Wednesday, May 31, 2006

On the Road Again


Has anyone else noticed how many dilapidated motor homes are being stored, I mean parked, on the streets of Pomona? Most of them are so dented up that they make the avenues look poverty-ridden no matter how nicely the homes behind said motor homes might be. As a mother, they create worrisome blindspots whether we are driving or walking. And as my friend asked me the other day, "Whose living in them?" The owners of these battered barges appear to strategically move them around to avoid street cleaning and save themselves exorbidant storage fees. A friend of mine who lived south of Alvarado told me that one of her neighbors moved to a nearby city, but they left their motor home behind. When my friend was selling her house, she finally asked them if they could move the motor home from where it was regularly parked on the street alongside her corner home. Now it's down the street. That's progress, people.

Once at a town meeting, a City official told me that motor home parking was not a problem as long as the owners have a permit to park on the street. Kind of like a license to take a dump on Pomona. The City official went so far as to tell me it would be illegal for the City to outlaw motor home parking on public streets. I am confused why other cities then don't have rampant motor home parking on their streets, given how expensive legitimate storage is? I invited the City official to go to the City of Brea, where I had recently seen signs posted everywhere reading "no motor home parking on city streets." This is but one example I have seen where if the officials of Pomona would concentrate on the obvious, visible fixes (and not just "that's the way we've always done it 'round here, little lady"), we could really win this image war. I swear we could.

Okay, I am stepping back off my soap box and going to bed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very funny post. As you can see on my blog, we have the same problem in Salinas with abandoned vehicles. It's against city ordinance to store boats or motor homes in a residential area here, unless you have a concrete "landing pad" large enough to accommodate them. I do agree, they contribute to the poor image of a city. Salinas has a similar problem to Pomona with regard to gang problems, but finally new developments in its Oldtown District are changing things. Let's hope the same thing happens in Pomona. My wife is from Colton and graduated from Cal Poly Pomona, by the way. Nice blog.

me said...

Jay-

Thank you for being my very first blog poster. How did you happen upon the blog anyway? Don't get me wrong, there are actually lots of good things happening in POmona in terms of revitalization. You just can't always see it behind those recreational giants. I did once have chips and a glass of horchata in your fair city btw!