Keep city open to all residents

Regarding Chad Goodwin's letter (Aug. 31), thank you for the opportunity to call you what I want. You are an ignorant, whiney bigot.

It's always easier to pull up the drawbridge to a boat once you're safe on board and say "OK, nobody else is allowed." It's another thing to say to people that have already been, or born here, that you can't live here any more because they can't afford it.

These are people that are victims of re-zoning, being pushed away from their homes. People that are victims of an economic recession triggered by a housing crises. People that are victims of scrupulous lenders preying on trusting property owners who don't know any better.

Perhaps you were right to move here to Moorpark. We welcome everyone, even the likes of you. This is a wonderful city that has worked hard to provide a safe place to raise children and protect the environment. That's why I moved here 22 years ago.

I'm sorry that you had to move from your hometown (Lancaster, Palmdale) because of the increase of crime, partially under your watch as a deputy. But you have no right to imply, after a year of living with us, that the gate should be shut closed because of your prejudiced perceptions.

Stay longer than just a year and you will find as I have, that this is a community that reaches out towards neighbors in need: the sick, the elderly, and the capable workers that want to work and have pride for doing so- they just need help in finding that work. This city tries hard to find it for them.

You mentioned the Sheriff's Blotter as an indicator of what is to come. I've noticed increases from time to time and I'm disturbed and disappointed by them like everyone else, but to me it indicates that that law enforcement is doing their job. If it means that they're catching shoplifters, taggers and arresting someone that pulled to the side of the road because he felt that he was too drunk to drive, as cited in the Blotter, so be it.

Every year that I see the statistics of the city of Moorpark being rated if not within the top five, it's always within the top 10 of the safest cities to live. I always feel that I would love to pin a medal on all of them.

I believe that the people living among us that work hard and get paid in a menial fashion or lower, those people deserve rights as well as all of us. The people that harvest and ship our food, clean our sanitary systems, maintain our landscapes, run our small businesses, our large businesses, serve in our police force, our fire fighters, our teachers and so on, they too have the right to raise their children here.

I don't know what happened in Lancaster- maybe it was a local corruption of some sort- but the term "affordable housing" here in Moorpark is a humanity issue that means caring and hope. Tom Shannon Moorpark