Safe Cities

Re “Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks Nation’s Safest Big Cities,” June 2.

We have visited both of those communities recently and there seem to be things missing. We didn’t see any of the smokestacks and factories that provide jobs to people who have to meet a $2,000 or $3,000 mortgage payment each month. We didn’t see any railway yards, harbors, huge warehouses and truck cargo terminals, tall office buildings that are the centers of commerce and finance. We probably didn’t pay attention, but we also didn’t see public housing projects taken over by gangs. (We didn’t see any “public” housing). We failed to observe schools brim full of the children of illegal aliens, long welfare lines, dozens of customers shopping with food stamps, thousands of unlicensed jalopy cars on the street that are routinely ignored in Los Angeles by the LAPD. We didn’t see thousands of illegal garage conversions rented to the otherwise homeless.

Safe cities? They are not cities at all, but mere deliberately isolated parasites that, without the immediate proximity to Los Angeles, would be insolvent in six months.

You want to cure the problem of the dwindling L.A. tax base? Easy. Put up toll booths on the way “in” on Highways 5, 10, 118 and 101. Cut the pay 10% for each employee of a public agency who does not live in Los Angeles. Take a flat 2% city of L.A. income tax, as other major cities must, from the paychecks of nonresidents.

We would all be safe if the non-taxpaying suburban escapees had to pay their share for the economic benefits of living near Los Angeles.

ROGER V. WING

Reseda