The disaster that is Fisher Park’s stretch of Santiago Creek
UPDATE: Now YOU can vote to support the completion of the portion of the Santiago Creek bike trail that runs through Santa Ana’s Fisher Park neighborhood. Click here to vote!
Did the Fisher Park NIMBYs who are blocking the completion of the Santiago Creek bike trail ruin their own neighborhood? It is a fair question to ask.
If you visit the Santiago Creek bike train in Santiago Park – or over at the Santiago Park Nature Reserve, you won’t see the horrible graffiti that is sprayed all over the place in the Fisher Park Neighborhood. Sure, you will find isolated tagging, but nothing like the disaster at Fisher Park.
And now, according to my sources, the Fisher Park NIMBYs, led by Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustee Mark McLaughlin and Chapman University Professor Paul Apodaca, want to fence off their part of the creek altogether – as if that will be some sort of panacea! 
It will only make things worse.
Don’t take my word for it – compare the picture above this paragraph to the one atop this post, and then check out the slideshow at this link. That is the mess at the Fisher Park portion of Santiago Creek – a self-inflected nightmare. The cops cannot patrol the area. Bike riders cannot ride through there. All you have is gang bangers and other criminals – and they would not be there if the trail was completed as it is in Santiago Park – and in Hart Park, over in Orange.
Here is what you will see at the Santiago Park portion of the Santiago Creek bike trails (the one on the north is paved while the one on the south side of the creek is just dirt.
Fisher Park
Santiago Park
The Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance has been working for many years to create a greenway along the Santiago Creek. They have a plan that you can read by clicking here. The plan is almost done – except for the small portion of Santiago Creek at Fisher Park, where the NIMBYs seem incapable of doing the right thing.
