QUALITY OF LIFE IN THE VALLEY : Richard Close, homeowner leader

“More traffic. Less parking. Resembles more of the East Coast rat race that a lot of us moved to the West Coast to avoid. East meets West.

“It just takes longer to get anywhere. The village atmosphere is gone. People were trying to avoid a lot of the problems that exist on the city side. They moved to the Valley and created the same types of problems. It’s similar to the people who moved from the East Coast to escape problems and ended up bringing the problems with them.

“Traffic on the Ventura Freeway used to be congested only one way, eastbound in the morning and westbound in the evening. It used to be gridlocked only three to four hours a day, now it has bad traffic 90% of the daylight hours.

“Some people will say it’s not as bad as New York. But that’s not the issue. The issue is, is it good or bad? The answer is, it’s bad.

“The Burbank Airport is another example of the urban nature. When I moved to Sherman Oaks, the Burbank Airport was a cute, satellite airport. Now it’s a major, urban, mini-LAX.

“There’s also another phenomenon. The Valley communities are becoming throughways. Ventura and Victory are mini-freeways. People who live in the outlying areas--Agoura, Calabasas--are traveling through the Valley.

“We need political leadership or it’s going to be business as usual. If we had had leadership, we wouldn’t have the large density that has created this problem.

“What kind of leadership? Public transportation, reduce the density of new construction and give living conditions a higher priority than campaign contributions from developers.

“Also, when school busing became a reality in L.A., I was unwilling to have my son sit on a bus for three hours a day. Busing was terminated and the students didn’t return to the public schools. Why? The quality of public school is nowhere near the quality of private schools.

“My age group was raised on the concept that only the snooty snobs go to private school because the quality of education was essentially the same. But it’s different here.”