Council Deadlocks on Locking Park Gate

Neighbors have been arguing about it for months. Now the Moorpark City Council has deadlocked on how to handle a gate that separates two neighboring communities.

Residents from the communities--Mountain Meadows and Home Acres--have been feuding for nearly a year over whether the gate should be locked at certain times or left open.

Residents on the Mountain Meadows side argued that the gate to the little park should be locked to keep vandals out and deter crime. Residents in Home Acres, just outside the city limits, said locking the gates essentially locked them out of their neighborhood when they are either walking or biking into town.

In a three-month trial, the City Council directed that the gate be locked at 9 every night and then reopened at 6 a.m.

There were few complaints about the hours, but city officials figured that it would cost roughly $7,000 a year to pay someone to lock and unlock the gate.

At a meeting Wednesday night, the council considered reverting to a previous schedule that closed the gates early and opened them later or just keeping the gates open all the time. The latter option would not cost the city anything.

Councilmen Bernardo Perez and John Wozniak supported removing the locks. But Councilman Pat Hunter and Mayor Paul Lawrason said that move was too bold.

Wozniak said that in the spirit of compromise, he would support locking the gate a little later every night and opening it a little later in the morning. But Hunter would not support that because he said it would cost too much money. In the end, the council deadlocked 2 to 2 on the compromise.

The council decided to continue locking the gate and revisit the issue in April after the March 26 special election to fill a vacant council seat. By then, a fifth member could break the deadlock.

“I can’t believe we couldn’t come up with a compromise to solve this problem,” Wozniak said. “We’ve already spent way too much time and too much money dealing with something that we really shouldn’t even be dealing with.”