Snow Bunny Brainstorms Continue: OpEd–Change or Be Changed…

Ideas from readers continue to pour in, suggesting ways to improve the Mountain Community’s ability to host visitors from surrounding urban areas while maintaining our peaceful rural habits. Here are OpEds and letters on the subject. They will continue next week. See related OpEd

By Joe Flores, Frazier Park

Ever since the television news stations started broadcasting how much snow we have and how easy it is to get here, we’ve been getting more visitors every year. So what are we going to do? Decisions need to be made before they are made for us by others who don’t even live here.

Others will agree that we should only let a certain number of snow visitors up on any given day, but I also think we must try to do what other mountain communities have done when facing the same problem.

Wrightwood and Big Bear both have a lot more paying visitors than we do and not because they have more snow. It is because they saw the opportunity to change their communities for the better. When ski resorts were proposed, they went for it. We had the ability to have what they have but wanted to remain unchanged [about 20 years ago].

Don’t get me wrong. I like the community as it is, but with Tejon Ranch [planning to] build two new developments, do we really think our little community is going to stay the same? Of course not. We need to adapt to survive, both economically and personally.

Just imagine for an instant: We build a ski resort on Mount Abel and a larger snow play area with a tube run on Mount Pinos.

Would our current unemployment rate be as bad as it is now? No, of course not. We would have good jobs for our future, with contractors building homes and businesses instead of watching a lot of businesses close—not to mention that the infrastructure would improve.

Roads would improve from two lanes to four lanes, and plow equipment would be brought in capable of handling the snow we get here. Blame the county if you like, but if we as a community had the income of other areas in this state, we could get a lot of other things we currently do not have.

We must give in to change.

Without change this community is doomed to deal with more visitors and more problems every year.

This is part of the February 12, 2010 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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