take back rowland heights.org

Who are we?

We are a community based group of people who want to make Rowland Heights a better place to live. We want to have more say in our community, the development and the ability to obtain more free open space.  We want infrastructure that accommodates our community, we want projects we were promised.  We want to have the ability to design where we live.  

The current support we receive from our County Supervisors is not helping our community.  Our leaders do not listen to us, they use us for a dumping ground for their pet projects. Our current leadership keeps us from using our county parks, is creating density without increasing the infrastructure, and they are collecting our property taxes for other communities.
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What do we need?

Our Community needs:

OPEN SPACE
The County is actively allowing developers to take open space and develop dense housing - to obtain State incentives for "affordable housing".  What is affordable housing? It is the going rate of our time. So if a home is built and sold for 1 million dollars today, it is considered "affordable".  It is not rent stabilizing or sold for a lower amount.  It is considered affordable in today's standard.
We voted for Proposition A many years ago, where taxpayers asked to be taxed so that the County could build parks and provide us open space. They did a comprehensive report and determined that Rowland Heights was considered to be an area that needed more parks.   
The County did several meetings in 2017 and asked us what we wanted.  Many different ideas were sought, however we have received NOTHING in response to the reports.  We are paying taxes pursuant to Prop A, but we received no benefit whatsoever.
In this study, parks per 1,000 people were calculated to develop a ’need’ basis.  This also included having access to parks in close proximity to where people live.  so 1/4 mile walk to a neighborhood park or 1/2 mile walk to a regional park as an example.  Health factors were also measured for an area.   You can see the results for Rowland Heights here:
https://lacountyparkneeds.org/FinalReportAppendixA/StudyArea_092.pdf
LESS DEVELOPMENT
Our Community is looking at a huge increase in development.  Over the last several years, the County has re-zoned all of the apartment properties into commercial/residential properties.  This means that at any time a developer wants to come in and buy the existing residential apartments, they can and build commercial/residential properties (three to six story apartment buildings (like the ones they are building in Brea and Fullerton) and not upgrade the infrastructure to accommodate those buildings.
Royal Vista Golf Course on the Eastern side of Rowland Heights is under development plans to build over 200 homes on both the north side and south side of Colima Road.  The anticipated increase of people that these houses bring will overload our roads with cars, more children in our overcrowded schools and put a drain on our resources (such as water). It will overload our streets (that have not been taken care of for years) and will not provide any reasonable open space for our community.
All so the County can receive State Incentives ($$$) for allowing these developments. These incentives are not passed on to our community.

Read below for links on what "Affordable Housing" is in the developer's world.

SERVICES
Our services for Trash have decreased but our rates continue to rise. The contracts for these services are determined by our County Supervisor.  However, our County Supervisors have election campaign costs and our current servicers are campaign donators.  We do not get better service, we get whomever donates the most money to our supervisor.  Our Contracts should be to the best deal, however that isn't happening.  The trash company refuses to pick up large items dumped here in Rowland Heights and we are in a constant battle to make our community look good.
LESS CRIME
Our Community has become crime laden and we are not safe.  Recent reports of robbery and assault have gone viral with people being attacked in our normal routines - going grocery shopping.  Home break-ins and home invasion are on the rise.  We have robberies of businesses where no one is held accountable.  Residents are being assaulted. Our county supervisors are only providing two cars in our community each day.  This is not enough.  Response time is not acceptable. We are not protected. We need at least 4 police patrol cars but the county has defunded the police patrol in our community.
MAINTENANCE OF ROADS/WIRES/STREET PAVING
Our community was promised a widening of Fullerton Road from Colima to the 60 freeway in 2016.  City of Industry started their part of the project from Rowland Street South to the 60 Freeway and it is known as the Fullerton Road Project.
Our County Supervisor, Janice Hahn, stopped the County portion of this project (from 60 freeway South to Colima Road) with no reason.  Her justification was that the county did not have the funds to purchase the houses on the West side of Fullerton and purchase the few business properties along the East side of Fullerton Road.  Further, the grants that they had received were no longer available.  We, as residents were told that they would save the 10 million dollars that was in the fund for this expansion project would be used to expedite the repair of residential area roads.   We have not seen any movement on this project.  Further, the funds when Supervisor Solis took over our community in her district in January were not transferred to her district.  So now we are left with no Fullerton Road widening, no street repairs and no funding.
We were also supposed to have funding provided for all the wires to be put underground and we don't have that funding either.


WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

Contacting our County Supervisor Hilda Solis has not been successful.  We have reported the issues related to the funds that Supervisor Janice Hahn designated for the maintenance for the roads and wires.  We informed the county of the funds that were promised for the widening of the Fullerton Road project.  We were told that those funds stayed with Supervisor Hahn's district. 

Letters and emails to Supervisor Solis' Field representative go unanswered. They apparently do not want to hear from us about these issues.

Email campaigns may work.  Email Supervisor Solis your concerns and let her know your vote counts and so do your tax dollars.  Tell her what your community needs.  See if you get a response!  If many do it, it may help.

Her email: firstdistrict@bos.lacounty.gov

Vote.  Your tax dollars matter.  It appears that the votes in our area matter.  You can make a difference if you vote.

large trash pickups

Athens is required to do 3 large item pick ups at each residence each year. You only have to call Athens or make an appointment online for Thursdays.  Some people do not call Athens when they dump stuff on the curb.  This causes unsightly neighborhoods and brings down the curb appeal of our homes and community.

The County contracts with Athens to do two Large Item Pick ups on Saturday.  Generally there is one on "Earth Day" week generally first week of April.  The second one is not always guaranteed.  Be sure to check your Athens bill to find out when these Large Item Pick ups are happening.

You can call Athens at (888) 336-6100 or schedule online at:

https://athensservices.com/bulky-item-pickup/

WHAT IS AFFORDABLE HOUSING?

This is a misleading term to gain support for new development.  Please read this article to explain how affordable housing is calculated for developers. 

https://medium.com/@rubble_mag/affordable-housing-in-los-angeles-defined-322cbec08668 


Cityhood. is it for us?

Quite frankly, we don't know.  Our community is in great need of leadership.  We are in need of services that the County is billing us for (property tax) and for promises that we never see.  Our community is in need of major road repairs with millions of cars a day commuting through our town.  Our residential streets are crumbling and huge pot holes are created when it rains because chunks of asphalt break off and drift away.

The County receives money from the state for having developers build affordable housing.  Do you think they are going to give us back that money in services? NO.

Being a city would definitely help.  It would keep 60-75% of the property taxes we pay in our community.  We would be able to approve or deny major developments if we have our own City Council.  We would be able to save our hills, the wildlife corridor and have more say in the commercial development.  We would be able to adopt a design that matches the entire community. Make things look more uniform going down Colima Road.  An example would be a design like Brea or Whittier where the buildings actually look similar and not a mix-matched mess.

We would be able to enforce the ordinances in our community. People would have to maintain their properties and make our community a better place to live.

Cityhood costs money.  We would have to apply, do an assessment to see if we could survive on our property tax and commercial income.  We have to get signatures and we have to jump through various hoops to have the city vote.

We could also be a "Contract City" where we contract all of our services (Fire and Sheriff) and pay for those services at the rate that we actually need. Instead of two patrol cars we could have four or five.

It isn't likely that the property tax would be increased, it even may go down at some point. We get to regulate that by what our needs are.  Remember, we won't have to pay for other communities to maintain, we only pay for us.

We continuously vote yes on propositions that increase our property tax each year and we see NO benefit in our community.  Wouldn't it be smart if we only voted to improve our community?

We don't know, but we would like to hear from you on this subject.

TakeRowlandHeightsBack@gmail.com


What is a cbo?

A "CBO" is a Community Based Organization that volunteers to make your community better.  Some examples of these CBO's in Rowland Heights are Rowland Heights Community Council, Kiwanis, Buckboard Days Parade, Key Club, Rowland Heights Women's Club and Pathfinder Senior Citizens. 

These CBO's are responsible for many of the events that happen in Rowland Heights.  They have their own bank accounts and rely on the County Parks to provide places for our residents to participate in these events.   The CBO's raise funds to put these events on through sponsorships. That is how these events happen.  It isn't the County doing these fun things for us.

The Buckboard Days Parade almost didn't happen this year because the County Parks Department created issues for the  rental of the Rowland Heights Park on Banida Avenue.  This parade has been going on for 50 years and is something that our community looks forward to each year.  

The Rowland Heights Women's Club had difficulty with being able to rent Pathfinder Park this year for their Trunk or Treat event.  County parks would not allow for them to have it on Halloween.  They would not let them reserve and pay for the use of the park on that day.  They finally got back to the Club in September when it was too late.  They claimed that they could not give them a date until they figured out when the county was doing their game day for Halloween.

Various CBO's are having difficulty with the County Parks.  In 2020, the County contracted with a "third party contractor" that took over the reservations.  The new department is making it a requirement that CBO's are required to "VOLUNTEER" their time to help County projects in exchange for use of the county parks.  This means that CBO's have to volunteer to help County Parks put on their events. 

Despite the fact that CBO's volunteer their time for county events, the volunteers are residents who live in Rowland Heights, who also pay property tax to the county -  they do not get access to our parks.  The county collects lots of money from our community members in forms of tax.  The County is now saying that CBO's (citizens volunteering in their community - paying property tax to use facilities)  have to "volunteer" for their benefit to gain access to the park facilities and they cannot be given an answer for reservations until a month before an event.

Does this seem fair? Support your CBOs in the community and attend their events when they happen.