In your article "Runyon Canyon Parking Lot Okd", Tom LaBonge says, "It's very important to get a feel about what people think of these ideas," yet despite thousands of signatures from park users against a parking lot in the middle of the already limited usable hiking space in Runyon Canyon, despite recommendations, entreaties, petitions, alternative solutions, from the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Association and the Runyon Canyon Park Advisory Board, and citizens far and wide against defacing Runyon, LaBonge has decided to build a lot. He then says, "I think it's important for people to participate in the process."

No wonder people don't often "participate in the process". I and scores and sometimes hundreds of other lovers of Runyon Canyon sat in regular four hour evening meetings for a year, waiting for our allotted two minutes to speak, if we were lucky enough to be called on. Through summer and winter, unpaid, taking time from their work and studies, citizens came together to preserve some of the last free rustic open space in the city; the place that may be the only community many of us have, the place that keeps us sane, lets us decompress, makes it possible to start all over again on Monday.

We watched as the parking hours were curtailed, as private permit parking signs went up on public streets. A walk in the park cost forty dollars as rangers ticketed cars in bright daylight because the new signs said "No parking sunset to sunrise" and the LA Times listed sunset at 4:31, though it was light until 6:30. Most people don't even get out of work and over to take a walk until 6:00. We watched Mr. LaBonge and the DOT chip away at the life of our community, Runyon Canyon. Still, the unpaid advisory board did
studies, offered wonderful suggestions, did litter cleanup, spent money, negotiated for solutions that would make the park accessible and still keep the residents (who live on a park, hello?) happy.

Now the smell of grass will be replaced by the smell of gas, and women jogging alone will be forced between parked cars. Less people will have access to the park, not more, but that was always the stated goal of the Parks Dept and LaBonge's office. People who live on the park don't like crowds.

The next time Mr. LaBonge campaigns while walking through Runyon he will discover: At the end of every leash is a vote.

Elayne Boosler