Not NIMBYs As a 16-year-resident of the Knolls, I have never opposed any development in or around the area. I worked in the real estate industry for a decade and my husband owns a real estate business. For Gilbert Beezley to say we are anti-development or that we're just a naive bunch of overwrought NIMBYs is insulting. The problem is that the proposed apartment complex is a bad idea. The entire neighborhood is too small and the area's resources weren't designed to take on this volume of new residents. There is no way the builder would, should or could be conditioned to improve all the streets, sewers, emergency services, power lines and other issues in the Knolls to accommodate his apartments. Also, this project butts up to the Simi Valley city line and directly adversely affects the city's resources, surrounding city neighborhoods and the Knolls Elementary School down the street. The county's own guidelines contradict the introduction of this kind of project to the Knolls. The Knolls is not "quasirural," but rural by the county's definition of our area. To put an apartment complex of this size in the middle of our neighborhood would jam a 250-unit square peg into a rural round hole. Affordable housing is not the issue. Affordable housing can take the form of houses. The Knolls residents have no objection to meeting current zoning restrictions and building houses on the land. Our objection is simply the addition of up to 1,000 people in a pocket of land that cannot support the masses. Acceptance of these facts doesn't make me a NIMBY or LULU or any other patronizing acronym by which Mr. Beezley chooses to stereotype me. It just makes me smart. -- Jacqueline Finch, Simi Valley |