Readers comments: December 24, 2021

Safety for cyclists in Claremont Wilderness Park
Dear editor:
In the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park on June 18, our son, Noah, was biking down the Pomelo trail in Gale Canyon when he hit a barely-visible rope that was suspended across the trail. Noah sustained facial injuries that landed him in the ER. The city acknowledged that, although the trail was open, they had failed to take the rope down that day and that the rope was a hazardous way to close the trail. The city assured us that protocols would be implemented to prevent a similar accident in the future. Subsequently, the city replaced the rope with a large metal gate that is indeed much more visible. Nonetheless, since then the gate has been closed on at least two occasions when the park was open, posing a danger to cyclists. In each case, the city has acknowledged the error and has offered assurances that this would not happen again. City and CHWP staff, please get this right; we don’t want anyone else to get injured. Fellow cyclists, please exercise caution when descending the Pomelo trail.
Ran Libeskind-Hadas and Laura Kotovsky
Claremont

Clean and Green Pomona
Dear editor:
Thanks to Sustainable Claremont for its worthy and appreciated work planting 35 trees at Pomona’s Ganesha Park recently (COURIER, November 27).
As CMC student Jarrett Korson points out in a related December 3 COURIER letter, the benefits of trees to communities are many.
So, many Claremonters may also be interested to know of the work of Clean and Green Pomona, a group started in 2012 by Pomona residents and business owners.
During the 2021-22 winter planting season Clean and Green Pomona will celebrate the planting of its 1,000th tree in the city, where its work has added trees to parks, school campuses and city streets since 2017.
Its most recent planting was December 11, when Clean and Green added 70 street trees to La Verne Ave., starting at the Claremont-Pomona border at Mountain Ave., with a volunteer crew of more than
40. Clean and Green’s tree planters are Pomonans of all ages, from elementary students to senior citizens. They include Pomona parents, business people, teachers, retirees, elected officials, city commissioners, faith leaders, people from the nonprofit sector and more.
Also, in a city overburdened with waste and recycling businesses, Clean and Green championed to fruition a Pomona ban on any more of them. It partnered with another Pomona-based environmental group to bring California EPA officials to Pomona for a series of business inspections and community learning and listening sessions. It successfully lobbied the Pomona Unified School District to end the use of diesel school buses. It convinced Pomona to make a long overdue and substantial increase to the fees dedicated to park improvements which the city charges to developers.
And there’s much, much more to Clean and Green’s work. If interested, please see cleanandgreenpomona.org.
Kathryn and Don Martens
Pomona

La Puerta property
Dear editor:
During the first day of any business school class, you are instilled to never sell a long-term capital asset for a short-term gain.
We the people, pledged with our houses, taxation to buy this property. Selling only enriches an offshore developer, not those who pledged their property. We own it.
The land was previously owned by my great grandfather, C.T. Naftel, also by my parents. All of my grandparents and great grandparents had foresight and vision to plan for this community. My mom and dad worked with city leaders to sell it, with a 99-year lease. Many great city leaders on city council and the school board thought ahead and invested a lot of time into this deal.
Now we are told that this land is excess. It won’t be used. The same logic was used selling off the land north of the Old School House, south of the CHS campus. It is now the Griswold Town House gated community. The high school has no land, as the new O’Connor Center was shoehorned between buildings. Another major city foul up was selling all the land around the Claremont Police Station. A new station is really needed.
Do not sell it off! Save it in reserves. With all the ADUs and new apartments – we will need it for park or educational use. This is our land, we paid for it. We just won’t get a large parcel such as this.
Paul S. Wheeler
(Fourth generation businessman)
Claremont