It’s a really big deal when a small town like la Honda gets its main road fixed. It’s an even bigger deal when that fix is a serious, highly engineered, $3 million repair that will withstand any number of future disasters thrown its way. And, wow, it’s a really, really big deal when you consider that this $3 million fix was done at no cost to Cuesta La Honda residents, when an earlier fix on Scenic Drive in 2008 resulted in a $2.1 million tax assessment for the community. That $2.1 million assessment meant that each homeowner in Cuesta had to make a payment of $6,029 ($12,063for those parcels at the epicenter of the slide) in a lump sum or in annualized payments. Many of you reading this are still paying that off today, right?
The cost this time? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Our road has been fixed, the homeowners compensated, and the residents of La Honda did not have to pay $6,000 (or more, with inflation)for that happy development.
How did we get so lucky? After all, there are dozens of disasters every year in this country, many bigger and more newsworthy than ours. We are a tiny town. Our needs could have so easily fallen to the bottom of some very big pile on a bureaucrat’s desk. But they didn’t and there are two big reasons why.
First, five years ago, when the landslide wiped out three homes and Scenic Drive, a group of La Honda residents decided that they could make government listen to them. They formed “The Slide Committee” and were tasked by the Board of the Cuesta La Honda Guild to lobby the government to get Scenic Drive fixed and to get those homeowners compensation for their losses. And just like it says in the First Amendment to the Constitution, they petitioned the government for redress, with lots of meetings, phone calls and emails. Slide Committee members, including Krista Kuenhackl, Maryann Chwalek, Bob Meehan, Carol Prentice, Mike Williams, Sherry Johnson, Nigel Webb, Tim Nelson and Kat Moazed worked with County, State and Federal officials to get them to come see the damage for themselves and to meet with our neighbors who had lost their homes. And we didn’t give up until we saw real results.
Second, we were extremely fortunate in the elected representatives we had to work with. Congresswoman Anna Eshoo has represented La Honda since 1992 and now has the seniority and holds the leadership positions in Washington that directly benefits us, her constituents. She put that to good use in pushing the appropriate levers in government to get FEMA and state and local agencies to fund the full cost of the repairs for Scenic Drive. It is no exaggeration to say that without Anna Eshoo as our member of Congress, this little town would not have gotten $3 million dollars to fix our main road and to compensate our neighbors who lost their homes. There are scores of communities in this country waiting years for their impassable roads, cracked bridges and broken pipelines to get fixed. But now we’re not one of them.
San Mateo County Supervisor Don Horsley also helped push the necessary funding and approvals through at the County level to help us get Scenic Drive repaired. Owing to term limits, he’s retiring this year, but it’s a reminder that the election this year for the position of District 3 County Supervisor is an important one for our community.
So, on February 23, a crisp sunny day, a few dozen happy La Hondans gathered with Congresswoman Eshoo and Supervisor Horsley to celebrate the reopening of Scenic Drive. Our guests cut the big red ribbon we had strung across Scenic and we drank champagne and ate the traditional opening day sheet cake. It was a glorious gathering, probably one of the largest we’ve had in La Honda since the pandemic started! People are genuinely excited about having their road back. Dave wants to have boxcar derby race down it, Krista’s going to skateboard the length of it and I’ve already seen a flurry of strollers and bicycles on it. For the rest of us, I think we’re just happy to be able to motor our way down Scenic Drive once again without having to meander a circuitous route through Cuesta just to get to the Post Office. I know the folks on Beverly and Cuesta Real are going to be grateful for a lot less traffic and wear and tear on their smaller roads.
For the five years since the slide happened, we’ve heard a few ask why it took so long to get it repaired or why they couldn’t just shovel a few tons of gravel into the massive hole and call it a day. To that the Slide Committee would point to the results of a patient, considered citizens effort that yielded a solid, engineered repair that is actually safe, impervious to collapse and that will last through weather events to come. And, just as important, it was a repair that did not cost the La Honda residents a single penny. And that’s a really, really big deal.
