A Chance to Correct the Conejo Grade

Dear Ventura County Supervisors:

Congratulations on acting swiftly and unanimously in hiring a temporary chief administrative officer to replace the interim chief administrative officer who took over when the permanent chief administrative officer bolted after four days on the job.

But, I urge you: Don’t let the momentum stop there. Your chance to attain true greatness is at hand, and not just by coming up with a measly $5 million to balance the county’s books. For just as FDR established huge public works projects to help the country out of the Great Depression, so, too, can Ventura County’s supervisors create jobs for thousands and a historic legacy for yourselves by undertaking a massive, lasting project for the public good.

Specifically, it is time to hire the engineers, buy the explosives, bully the naysayers and do whatever else must be done to get rid of the Conejo Grade.

This will be a bold, unforgettable stroke on your part. The grotesque, 70-story lump has been dividing neighbors and disrupting traffic on the 101 for more than 15 million years. It is more than ripe for a takedown, and you are just the folks to do it.

Yes, I know you might not be accustomed to thinking in such grand terms. Yes, I know it would cost billions and you don’t want to hit up the D.A. and the sheriff for a loan, no matter how low the interest. And, yes, some troublemaker is sure to file suit because the endangered Kvetch’s smogwort was seen poking up near the truck scales, or a long-faced toad was spotted in the fast lane.

Even so, The Grade--unsafe, unsightly and unnecessary--must go.

For starters, it separates us unnaturally into “east county” and “west county.” At a time when communities are ever more fragmented and gates are going up all around us, do we really want to be restricted by a humongous chunk of baked mud? If The Grade were as flat as Kansas and as straight as Al Gore, maybe we’d drive over to the Other Ventura County and say howdy from time to time.

On top of that, The Grade violates the most basic premises of feng shui--the Chinese art of creating harmonious spaces. Any reputable practitioner of feng shui will tell you that an obstruction in an east-west freeway separates yin from yang, turning dogs mean and causing spot outages in the beneficial energy known as chi.

I know this to be true. Because of The Grade, Thousand Oaks has a dangerous surplus of yin. To attain tranquillity, residents must rearrange their furniture as many as seven times a night, sometimes sleeping with their heads under the bed and their feet in a spice garden.

On the other hand, people in the west county must confront the problem of too much yang. They can find peace only by stationing an industrial-sized dishwasher in the living room (facing north) and running it on high beneath a crescent moon.

So many have suffered so needlessly because of The Grade! Clearly, it must go.

Besides, it’s ugly. No Planning Commission in even the neediest Ventura County city would allow the construction of something as ugly as the Conejo Grade, unless it were topped with a red tile roof.

If it were pretty, it wouldn’t have to go. I picture a mini-Matterhorn, thick with blue spruces and yodelers, plunked down right there in the middle of Ventura County.

But the Conejo Grade tends a lot more toward lizards than lederhosen. No tourists will ever ooh and aah at the bottom. No climbers will phone home after plodding all the way to the top. As a mountain, The Grade fails to make the grade.

Finally, it’s frightening.

I drive it with my jaws clenched, my shoulders raised up around my ears, my hands locked in a death grip on the steering wheel, my stomach hard as a very firm pillow. I know it’s not as steep as, say, the bunny slope at Big Bear, but novice skiers don’t have diesel trucks barreling down on them from behind as petrified old-timers ride their brakes in front.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking up all the reasons you can’t just remove the Conejo Grade. I’m sure you’re wondering where the dirt would go. But just open your eyes. Take a look at the sand-starved beaches. Take a look at the huge, vacant Auto Nation lot just up the freeway in Oxnard.

Sure, it seems daunting. But it’s just like politics: You do it one shovelful at a time.

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.