Article Contributed on: 12/10/2006 8:10:17 AM
Last week,
WestWord magazine printed a story featuring Rita Bertolli and her opposition to the exchange of land in Rooney Valley entitled, "Trading Spaces". This story is as much fiction as "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".
Ms. Bertolli specializes in propogating her version of the truth. I would like to address her distortions with proveable facts:
1. Bertolli claims citizens were not informed of the planning process for Rooney Valley 10 years ago.
The Rooney Valley Task Force held three forums in 1994 to get input from property owners and the public on their views for development in the valley. This information was used to draft a plan and public hearings were
again held to get more public input, afterwhich, in 1998, the Rooney Valley Master Plan was adopted by the city of Lakewood.
Naturally, Miss Bertolli wasn't aware of the process to exchange land 10 years ago, as she was 15 at the time.
2. Bertolli claims the land exchange will only benefit the residents to the east of the Carma development. The home owners are only looking out for their own best interests,and we are selfish.
Yes, the land exchange benefits the residents nearest to the exchange, but it benefits all of Lakewood as well, providing
USEABLE recreational/wildlife space. Curious how she paints adjacent Rooney Valley homeowners as selfish when she fought for open space next to her parents home last year, as highlighted in another article in Westword. I'm pretty sure her family home's value has maintained or increased being adjacent to currently undeveloped open space.
2. Bertolli maintains that Forsberg Park is a "pristine" park used by hundreds if not thousands of people, including children playing there daily.
That is a gross over-exaggeration. This park land is best characterized as a parking lot, junk dump and dog park. No reasonable person would allow a child to play there. As for the dog park, that will remain and be improved upon to house Lakewood's first fenced, off leash dog park.
Although I am not quite sure what Bertolli considers
pristine, I strongly urge Lakewood citizens to come to the park in question to get their own impression.
4. Bertolli claims Lakewood is dishonoring Mr. Olle Forsberg's wishes in trading his park away.
Mr. Forsberg's gift of a park is not being traded
AWAY. It is being
EXCHANGED for useable space. A question of semantics? No. Mr. Forsberg's gift of a park is still in existence. And, at that, only 21.6 acres of the park is being traded. The rest of the roughly 140 acres of Forsberg/Iron Springs Park is maintained.
The 1974 ordinance documents regarding Lakewood's acceptance of the land donations by the Forsberg and Burns families each included the following statement: "It is provided in said Deed that the same is given and accepted subject to the conditions that the premises shall be used for park and other
municipal purposes. " Meaning when the city accepted Mr. Forsberg's gift, the city had the right to do with it as the city saw fit in the best interests of the citizens.
It is hard to fathom that the land exchange is dishonoring Mr. Forsberg's wishes by "giving it away to a developer", as Bertolli would have you believe. Since Mr. Forsberg was himself a realtor/developer, I'm not sure her logic is sound.
5. Bertolli funded petitioners to get the 4000 signatures needed to force the $240,000 special election.
Most of those signatures were gained under false pretenses, with paid petitioners telling citizens they were signing to
STOP DEVELOPMENT in Rooney Valley. Find someone who signed the petition circulated in August. Ask them if they knew what they were signing. Some actually got the right story, but many did not.
6. Bertolli claims the park land is more valuable than the proposed corridor.
According to a 34+ page assessment conducted by real estate analyst Bonnie Roerig and Assoc., the land deal is fair and equal. Bertolli's own paid appraiser admits to never looking at the site when he came to his opposing conclusion. In this circumstance, Bertolli has attempted to discredit Roerig and Assoc. at a City Council meeting by saying this company was not independent.
7. Bertolli characterizes the proposed open space corridor as nothing more than a "worthless ditch", and is not meant to be a wild life corridor.
It is true that Coyote Gulch, a natural ravine, traverses the corridor, but relative to the corridor's total area, the space occupied by the ravine is about 14% according to a recent topographical study.
Wildlife use ravines in migration for protection as much as direction. Whether the open space corridor is meant to be a wildlife corridor or not, the fact is wildlife use the corridor.
The television show "Trading Spaces", whose title WestWord cleverly borrowed for it's story, is about neighbors working together, exchanging property, and improving upon it. In the debate over trading spaces of Rooney Valley, the facts support the exchange of this acreage as a definite improvement. Now, if only we could work together.