Readers Write
New curbs are a blight
Editor’s note: This letter was sent as an email to Riverside County supervisors V. Manuel Perez and Chuck Washington.
Dear editor:
Please stop the Idyllwild paving curb installation project now and fix the enormous berms installed.
The long-awaited paving project is well into the last phase with installing what were supposed to be curbs. Instead, we have essentially seen unwanted and unnecessary pointed retaining walls in front of our home, and many others in town creating a visual blight ruining our rustic atmosphere, creating a county traffic and pedestrian safety liability, reducing parking, and being a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollar/resources.
At our driveway, the tie-in to our existing paved driveway is so sloppy that the thin overlay installed over existing asphalt will continually chip away in the coming freeze/thaw cycle making a mess and being totally unneeded in the first place when there was a clean edge to simply butt up against.
Berms are a whopping 8 inches all around town. From my determination it has been the same everywhere: 8 inches with a pointed top and 2 inches at driveway approaches. 8 inches may have been needed at a few locations but is complete overkill elsewhere.
The pointed design has already lent itself to looking terrible (a worker boot print is smashing the point down right in front of my gate) and serves no purpose but to be a finish continually getting chipped at and look worse year after year, dislodging bits of asphalt to litter the road and parkway.
Moreover, this uneven top of berm detail will ultimately be a trip hazard to those using it and is already forcing pedestrians to walk in the roadway, narrowed because of the width of this unnecessary berm, creating another pedestrian hazard.
I spoke with the supervisor at our local county roads yard who said the contractor will backfill behind the berm. If this is done, it will bury my fence and create erosion that has never been an issue before.
The berms detract from the rural nature and appearance of mine and many other homes. The “rural mountain community” look is gone, reducing aesthetic and property value, and you can no longer park on the street/parkway in front of our home without losing an oil pan because the pointed berm is so high and precarious.
Delivery trucks that used to be able to pull off onto the parkway will now have to remain fully in the travel lane, endangering vehicle traffic that will now have to cross over the newly installed double yellow lines.
Lastly, one must wonder how much in wasted resources was expended installing berms multiple times larger than what was needed to effectively do the job. The berms are at least twice, if not three or four times the amount of asphalt needed to effectively install long-lasting, effective curbing. The excess in asphalt tar, sand and gravel, and all the extra trucking to get it to Idyllwild is a waste of public funds and certainly can’t be in line with any GHG emissions goals the county must take pride in.
A rolled curb, many times smaller, would have effectively done the job — presumably water course direction — in front of my home, and so many others. As a retired, 34-year public works maintenance professional, I take particular issue with the tone-deafness of this project and suspect the design was done in a cubicle in Riverside with no oversight, as any proficient engineering designer would have never called out a one-size-fits all remedy had they spent any time on the actual jobsite.
It’s not too late to undo this wrong and keep others from being saddled with this incompetent berm installation by stopping today and fixing what has already been done before it is irreparable.
Bryan Forward
Fern Valley
Please help get charges filed
Dear editor:
While I have touched on this situation prior, this has a bit more detail and is more directed at District Attorney Michael A. Hestrin, seeing as he’s definitely trying to negate his obligations by asking for something that would be impossible to produce from the sheriff.
I was on the phone with my wife, being out of town that night on business, and the doorbell rang. I cautioned her to look from above to see who it was, but she recognized the man through the stained glass door and greeted him with a degree of horror.
It was our 82-year-old neighbor and dear friend. Blood was running down his forehead, nose and face. He was obviously disheveled and had been badly beaten. Being that I was on the phone, I patched in sheriff dispatch and they took the report. I then instructed my friend to have his wife bring him to the fire station to check out the extent of his injuries.
Luckily, nothing was broken and yes, being the tough resilient man he is, he has physically recovered, but the mental scar of being brutally attacked when simply trying to help out a young lady in distress will be with him for some time.
He and his wife were driving home and only a few doors from their house when a woman driving a pickup truck flagged him down in obvious distress. His window did not work immediately so he opened the door to see what was wrong.
She said help me, call the police. The next thing my friend knew, his face was smashed into the steering wheel, he was getting punched in the back of the head and then he was punched mercilessly in the face and neck, while his poor wife helplessly looked on in terror, pleading with him to close the door to the car, which he finally was able to do.
To say this incident affected me directly is an understatement. It happened around the corner from my home and could’ve just as easily been my wife, hence the season I dug in.
Being limited on words, I won’t go into all the details of what I did over the next five days, which including pounding the pavement, speaking to people and checking video on the street.
Finally, a lead paid off. A couple who had come up from West Hemet for one night to stay at a small Airbnb, just down the street from us, was having a domestic dispute. I checked with the manager and, sure enough, she confirmed the dispute, and her husband also was able to confirm the screenshot I sent them from the video as the actual pickup truck of their guests.
My wife did some of her usual background skip tracing from our old landlord days, which turned up full names and address needed for the sheriff to not only locate the felon, but get a full confession out of the wife.
I will simply say this: Here is the district attorney‘s phone number, 951-955-5400, and incident #D230170066 for this case. I implore anyone who has a few minutes to call and ask why he has not filed the felony elder abuse charges against this criminal, who also beat up two more older folk later that month.
He is asking for a lineup, knowing it was dark and my neighbor’s face was smashed into the steering wheel, and he saw nothing other than the blood in his eyes during the beating. Let’s hold this district attorney accountable.
I appreciate anyone who takes the time to call.
Joel Feingold
Idyllwild
