My letter to the Mayor about the farm

by Guy Berliner Monday, Jun. 12, 2006 at 4:55 AM

The city of Los Angeles has a solemn legal and moral responsibility to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its residents. That responsibility demands the city's immediate intervention on behalf of the South Central Farm.

Dear Mr Mayor:
The city of Los Angeles has a solemn legal and moral responsibility to do everything in its power to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its residents. The city is not in compliance with its minimum legal obligations under state law to provide parks and other public recreational amenities to the residents of the district where the South Central Farm is located.

It does not require great imagination to see how this grave failure on the city's part can lead to immediate threats to public health, safety, and welfare. If a child in this poor, underserved community is struck by a car while playing in the street, because of a lack of such legally required public amenities, the city can be regarded as morally and legally responsible due to its negligence. It should be obvious that such threats to public safety will be greatly exacerbated by the immediate destruction of the largest community garden in the city, indeed the country, right in this neighborhood.

Offering residents a green space five miles away is not an adequate response for meeting the city's minimum legal obligations. A five, six, or seven year old child is not going to commute five miles away through the middle of the world's most frenetic traffic clogged city to find a place to play.

Therefore, I urge the City and Mayor's office to instruct its attorneys to seek an immediate temporary restraining order against the destruction of the South Central Farm, until such time as the city can facilitate the successful acquisition of the land from the private developer to which it negligently and improperly sold it. The city's sale of the land to this developer, under highly questionable circumstances, at far below market value, exacerbates the city's moral and legal responsibility for this fiasco, and its obligation to immediately intervene positively in this case.

Thank you in advance for reading this, and for your urgent attention to this vital matter.

Sincerlely,

etc