The following is a community report shared with the Civic Bee from the Briggs Road homeowners group in Agua Dulce:
The Santa Clara River is one obstacle Briggs Road homeowners face in regaining access to their homes
Mr. Hickling presented a plan to the 20 or so homeowners present that was going to reconnect them to Soledad Canyon Road after ten years of no legal way to get to their homes. The proposal was to give access across the Los Angeles County Metrolink rail line, a rail line that had been used as a blocking force for years to prevent the homeowners access to there homes.
L.A Co. proposes to move the easement the homeowners won in a very hard fought court battle seven years ago to a new location 200 hundred yards east of where it exists today. L.A. Co. proposes to install some type of crossing for the stream that must be crossed before the black top of Soledad Canyon is reached. Norm said there was to be an escrow account set up and funded by rental income from filming that was to be done at Oasis Park, the property that our easement is on. Norm said there was going to be a meeting in 45 days from the 10th of February to give more details of the plan and notify us on how progress was doing.
All of this news was received with great joy and some skepticism and a hope this will be an end to a living hell for all of the Briggs Road homeowners. Everyone that reported their feelings wanted to thank Norm Hickling for all of the time and hard work he had put in to bringing this about. Everyone also was asking why had it taken so long to bring this news. Everyone also wanted to know why the L.A Co. MTA was just now finding the rail line a recognized crossing when the residents on Briggs Road have known all along the truth about the rail crossing.
Permits for the rail crossing have been well known to the Briggs Road residents for years even before the rail line was closed to them. What was a mystery was why no one at the L.A. Co. MTA could find them before this, some of the residents had seen the permits before – so why so long? All of the people living on Briggs Road have deep concerns about dealing with the owners of the property they will have to deal with; they still remember the afternoon back in 2004 when on their way home from work a man standing in the center of their road with a shotgun said he would kill them if they tried to go home.
There is hope all can be worked out; there is hope that the homeowners can save their homes; there is hope this time they are not being lied to one more time; there is hope the people that have tried so to destroy the lives of the good people on Briggs Road will see how wrong they have been and do the right thing – let us pray.
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For more background information on the homeowners’ efforts behind saving Briggs Road, visit the group’s blog at savebriggsroad.blogspot.com.