Illegal Bike Trail’s Fate Up to Claremont : Government: The city built the trail in 1981 with county funds. If it’s removed--as neighbors want--the county will want a full refund.

While John and Eileen McDermott were out of town in 1981, the city paved an eight-foot-wide asphalt bike trail through their back yard.

The returning McDermotts were not pleased. Stunned, they saw bicyclists tooling along the public bike-and-jog trail, past oak trees and alongside a lemon grove on the McDermott’s four-acre expanse of land. “We even had one mother lifting her kid up to pick a lemon off our tree,” Eileen McDermott recalled.

The McDermotts complained to City Hall. The trail was closed. They filed a lawsuit to block its reopening. City officials put the matter on the back burner, hoping it would go away.

It wouldn’t. Now the City Council on Tuesday must consider whether to reopen the trail, abandon it or find some other way out of the mess.

The pressure is on, city officials say, because the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission has threatened to require them to refund $33,300 in bike trail funds, if the city gives up on the trail.

The trail on the McDermott property was constructed by city workers under the mistaken impression they could do so under an easement held by the county Flood Control District. It turned out, however, that the easement only applied to flood control measures. The path--part of a trail running along the Thompson Creek flood control channel--was intended to run from the foothills of Claremont through Pomona to connect with other trails at Bonelli Park and Cal Poly Pomona.

Only one segment of the envisioned master trail is open, however: a 1.8-mile segment north of Base Line Road. The one-mile section, which runs southwest from Base Line to Garey Avenue at Arlington Drive, is closed because it crosses the McDermott property. And the section through Pomona has never been built.

John McDermott, 58, an eye surgeon, said Claremont officials periodically raise the possibility of reopening the trail, despite the fact that neither he nor his neighbors along Thompson Creek want it.

“It’s been a little annoying. . . . Actually, it’s been a whole lot annoying,” he said.

The McDermotts and their neighbors said that bicyclists and joggers on a trail at the rear of their properties would intrude on their privacy and could open the area to crime.

City Engineer Mark Christoffels said the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission has advised the city that, unless the trail is opened, it may ask for the return of the money used to build it.

Diane Perrine, senior analyst for the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, said money allocated for bike trails must by law be spent on trails that are open to the public. In this case, she said, money has apparently been spent on a trail nobody can use. “It’s taxpayers’ money, and the taxpayers are not getting the benefit,” she said.

Mayor Nick Presecan said the Transportation Commission “has not put anything in writing” and may be willing to accept an alternative, such as reopening the trail when Pomona builds its segment, or after the McDermott property changes hands.

Presecan said the City Council on Tuesday will consider several alternatives, including abandoning the trail, rerouting it or reopening it. “The neighbors want it resolved. It’s my intention to have it resolved,” he said.

But the mayor, after meeting with the McDermotts and about 25 of their neighbors, said late last week that he had not made up his mind about what to do. “I’ve been vacillating back and forth,” he said. He and Councilman Bill McCready, who owns a bike shop, formed a subcommittee to examine the issue, but Presecan said they have not reached agreement, and he plans to simply submit a list of alternatives to the full council Tuesday.

The mayor said the city made two mistakes in building the trail in 1981. First, he said, the city neglected to obtain an easement over the McDermott property.

The second mistake, he said, was antagonizing the McDermotts.

“The city should have apologized for trespassing, removed the asphalt and asked to sit down and negotiate,” he said.

Instead, the McDermotts were forced to hire a lawyer, file a lawsuit and endure endless discussions over the trail.

Eileen McDermott said, “Now you have eight years of frustration, banging your head against the wall and trying to get some kind of answer. We’ve spent $9,000 on lawyers.”

All the couple want now, she said, is for the city to rip out the asphalt.

She said she rides a bicycle and considers the trail between Base Line and Garey of little value.

“If you bike, this is not a good path,” she said. “It’s not long enough, it doesn’t go far enough.”

The trail would become much longer, of course, if Pomona built its segment, but Pomona has not scheduled the project.

Douglas Bridges, head of the Pomona Parks and Recreation Department for eight years, said the bike trail is such a low priority that he was unaware of the existence of the plan until recently.

Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard said that, although the bike trail might not be a high priority in Pomona at the moment, it is part of a county system that will be completed eventually.

The trail on the McDermotts’ property, between Base Line and Garey Avenue, is on the west side of the Thompson Creek flood control channel. For it to remain, the city would have to acquire, by eminent domain proceedings if necessary, a 920-foot-long strip of property from the McDermotts. The city has estimated the cost of acquiring the land and building a security fence at $20,000, a figure the McDermotts said is too low.

Another alternative would be to route the trail along the east side of the channel. But residents there have protested this plan.

About 70 residents on both sides of Thompson Creek have signed petitions asking that the trail be routed away from the flood control channel and along city streets.

Southard said that putting the trail on public streets raises safety issues, adding that it is questionable whether the county Transportation Commission would accept that alternative.

The McDermott house sits on a mesa far above the trail path at the rear of the property. Eileen McDermott, 52, said she and her husband might not have fought so hard to keep the trail from being opened, but for two things. One was the city’s seeming disdain for private property rights. The other was something her father, an Irish immigrant, brought up: If the McDermotts, with their money and education, could not stop something like this, what chance would anyone else have?

She said she has told the city that, if it wants to acquire her property through eminent domain proceedings, “ ‘Go ahead, but it will not be easy.’

“I will not make it easy for them.”