Letter: Ordinance forged neighborhood peace

I don’t know about you, but I am really tired of the fighting over off-road vehicle use. It’s time to get working on solutions.

I’ve lived in the Morongo Basin for 18 years. I love my community and enjoy the wide variety of folks who have also made this their home. Creating peace in a diverse neighborhood takes work. Ordinance 3973, the off-road vehicle ordinance, has been a successful attempt to promote such peace. ORV use had long been a source of terrible discord among desert neighbors, with no clear or effective framework for settling disputes. Over the last few years since the ordinance has taken effect I’ve seen peace and order restored to my neighborhood as law enforcement finally got the tools they needed to do their job.

Is everybody happy about everything? No. But a return to the bad old days before we had the ordinance is NOT an acceptable option. If there are problems with elements of the ordinance, then Supervisors Mitzelfelt and Derry need to show leadership and bring residents and riders back together in the stakeholder process to work the issues out. Responding to backroom pressure from special interests to simply gut the ordinance is a guarantee of more problems in the future and is no solution at all.

Let’s not step backward into lawlessness. Let’s build on the progress we’ve made, come together as equal adults and work toward a sensible solution in a coherent stakeholder process. Anything less is doomed to fail.

Christine Carraher
Wonder Valley

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Source: http://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2010/03/17/editorial/doc4ba081398d742100866402.txt

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