Gates will divide Oak Park in two

I want to commend Sophia Fischer on her excellent writing for the community of Oak Park. Since she started writing articles on Oak Park, I feel she has been one of the best writers for our community. She has been very objective, but most importantly I think she always reports the true facts of the story.

Interpretation of an article will always be a subjective choice, but the facts are the facts. Since I have been on the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council for the past six years, I can easily see how facts can get quickly distorted. Our meeting regarding the proposed gates in Regency/Chambord have a few facts that need to be considered:

1.Ron Stark, who is a 30-year resident, community volunteer and past Oak Park MAC member, attended our meeting and said gates were never an option for an open community where walking anywhere is a free choice, including going to a park or hiking trail.

2. Pardee had asked the Oak Park MAC for gates before building the Regency/Chambord development and were told "no."

3.Capt. Flanagan, who oversees the Oak Park area for the Ventura County Sheriff's Department, sent a representative that evening, but all of us have been told by him personally and Sheriff Brooks that the crime we are seeing is cyclical and it is all over Ventura County. Since April, several arrests have been made and the vandalism we were experiencing has stopped. Other parts of Oak Park have experienced this type of crime in the past and nobody needed gates.

4. There were a few residents of Regency/Chambord who said they did not want gates. More of them were at the meeting than the ones who wanted gates.

6. Todd Haines has spent countless hours volunteering his time and achieving good things for all of us in Oak Park. He is entitled to have an opinion, too, and he doesn't want gates.

I can only speak for myself, but I believe the Oak Park MAC members make decisions based on what is good for every one of the 5,000 households in Oak Park and what is good for the community as a whole. There are always going to be individual situations that require special attention, but the gates is not one of them.

Mr. Iazzetta's recent letter to the editor fails to mention the other 4,700 households and how they might feel about one set of gates dividing our community into two. Maybe he should have sent the letter out to the whole community and see what all 16,000 residents think. Deena Parry Oak Park MAC