County to Vote on Granting of Easement for Bridge Construction

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors is set to vote Tuesday on whether to grant an easement to the city of Moorpark for construction of a pedestrian bridge over the Arroyo Simi, near where an 11-year-old drowned earlier this year.

Moorpark sixth-grader Joel Burchfield was swept into the rain-swollen arroyo Feb. 1 while taking a shortcut home from school near the end of Liberty Bell Road. After the boy’s death, more than 1,300 high school and middle school students signed a petition urging the council to build the bridge, which has been planned since the mid-1980s.

The county is expected to approve the easement over land owned by the county, but Moorpark officials still have to negotiate another easement with Southern California Edison before the bridge can be built, Mayor Paul Lawrason said.

“We’re not making real good progress on that and I’m real upset about it,” Lawrason said.

If the city cannot work out a deal with Edison, it may have to condemn the property to gain the necessary easement, Lawrason said.

The negotiations have stalled because the company will release the easement only in exchange for an easement of its own.

Southern California Edison owns another parcel at the far end of Arroyo Vista Community Park, and the company wants an easement for trucks to be able to travel across a city park to reach the land. The company also wanted an agreement that would allow it to get water to the site.