City Seeks Land to Build Footbridge
Arranging the purchase of a few small pieces of riverfront property is the last step that Moorpark city officials must take before a footbridge can be built over the Arroyo Simi near where an 11-year-old boy drowned last month.
The Moorpark City Council is scheduled at a meeting Wednesday to consider the purchase of three pieces of land, totaling 33,809 square feet, near the south end of Liberty Bell Road.
The land is owned by Southern California Edison, and city officials have been negotiating with the company for several weeks on terms of the acquisition, said Councilman Bernardo Perez.
Perez talked informally to several Edison officials Monday, but said he would not know until the City Council meeting Wednesday whether the deal will go through.
The city and Edison still have to agree on a price for the parcels, Perez said.
Moorpark sixth-grader Joel Burchfield was swept into the rain-swollen arroyo Feb. 1 while taking a shortcut home from school. After the boy’s death, more than 1,300 high school and middle school students signed a petition asking that the City Council build the bridge, which has been planned since the mid-1980s.
The City Council pledged to begin construction within a couple of weeks and targeted the bridge for completion by the next rainy season.
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