Alpine County? It happens to be one of California's 58, a unique governmental entity saddling the Sierra Nevadas south of Lake Tahoe. It's almost the geographic size of Orange County, boasting a year round population of about less than a thousand plus about 500 part timers. The county seat of Markleeville has a two-block long "business district" lining state Highway 89. Unincorporated Markleeville, population 165, sits on the East Fork of the Carson River, which flows into nearby Nevada.

For fishing, skiing, camping and isolated mountain living, Alpine County is the state's best kept secret. It was carved out of five adjacent counties in 1864, and actually makes no sense at all. Not only the smallest in population in the state, its west side is totally isolated from the east side in winter. The main connector, narrow Ebbetts Pass road, rising to over 8,000 feet, is closed by snow for five or six months. Bear Valley, a resort popular with Bay Area skiers, is an hour and ten minutes west of Markleeville, a mile from the Calavaras County line.

In summer it hosts music festivals, ranging from rock to classic. Markleeville is closer to' Minden and Gardner-ville, Nevada, where its high school students go- You can go north over Highway 89 to the Tahoe Basin via Luther Pass or northwest on Highway 88 over Carson Pass to Jackson on the 49er. Highway 89 goes southeast over Monitor Pass, to Highway 395. All these passes, over 7,700 feet high, are closed in the winter. Coming to Markleeville out of Nevada, our first stop was the county Chamber of Commerce, housed in a two-story barn-red building.

We learned that the town was named for Jacob Marklee, its founder in 1861, who was killed in a gunfight three years later. The 1928 stone courthouse was built on the site of the original Marklee cabin. It being Monday afternoon, we sat in on the weekly county court session, after a brief lunch stop at the rustic J. Marklee Toll Station (food and lodging). Where Chino court deals predominantly in traffic violations, the Markleeville court is filled with fish and game violators.

The penalty is stiff not having a valid fishing license displayed on one's person $675 for being unlicensed, $135 for leaving it at home. A UCLA-bound graduate student, trying the Carson River for the first time, had to pony up $236 for using a barbed hook below Hangman's Bridge south of town, a catch-and-release haven for trophy sized fish. Judge Harold Bradford, a grandfather looking jurist, was sympathetic with the student's plea that he didn't see the sign at the bridge, but admonished him that "the What will they change next? So now we're informed, after the expenditure of millions, maybe billions, of dollars in the name of good health, that the authorities have been wrong about the addition of MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) to our gasoline. Now the federal Environmental Protection Agency is saying that possible benefits to clean air may be offset by the health risk caused by MTBE leaking into the water supply. Congress has been asked to ease the law, and will probably need to approve funds to clean up the contamination to the water supplies.

Gov. Gray Davis has already ordered a phaseout in California by 2002. This may not be soon enough, now that MTBE is linked with cancer. In any event, cost, of dropping the additive will be passed on to the motoring public, as was its addition in 1992. The environmental jumpy politicians and bureaucrats and tunnel-vision environmentalists have got us coming and going.

Another old timer hits dust The 105-year-old Hemet News is being another victim of a trend enveloping Southern California weeklies. For the past several years the veteran community newspaper has been owned by Donrey Media, whose -Inland Valley empire, including the Daily Bulletin in Ontario, was swallowed up by William Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group earlier this year. The Hemet and Moreno Valley papers have been acquired by the Riverside Press-Enterprise because they didn't fit the Singleton pattern. The Press-Enterprise will make the News a daily section of its own newspaper and keep the 45-year-old Moreno Valley paper (founded as the Butterfield Express) as a separate newspaper. The Press-Enterprise recently entered an agreement with the Champion to run its employment classifieds and some display advertising in Chino Valley, but this did not involve any change of Markleeville's general store law is very strict in the matter." Those without ready cash were given 30 days to pay.

The district attorney, who prosecutes all the cases, also serves as county counsel, handling civil matters for the board of supervisors. "About everyone in the county has run for the board," we were told by one citizen. The winners usually only need 100 votes. A recent board meeting sounded like a Chino School board session, but in this case it was the county counsel (aka the district attorney) berating the county librarian for her "stubbornness" and persistent refusal to "take orders" and "direction" in developing an Internet policy for the county and the library. The monthly Alpine Enterprise scolded the board chairman for not being firmer, and the "personal, unaccountable and irresponsible fiefdoms, which pervade this county's government." Over in Bear Valley, which gets its news from the monthly Cub Reporter, the invasion of bears leading to the killing of four was the hot Hopic.

The bears had been foraging for food in the village, scaring residents, and in one case ripping open a car. The featured letter to the editor decried the destruction of the animals for which the valley was named, and blamed nonresident owners and visitors for not taking precautions with their food. If the bears bother them, they should pack their bags and leave, because "we don't want you here," the writer said. Sheriff Skip Veatch described the task of controlling the huge crowd at the High Sierra Bear Music Festival. He got help from neighboring counties in anticipation of drug problems, and ended up arresting 18 for felony violations.

"We could have arrested literally hundreds of people more," he wrote. Trouble was, he has no jail. Prisoners have to be taken over to the El Dorado County. As far as the festival promoter were concerned, it was an outstanding event and there were no violence or medical problems. The traditional Bear Valley music festival starting today through Aug.

15 should have a tamer following. It features classical and opera. Public Forum views from our readers The role of an 'obscure' district While the Chino Basin Water Conservation District (July 24 Here and There) may be obscure, that does not mean that the work we are doing is unimportant. The district has the responsibility to conserve water for Chino Valley. One way is to capture storm water and recharge it into the ground basin.

Storm runoff is the best source of high quality, inexpensive water. The Chino Basin Watermaster, which administers the Chino Basin groundwater judgment, has identified artificial groundwater recharge as one of the most important needs of the Chino Basin. The conservation district operates four large recharge basins in Montclair near the 10 freeway. It operates the Brooks Basin, just north of Chino in South Montclair, and the three Ely Basins in Ontario, just north of the Whispering Lakes golf course. We are working with the flood control district to automate the outlet gates at the new Grove Avenue Basin at Riverside Drive and Grove so that we can maximize water conservation.

The District is also looking to reactivate the Turner basins along Archibald Avenue, north of the 10 freeway, and is in discussions to RVs important to family life acquire two other basins for the Upland and Rancho Cucamonga areas. The District built and operates a one and half acre drought tolerant demonstration garden, located at the District office, at 4594 San Bernardino Ave. in Montclair, open to the public seven days a week. It hosts an Earth Day learning event every April, where 1,200 fifth graders experience a variety of water conservation and environmental stewardship activities. The board has seven members, representing different parts of the Chino Valley.

It meets once a month. Directors receive $100 per meeting for their service. Board meetings average about three hours each month and are open to the public. Directors spend a significant amount of time preparing for meetings and staying informed on important issues concerning water conversation. As with most public officials who get a per meeting fee, time spent preparing and staying informed is not compensated, nor should it be.

The public receives a good return on its property tax investment in the Chino Basin Water Conservation District. Geoffrey Vanden Heuvel, District Director, Division 7 ed their budget and all of our family vacation memories would just be dreams. I don't condemn the RV ordinance, but implore those; in power to reconsider the restrictions by coming to a common with guidelines that will allow responsible owners to park RVs on their property. I have heard comments referring to this ordinance as a safety issue. I challenge a comparison with the fireworks ordinance concerning safety.

It would be. interesting to see the statistics of injuries caused by RVs being parked in driveways versus the injuries and property damage caused by fireworks, both legal and illegal. If safety is truly in the forefront of the RV ordinance, then safety needs to be in the forefront of fireworks too Brenda Rae Vallejo, Chino Some of my fondest childhood memories are of outings with my parents. When I was very young they took us on a trip to Wyoming in an Oldsmobile station wagon. It was a long haul since there were five children along with mom and dad traveling across this beautiful country in a station wagon.

This vacation experience opened the door to outside adventures our family grew to love. When my husband and I were married, we made it top priority to become owners of a home and a recreational vehicle. Although we had to sacrifice much, four years into our marriage we had met both of these goals. We appreciate the opportunity to park our RV in our driveway. If we must place it in storage, we will comply.

But, my heart goes out to those who will suffer a financial impact. I believe that if my parents would have been forced to comply with such an ordinance, it would have financially exhaust- Whose civil rights involved? been violated. This camera man is just as criminal as the reckless driver of that vehicle. If our "news media" nationwide would put more emphasis on more positive happenings and good deeds, maybe our nation would turn toward a better moral for our country. The man whom this article was written about needs to be locked up along with the man driving his car out of control from Oceanside to Lake Elsinore.

Our law enforcement personnel are putting their lives on the line to help make better communities for the common people. Who is getting away with the crime? The reckless driver, the interfering camera man, or both? Connie Hieb, Chino Letters to the Forum Priority will be given to letters which have not appeared in other publications first. Letters must be signed, and include address and telephone number for our reference. They are subject to editing for length. If typed, double spacing is preferred.

Send to: Letters to the Forum, Champion, PO Box 607, 1 I have worked for the state of California Criminal Justice System for over 12 years. I have heard stories that would curl your hair as the detailed and horrendous crimes com- 'mitted by "poor, innocent individuals who are so misunderstood and have their civil rights violated because they committed a crime by breaking the law. Whether they get treatment or not, almost seven out of 10 return to prison for committing another crime. They then sue the system because their civil rights were violated. Your article (on the photographer involved in the long chase, July 24) is just a tip of the iceberg that shows how our state criminal system works and thinks.

There's the civil rights of the man putting a lot of lives in danger by driving recklessly from Oceanside to Lake Elsinore, to the camera man's civil rights being violated because he was "interfering" with the law enforcement to get pictures of a criminal being "abused," then having the deputies take his camera and he was unable to meet his deadline for the sole purpose of being a celebrity and getting more money for his pocket Ijbelieve the community's civil rights have Champion Founded Nov. 11, 1887 Published every Saturday by Champion Newspapers division of Champion Publications of Chino Ine at 13179 Ninth St, Chino, CA 91710. If you don't receive your newspaper by 10 a.m please call our Circulation Dept. at (909) 628-5501 before 2 p.m., Saturday. Postmaster Send address changes to: Chafnphn P.O.

Box 607, Chino, CA 91708 Phone (909) 628-5501 News FAX (909) 590-1217 Advertising FAX (909)591-6296 ALLEN P. McCOMBS, Publisher and Editor LARRY STATTL General Manager NEWS DEPARTMENT oin Reyes, editor, Marianne Napoles, Patty McAlpin, Brenda Dunkie, and Natalie Morales, reporters. ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT DISPLAY Rick Powers, Linda Fenner, Valerie Ridout, secretary; Henry Medina, dispatch. CLASSIFIED Kim Nelson, sales. OFFICE Angela Clark, manager.

Colleen Taylor, legal scirculation; Rosella De-Cecco. accounts receivable; Doris Kipp, office receptionist. PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT Lynn Haws, manager, Jan Summers, Kristy McCray, assistants; Moises Ayala. custodian. MAILROOM Enna Gumcha.

Trim Dmoo. Action applauded I would like to commend the four Chino Hills city council members who responded magnificently to community concerns about the Catellus, Walnut Glen, golTcourse and high density residential development project. What ever merits the project had, it was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Last Tuesday Gwen Norton -Perry and Gary Larson joined Ed Graham and Michael Wick-man, responding to an overflow crowd at the city council meeting, by voting to support the voter power initiative and by sending the Catellus project EIR back to the drawing board. Local control of local government, real disclosure, an independent free press and four responsive council members minding the store have shown that in Chino Hills small and green can be both beautiful and possible.

Carol Dobrikin, Qhino Hills Chino CA 91708 or FAX to 590-1217. 4- 4-.