Letters to the editor, July 1, 2009

Code enforcement is a benefit to community

I’ve got to take serious issue with Carol Jensen’s utopian anti-code enforcement diatribe of June 15.

I can just imagine a Barstow without code enforcement; a town with former responsible, taxpaying residents fleeing to more respectable climes, and residents with less acceptable ethics and incomes infecting the area with junk car and trash-strewn properties.

If you want to see the results of lax code enforcement, never mind no enforcement, just take a look at the unincorporated areas around Barstow with the possible exception of Barstow Heights. In those unincorporated areas, properties that can be accurately described as “dumps” abound due to the lack of attention by both local Community Service Districts and San Bernardino County. In general those governmental entities with the most egregious violators are dominated by folks who put selling real estate before the rights of those who have worked hard to keep their properties in a condition that doesn’t degrade and indeed insult the property values of their neighbors.

In these areas as well, the sanctity of private property doesn’t mean much. I was recently apprised of a situation in which one resident of one of the aforementioned areas had to run off a number of residents of a local governmental facility that can’t normally put their categories of folks in respectable incorporated communities. This elderly resident had to either suffer their depredations, or run them off their fenced property with a shotgun, which fortunately accomplished the desired effect, with the trespassers enthusiastically jumping back over their fence after protesting that “We are just looking around, lady”.

In my area, dirt bikers and four-wheelers with a non-existent sense of common courtesy routinely show their contempt for the rule of law, personal property rights, and the sensibilities of their neighbors. I have personally observed and photographed riders speeding irresponsibly through my neighborhood, and across my own property with no concern for anyone’s rights.

The City of Barstow should count themselves fortunate in having a governmental body that pays attention to the concerns of responsible citizens. It’s unfortunate that those bodies outside of Barstow do not feel a similar urgency in protecting the property rights of residents and home-owners. The money that Barstow is spending for code enforcement is indeed a guarantor of revenues that would be unequivocally non-existent without it; revenues that home-owners are glad to subsidize in order to protect the values of their own hard-earned investments.

Robert Vasseur, Newberry Springs