New groups to promote neighborly peace
This article appeared in the AV Press, Saturday, August 8, 2009
By Daisy Ratzlaff
Valley Press Staff Writer
LANCASTER – Palmdale and Lancaster officials hope a newly-instated mediation program resolving neighborhood disputes will help foster greater communications between neighbors and relieve courts, code enforcement and sheriff’s department personnel of having to deal with issues pertaining to matters residents could otherwise solve themselves.
Darren Parker, president of the Antelope Valley Human Relations Commission, said residents who have complaints about their neighbors’ cars being parked on their front lawns or overgrown tree branches that grow into their yards now have an alternative option rather than notifying city or deputies to handle “the more civil rather than criminal matter.”
“This program is designed to help neighbors who are in dispute at no cost to them t solve their problem in order to build safer, better and stronger neighborhoods,” Parker said.
The mediation program, which runs under the Neighbor Dispute Resolution Program, was developed by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich and the Antelope Vally Human Relations Commission as well as Lancaster and Palmdale city officials. It officially began operation Thursday and will allow residents to call a special hot line and ask for one of 20 mediators and four senior mediators to help resolve neighbor-to-neighbor problems, Parker said.
“we found out that one out of every three cases that the task force deals with may at some point have started as a neighborhood dispute,” he said. “We are happy that we have law enforcement with us, and it looks like it will take the work off their desks and put in the proper place, where the issues can be addressed on a one-on-one basis.”