Back-Room Politics on Highway Project

I was gratified to see a recent article in which two Ventura County supervisors acknowledged that there was a government action (a privatization proposal for the Oxnard and Camarillo airports) in which the public should have been involved earlier.

Apparently county officials were accused of using back-room politics by taking action without notifying the appropriate city officials or the public.

There is another important local issue that is also emitting the unpleasant odor of back-room politics. I am referring to the proposed Caltrans “improvements” to Highway 118 through Las Posas Valley and the many private negotiations and meetings that have apparently been taking place between a very small number of special interests (governmental and private) and Caltrans.

What were originally sold to the unsuspecting residents of Somis and Las Posas Valley as “safety” improvements have long since been converted into a blatant back-door attempt to start four-laning Highway 118 in a decidedly unsafe way that would never survive public scrutiny were the public ever allowed to scrutinize it!

I believe that interests that want to throw open Las Posas Valley to land speculators and developers (apparently not minding that they will be destroying its rich agricultural base) have wrapped themselves in the flag of “safety” while in fact setting forth quite another agenda, which is to make Highway 118 a regional superhighway.

I believe the residents of Las Posas Valley want a safe two-lane highway, not a four-lane, inherently more dangerous superhighway. All it needs for improved safety is a few stoplights at the most dangerous intersections and a couple of dangerous S-curves to be straightened out.

The proposed four-laning near Mesa Elementary School and bizarrely designed, vastly over-scaled multilane intersection that is about to be foisted upon the tiny community of Somis are the handiwork of a very few people who either don’t have the best interests of the residents at heart or who haven’t bothered to ask the people what they want for their highway and their valley.

I urge our elected representatives and Caltrans to take this disaster-in-the-making out of the back room and into the light of day before it’s too late.

PATRICIA FEINER ARKIN

Somis