Comments by marcmcginnes
Posted on August 21 at 9:26 p.m.
Bravo, Mr. Maualim! Your letter speaks from a place of moral clarity on a topic about which there is so much confusion, fear and hostility.
I am grateful that I got to read and consider your wise words, and I am grateful too for your presence in our community-- the local, the global, and the wider ones of which we earthlings are a part.
Thank you.
Posted on August 19 at 8:37 a.m.
Dear Tony,
The last sentence of your letter invites response, as it is a fact that most people who are affiliated with Friends of the Bridge do indeed spend their time and energy working for the environment and for life.
That is the reason we have been spending our time and energy over the past five years to prevent Caltrans from defacing the unique grace and beauty of the Cold Spring Bridge by constructing 10-foot-tall fencing barriers as an inferior means to saving the lives of suicidal people.
Caltrans has so far failed to give adequate consideration to live-saving suicide prevention plans that Friends and others have presented to it. The plan presented by Friends was designed by the former Director of the Office of Suicide Prevention in the New York State Department of Mental Health, and it has been working well since 2007 on five bridges in that state. Caltrans is trying to ignore it, and that is one of the reasons that it illegally attempted to move ahead with its more expensive and less effective fencing proposal.
BOTH saving lives AND preserving beauty are the goals of Friends of the Bridge, and we will keep on spending our time and energy to achieve this on the Cold Spring Bridge for as long as it takes.
Marc McGinnes
a Friend of the Bridge
and also
Founding President, Community Environmental Council;
Founding Exec. Dir., Environmental Defense Center;
Senior Faculty Member, UCSB Environmental Studies Program (1971-2005);
Founding President, Community Mediation Council;
etc.
On Criss-Cross
Posted on August 16 at 3:29 p.m.
Interesting coincidence to read about this place while we are staying here with grandchildren and others in our extended family. Spent the day paddling, swimming, fishing, lazing around at one of the lakes close-by.
A pair of bears sauntered by our cabins by last night. Deer gazing from the forest shadows before breakfast.
Posted on August 13 at 10:24 a.m.
@ Equus-posteriori
I think that you are not being too idealistic in invoking the folk wisdom that an "Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." More effective attention to and treatment of those at risk of suicide is needed, but alas, this requires a good deal of money, not to mention changes in our attitudes toward each other. It is very well to keep working to make needed changes in these realms.
But what we have going on at the Cold Spring Bridge is something different. Up until now, Caltrans has treated the issue of effective suicide prevention (as opposed to diversion) as a "sideshow" (the very term used), and it has kept speeding ahead-- in part for its own budget-justifying purposes-- to spend the $4 million that it has allocated to this project, even though a superior and less costly alternative has been presented to it.
Maybe I am too idealistic to believe that citizens have the right and the responsibility to require that those, like Caltrans, who act in our name, do so in a reasoned and fiscally responsible manner.
Posted on August 12 at 10:05 p.m.
Equus_posteriori and all,
What we Friends of the Bridge are attempting to do can be very challenging to folks who are stuck in the too-dominant polarized/polarizing paradigm that frames our choices in matters such as this as tightly-confining EITHER / OR propositions-- in your terms it gets "boiled down to 'safety vs. aesthetics" (where vs. means AGAINST or FOR).
We-- and we think most people-- are in favor of and working to implement a plan that BOTH improves safety AND preserves beauty.
A BOTH / AND solution can be achieved in this case if local leaders and Caltrans are willing.
We are hopeful that these public servants are willing to achieve a WIN / WIN resolution: higher safety railings, closed-circuit cameras and speakers, call-phones linked to qualified suicide-prevention counselors, improved officer training, making safe the area under the bridge, limiting near-bridge vehicle access-- at a fraction of the cost of fabricating and installing the tall fences that have been proposed.
Thank you for your consideration.
Posted on August 12 at 1:26 p.m.
Dear Mr. Alfano,
A further important fact that I did not mention in my response above is that I and others have gone below the bridge to see and photograph the terrain there. The area is typical of any canyon in the Santa Ynez Mountains, and even in its current state, it is neither extremely rough nor life-threatening to recovery personnel.
What is astonishing is that neither Caltrans nor the Sheriff have seen fit to do even minimal trail-clearing work to assure that recovery personnel can do their work in full safety. Astonishing that this matter has overlooked for decades, and that the true conditions have been grossly misrepresented in the course of the discussion of the Caltrans fencing barriers proposal.
I would be happy to accompany you or anyone else to view these conditions, so that you can have first-hand knowledge.
Thank you your service and for your consideration.
Marc McGinnes
Posted on August 12 at 9:48 a.m.
Dear Mr. Alfano,
Thank you for your letter and your service to the community over the years.
Like many others who oppose the Caltrans fencing barriers plan, I have experienced the anguish of the death by suicide of dearly beloved ones, and so those of us who have come together as Friends of the Bridge are committed to finding the means that will most effectively serve to save the lives of individuals who go there in the awful grip of suicidal intent or impulse, and to see that this is accomplished without defacing the unique grace and beauty of this justly famous single-arch-span and degrading the wonderful of experience of being practically airborne in the midst of such while passing over it in our cars, bikes, or on foot.
In keeping with that mission, we developed a suicide prevention plan for the bridge in consultation with one of the nation's leading experts on suicide prevention, and we presented it to Caltrans officials in 2007, accompanied by the comments of that expert explaining that fencing barriers were an inferior means of suicide prevention for the reason that they mostly served merely to divert suicidal individuals to take their lives elsewhere, absent the intervention of human beings. Our plan for the Cold Spring Bridge is based on the "human barriers plan" designed by this expert and adopted by the New York State Bridge Authority and that has been in effective use as a live-saving suicide prevention plan since 2007 on the five bridges under its jurisdiction.
Long-needed higher safety railings, closed-circuit cameras, call-boxes directly linked to qualified helpers, and better training for uniformed first-responders are the main components of the "human barriers plan" that we and others believe to be far more effective at saving lives, not merely-- by no means other than cold, hard steel-- diverting suicidal people to take their lives elsewhere in our community.
Working for the best way BOTH to save lives AND to preserve beauty,
Marc McGinnes,
a Friend of the Bridge
Posted on August 9 at 5:23 p.m.
Dear Ms. Hughes,
You have my deepest sympathy for the loss of your eldest son. Like many others who oppose the Caltrans fencing barriers plan, I have experienced the anguish of the death by suicide of dearly beloved ones.
Thus, the mission of those of us who have come together as Friends of the Bridge is to see that what is done on the bridge will most effectively serve to save the lives of individuals who go there in the awful grip of suicidal intent or impulse, and to see that this is accomplished without defacing the unique grace and beauty of this justly famous single-arch-span and degrading the wonderful of experience of being practically airborne in the midst of such while passing over it in our cars, bikes, or on foot.
In keeping with that mission, we developed a suicide prevention plan for the bridge in consultation with one of the nation's leading experts on suicide prevention, and we presented it to Caltrans officials in 2007, accompanied by the comments of that expert explaining that fencing barriers were an inferior means of suicide prevention for the reason that they mostly served merely to divert suicidal individuals to take their lives elsewhere, absent the intervention of human beings. Our plan for the Cold Spring Bridge is based on the "human barriers plan" designed by this expert and adopted by the New York State Bridge Authority and that has been in effective use as a live-saving suicide prevention plan since 2007 on the five bridges under its jurisdiction.
Long-needed higher safety railings, closed-circuit cameras, call-boxes directly linked to qualified helpers, and better training for uniformed first-responders are the main components of the "human barriers plan" that we and others believe to be far more effective at saving lives, not merely-- by no means other than cold, hard steel-- diverting suicidal people to take their lives elsewhere in our community.
In sympathy, and working for the best way to save lives and to preserve beauty,
Marc McGinnes,
a Friend of the Bridge
Posted on August 2 at 1:15 p.m.
Situations like this are governed by a basic rule of property law: owners of private property have certain duties as well as certain rights.
While an owner of private property generally has a right to exclude others from coming upon or crossing over such property, that owner may have the duty to allow others to come upon and cross over particular areas of that property where it is shown that there has been a history of continuous public use of such areas for many years.
Disputes about this are resolved by reference to well-settled legal doctrines, and it is to be hoped that this matter can be resolved without resort to costly legal wrangling.
Previous Month
Posted on August 23 at 11:54 a.m.
Dear Tony,
I and other Friends of the Bridge are guided in our efforts by expert opinion in the field of life-saving suicide prevention means.
The following statements are those of Gary Spielmann, former Director of the Office of Suicide Prevention in the New York State Department of Mental Health, and they were made specifically about the proposed fencing barriers on the Cold Spring Bridge:
"The message conveyed by a physical barrier (i.e. fence) on a bridge to a potential jumper is: don’t jump here. The message that should be conveyed to a distraught person is: we want to help you now, so that you don’t lose your life as a result of a temporary crisis. Advocates like the Glendon Association rely far too much on the efficacy of a structure to block the impulsive behavior of would-be suicidal individuals, and fail to appreciate its limitations and shortcomings."
"[Physical barriers] provide society with the impression that by installing a physical barrier, we have somehow addressed the needs of suicidal individuals, so we can continue to ignore the likely root problem - mental illness, which is probably treatable in a majority of cases. WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE BRIDGE IS NOT THE PROBLEM. (emphasis added) The problem is the stigma, shame, and fear behind mental illness and the thoughts
that surround suicide."
"[Physical barriers] do nothing to address the suicidal condition of the person who might be tempted to jump from the bridge. Unlike the live voice at the receiving end of a
callbox, a physical barrier does not give a desperate person a reason to live or serve as a listening post for the real or imagined motives for being on the bridge at that point in time. By relying solely on an inanimate object to “save a life”, an opportunity to identify and help a suicidal individual is lost."
"[Physical barriers] shift the risk of suicide, rather than manage it. A careful review of the literature on the efficacy of bridge barriers shows that their installation does not
reduce the suicide rate in the surrounding geographic area."
It is very unfortunate that The Glendon Association was allowed by Caltrans to be in a primary advising role in this case. Their limited expertise compares very unfavorably with the extensive experience of Mr. Spielmann, and Glendon's highly-partisan pro-barriers agenda should have disqualified it from acting in an advisory capacity.
In any event, it is not too late for Caltrans to turn away from its tall fencing barriers proposal and to adopt the superior human barriers alternative plan that we have proposed.
Thank you for your consideration,
Marc McGinnes
On Criss-Cross