Duarte Enclave’s Planned Sentry Station Draws Fire

“Duarte . . . Our Kind of Town!,” reads the billboard on the westbound Foothill Freeway.

For Phil Reyes, it’s more than an advertisement; it’s a message of inclusion. The city, the councilman said, is supposed to be a place where everyone is welcome regardless of race, color, religion or wealth.

But that hoped-for harmony, according to Reyes and others, is undermined by a proposal to place a sentry station at the entrance to an old, upscale neighborhood of homes nestled in the foothills.

“This is divisive. They have the legal right to do it, but it is morally wrong,” Reyes said. “This opens up old wounds. We’ve worked hard to make this community inclusive, not exclusive.”

The Duarte Mesa Assn. wants a guard at a post on Mount Olive Drive to monitor--but not stop--those entering the neighborhood of 91 homes at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. Property owners in this near-to-nature tract, where homes costs more than twice Duarte’s median value of $174,000, would pay for it through a special levy.

“We’re not talking about gates here, just someone taking down license plates.” said Mayor Robert Davey, a longtime Duarte Mesa resident.

But opponents see something worse. “The City of Health,” as the town of 21,000 is nicknamed, is showing symptoms of civic malady, they say.

Indeed, whatever the intent of the sentry, say critics, many see it as an effort to keep out minorities from a mostly white neighborhood.

And that, they say, recalls the days in Duarte--days still vivid in some memories--when minorities attended one elementary school and whites another, and when Latinos could not buy homes in certain areas until the early 1960s.

“A message is being sent that again, you don’t want us to be part of our town,” said Julian Rodriguez, a local school principal, referring to the billboard campaign.

“We feel that if this action is taken and supported, you’ll open up some very, very deep wounds,” Rodriguez recently told the City Council, speaking on behalf of the local chapter of the national League of United Latin American Citizens.

But Mesa residents say the catalyst for the sentry was a spate of burglaries in the last year, compared to almost none in past years.

“So far, we’ve been lucky no one has been raped or murdered,” said Alan Vetter, a 23-year resident, who is spearheading the Duarte Mesa Assn. project.

While no security measure can guarantee safety, he said, the mesa residents want to do everything they can to protect themselves.

As such, residents insist they are not racist or elitist, just safety conscious.

Said Vetter, a research engineer: “If you come into our neighborhood, it’s a cross-section of Los Angeles.”

One in four who live in Duarte Mesa are minorities, by Vetter’s estimates. In the city, whites are less than half the population, according to U.S. Census figures.

Residents there would pay the costs of the sentry through a special tax that would need approval of two-thirds of the neighborhood’s property owners in an election. While the cost to each household is expected to reach $100 a month, dozens of residents already have signed a petition supporting the plan.

In addition to increasing security, Vetter said, the post also would serve as a warning station for forest fires such as the one in 1980, which burned more than 30 homes.

Some Mesa residents say they have little choice because the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which patrols Duarte, does not provide adequate service to the Mesa area.

But Capt. Neil Tyler of the Temple City station that serves Duarte said no one has complained about the department.

“We provide excellent service to the area,’ said Tyler, adding he was unaware of the sentry proposal.

Echoing Duarte officials, Tyler said the city is among the safest in the county, with serious crime in decline five years in a row.

The City Council, on a 3-1 vote, earlier this month approved the formation of a Community Facilities District that allows property owners to tax themselves. Reyes dissented and Councilman James Kirchner was absent.

Reyes said his efforts to challenge two of his colleagues’ votes because they live in the Mesa neighborhood was rejected by the city attorney on grounds that Mayor Davey and Councilwoman Margaret Finlay would benefit no more than other residents who live there.

While the council cannot legally stop Mesa residents from voting on the tax, Reyes said there is nothing to say the city has to allow a guard post. The association has paid the city $500 to examine the costs of the project and will have to pay $10,000 for an election.

Local tax activists oppose the plan because, they contend, it stretches state law.

Lino Paras said the group should not be allowed to install a guard booth on a public road unless it is willing to maintain the public roads beyond it. “They want to make private what is public,” he said.

In neighboring Bradbury, a similar tax pays for gates, security guards and other services at Bradbury Estates.

But the distinction, Paras said, is that that enclave’s interior roads are all private.

Gates or no gates, said 45-year Duarte resident Margaret Viramontes, people approaching any sentry post will assume its purpose is to stop entry.

“They want to be like those people in Bradbury,” she said, disdainfully. “Next, they’ll want to secede from the city.”

But Mesa residents dismiss such a notion.

“Everybody on the mesa is astonished with the opposition,” Mayor Davey said. “This will bring nothing but prestige to the whole city.”