Masry attacked

Louis Masry’s Sept. 29 letter blaming the city council and planning commission for causing a 13-year delay in completing improvements to the Kanan Road interchange is misleading. Masry calculates the “delay” from the General Plan of 1992.

But a general plan is a longrange vision to be implemented over a decade. You can’t calculate delays from the first enunyou can say a couple’s “delay” in having a child dates from their engagement.

Over the years, the city pieced together funds from its own savings, a county grant of $13 million and now, we hope, federal funds.

Costs for the interchange have always been around $23 million. Masry’s assertion that the city would have saved $10 million by acting earlier, presumably by taking on massive debt, is irresponsible.

Masry seems not to understand that the 101 Freeway is not like a city street or that the planning commission has no role to play.

Caltrans’authority supercedes that of the city and any project over $1 million is subject to a level of review that makes five years for a major project seem reasonable. Caltrans twice interrupted the Kanan project with major design revisions.

It’s no small feat that the city has rolled with the punches and kept the project on track.

I also find it highly presumptuous that Masry, who lives in Moorpark, speaks of “our city leaders,” “our city leadership,” “our city,” and so on, as if he were a resident of Agoura Hills. Robert Evren Agoura Hills