Rural Knolls’ Conflict With Simi

Re “Knolls, Simi Have a Natural Animosity,” Dec. 20.

If the Knolls and Simi Valley don’t get along, I believe the basic Knolls attitude of fighting anything the city tries to do has a lot to do with it.

Knolls residents are ready to police developers and landowners outside their boundaries but not their own residents.

Holly Huff’s and Dawn Kowalski’s statements that Simi Valley hates them are not true. I feel very sorry for them. Their standards are so much lower. For example, the photo of Mike Williams’ rental cottage displays minimal building code standards--small doors and exposed permanent wiring.

As for the proposal to “continue a county road through the Knolls and connect it to a proposed housing tract,” that was for an emergency road only, not an exit road for Parker Ranch vehicles, and was even to have a locked gate to be opened only by police or fire departments. That issue has been resolved by Parker taking on the financial responsibility of building a 24-foot road through Brandeis property for evacuation purposes.

What was rather comical at the meeting announcing this Brandeis road settlement was that the Knolls people were taken by surprise at the resolution for evacuation of Parker, Brandeis and Knolls residents in an emergency. I watched the wheels turning to see what argument they would have against this proposal, because they always seem to have an argument against anything, and the only thing they could think of was that the asphalt road would be an eyesore through pristine property and should be dyed to match the color of the environment. True; I’m not joking.

As for Knolls residents’ love of trees, I personally know a Knolls resident who, a year ago, cut down two huge oaks because they were dropping leaves on his driveway and leaving a mess. Simi Valley city would have required a removal permit, and because he didn’t get one he would have had to replace the trees with a similar dollar-value tree--in this case approximately $8,000 each.

The most recent developer the Knolls has chosen to oppose is Parker Ranch, which is doing two things for Simi Valley that the Knolls is not willing to do: bringing much-needed affordable apartment housing into our valley and protecting the native oaks by building protectively around the trees and moving but not destroying others.

We welcomed and still thank any Knolls residents for their support of Simi Valley’s City Council making Corriganville movie ranch a public park and also saving that beautiful big rock. If the Knolls people could join in the protection of high-quality Simi Valley living, instead of fighting almost everything that Simi Valley does, maybe there wouldn’t be such a rocky relationship. We love the environment’s pleasures as much as they do--that’s why we moved here in the first place.

JUDY DWYER

Simi Valley