When cats fall from a neighbor’s tree into your proverbial punch bowl, perhaps it’s time for a visit to city hall to see what might be done.
Emma Diones, a registered, yet retired nurse from La Palma, showed up at city hall for the City Council’s February meeting pleading for help with trees from her neighbor that have long overtaken her own yard.
Diones said she and her husband Sal purchased their tri-level La Palma home in 1979 and was appearing at the Council this month because her neighbors’ 11 huge cypress trees have overtaken their yard.
“There’s not a single day that I don’t go out and clean my backyard,” bemoaned Diones.
“I’ve got papers that I sent to the owner to cut or remove the trees, but the letters seem to always come back,” she said.
“I love La Palma,” she said. “Who wouldn’t?”
“We’ve been here for 46 years now,” she sighed.
“There was one time when I was having a party in my backyard,” said Diones, “and there were squirrels all over the place, and there’s a cat that fell right on top of our party,” she said.
“Things like this happen in my backyard,” she pleaded.
“I asked several people, including our neighbors,” she said, “and they have the same issue, especially with the last wind that we had. It is truly giving me some nightmares, because it’s once the tree that tree sparks my house will go, and also my other neighbors,” Diones told the Council.
She said nobody has lived in that house for the past three or four decades, pleading with the Council for help.
Mayor Pro-tem Nitesh Patel, after speaking with the city attorney, said the matter was a civil issue between neighbors.
“Typically, this will be a simple matter between private property owners to deal with one another. There’s the potential that there could be some sort of nuisance involved,” said City Attorney Agit Thind.
“Usually this is the type of thing that, unfortunately, the city doesn’t really get involved in,” he added.
“Okay, I understand,” she said. “I truly understand, but I’m at the end of my rope,” she told the Council.
“When these items come to council, these are items that we really can’t govern,” Patel said, “because they’re disputes between two property owners.”
Patel suggested to Diones to hire an attorney or perhaps reach out to real estate agents who had ways to find out the actual owner of the property.
Another property owner, Joanne Studebaker, told the Council her home, which she had lived in since 1977, was now backed up to Walker Jr. High School baseball field.
It was fine, she said, until 12 years ago, when the Little League put up a backstop.
“They put it up one Sunday morning without telling anybody,” Studebaker said, “And so for all these years, we’ve been listening to baseball non-stop but now the boys have gone somewhere else.”
“For the last two years,” said Studebaker, “we’ve had girl’s softball, and it can be from five days a week to seven days a week.”
She said the girls come from Arnold Cypress Park “and I’m just asking for any kind of help I can get.”
“I’ve been here 52 years, but I’m ready to move,” Studebaker said.
The Council asked Studebaker to leave her information but doubted what they could do to help but clearly, this would be adjudicated under the authority of the school board, noted city manager Conal McNamara.
In other news, McNamara announced that Kimberly Kenney, longtime city clerk and former employee of the year, plans to retire.
“Before you this evening is a staff report and a request addressing basically the pending retirement of our one and only Kimberly Kenny, who has announced that she will be leaving us later this year,” the city manager said.
With nearly two decades of employment at the city, he said she was retiring after 17 or 18 years with the city, as well he announced the departure of Andy Ramirez, who was our Public Works Community Services Director.
McNamara said the city is busy restructuring staff to accommodate.
“We will be currently looking at integrating the Community Services function into the city manager’s office for the near term to make sure that we’re continuing to provide the level of service we need to provide food for parks, recreation, and community services to our residents,” he said.
“In terms of the City Clerk’s transition, we’re asking this evening is to create a deputy city clerk position and adjust the salary accordingly for both the deputy city clerk and the city clerk position. We’re looking to also have an overhire for the city clerk position, we’d like to recruit and hopefully bring somebody on board so that we can have Kimberly train them for a couple of months to make sure Kimberly can train them for a couple of months.”