Santa Ana Breaks Promise on Barriers

* Does the City Council of Santa Ana know how to keep a promise? For thousands of Northwest residents, the answer is no! On June 19, the council voted 6 to 1 to convert temporary traffic barriers that were placed two years ago into permanent structures even though they promised originally to remove them when local Caltrans work was completed on the Main Street Bridge.

So what happened? The Santa Ana City Council instead chose to respond to the two-year lobbying effort of a vocal group called the Floral Park Neighborhood Assn. to justify betraying their word to the other surrounding neighborhoods.

The council chose to believe this group’s exaggerated claims about the effectiveness of these barriers to reduce traffic and crime. They also chose to ignore the recommendation of opponents that the barriers be removed and then let traffic experts, not amateurs, determine if a need still existed.

It’s hard to understand how an elected body can reward tactics that include the politics of exclusion. The council members who said their action was a way of supporting the neighborhood movement should realize that they created a new one called the neighborhood versus neighborhood movement.

TOM OSBORN

Santa Ana