After Midpen general manager Anna Ruiz’s public statements Feb. 12 about mutually supported agreements and amicable solutions, Midpen taped a three day eviction notice to our door on Feb. 19. It is clear that they are attempting to apply the most pressure possible to a 73-year-old woman who’s lived there for nearly five decades without issue.
Nobody in the community is advocating for this eviction. It is a small group of people at Midpen, who in my opinion, believe they are lords and ladies with title to the land instead of stewards of public lands, which are publicly funded through tax dollars.
Midpen staff members attempted an abandonment eviction that we received the day before Thanksgiving.
The district’s public statements don’t align with their very real and documented actions.
For those keeping score at home this is the third eviction served to us in as many months.
We are still under the 60-day eviction so this seems like a bit of overkill or just another Midpen tactic to stress and overwhelm a 73-year-old woman into an unfavorable position in the hope that the weight of these actions will cause her to collapse.
This Midpen team seems to have collective amnesia about the meeting that was held nearly five years ago in March 2020 to discuss issues. They had some talking points and proposals, and we responded with our own thoughts and proposals.
They decided to go radio silent until November 23, 2024, when we received the abandonment eviction notice. Nothing amicable or mutually supported about that, right?
What’s worse is that the board refuses to recognize the public’s support and the right we have to stay on the sliver of land that we have occupied for five decades, as set forth in the 1987 agreement pursuant to which Frank Duveneck’s heirs sold the sliver to the district.
Aside from their land management team, who is asking for this? We have over 500 signatures and rising of people who don’t want this to happen. We don’t cost the district a dime, we own the structure in which we live, and the neighbors and the community have repeatedly stated that they feel there is community value in us being there.
If the board is just a rubber stamp for Midpen staff, then people really should start questioning who is monitoring this tax-funded bureaucracy that has eminent domain powers and a budget of nearly $90 million taxpayer dollars for fiscal year 2025.
I have no doubt that the board is made up of people that have very genuine motives, but their job is to be the weight of the public’s opinions and views on the scale of decision making, not a rubber stamp.
