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Show Group forms to open drive "Our rights have been taken away without due process of law," said Mark Miner, a lawyer who lives on Virginia Street. "I have to park my car around the corner on 13th East now because the traffic is so bad in front of my house in the morning I can't get out of the driveway." Injunction possible Mr. Miner has been studying the studying the case and feels there is a possibility of getting an injunction injunc-tion against the closing of the street to run a traffic survey. "The street is not to be vacated until June 1, 1973. I don't see how they can close it for nine months to The Penrose drive controversy continues and citizens opposed to its closing have come together to take action. Keep Penrose Open is the name of the group. Thursday night 22 interested citizens citi-zens met "to get their heads together to-gether and discuss the problem and plan strategy," said Mrs. Katherine Darley, a member of the group. The group elected two co-chairmen, co-chairmen, Mr. John Zotz, who has been fighting against the closure since last fall, and Dr. James Mc-Entire, Mc-Entire, a surgeon affected by the traffic problems. The group plans to take numerous numer-ous steps in fighting to keep Penrose Pen-rose open. The first is to arouse public interest. A mass meeting has been scheduled for October 19, the place is not decided yet. The group's other plans call for legal action. run a trafic survey. They should either vacate it or open it," he said. "When the street is vacated, the city will have nothing to do with it. The homeowners on the street will not receive mail, garbage pickup, or any other services normally offered of-fered to residents. While it's only closed, the people still get all those services, but have a private street also," Mr. Miner explained. Penrose Drive became the center cen-ter of controversy in Fall 1971 when Joseph Rosenblatt, a Penrose resident, presented a petition to the city commission requesting the street be vacated. The petition signed by 1,000 people, including Rep. Sherman P. Lloyd and Harold B. Lee, cited nine reasons for the closing of Penrose. Some of those were that Penrose was an unnecessary unneces-sary conduit for traffic and the traffic destroyed the peace and quiet of the residential area and lowered property values. The petition was presented to the commission and they voted unanimously to direct the city attorney at-torney to prepare an ordinance vacating Penrose. Wo hearing This motion was made before a public hearing on the matter was held. Utah law requires that a notice no-tice of hearing be published for four consecutive weeks in the daily papers before the date of hearing. The commission did this a week later and the hearing was held Oct. 21, 1971. "They conformed to the letter of the law, but the spirit wasn't there," said Mrs. Francis Farley. "In opening open-ing the meeting Mayor Lee said 'We've made our decision, but this meeting is a formal legality we (continued on page 5) Group wants Penrose open dents of Federal Way couldn't get up a petition similar to the Penrose one and have their streets closed, and the same goes for any other streets leading to the University." "We need the public's support, though. That will be the most influential in-fluential factor in getting this ordinance ordi-nance reversed," he added. "If people don't keep complaining the commission will continue to ignore the problem, and nothing will be done." (continued from page 1) must go through.' We did manage to get them to postpone the vacating va-cating of the street until June 1, 1972, at that time, though," she added. After that Mrs. Farley and some other citizens continued to fight the ordinance and raised 400 signatures sig-natures on a petition which requested re-quested that Penrose drive not be closed because of the traffic problems prob-lems it would cause the surrounding surround-ing area. This petition was received and the commission postponed the vacation of the street once more until June 1, 1973. . Sue commission Keep Penrose Open is considering consider-ing legal action that may involve a law suit suing the city commission, the individual commissioners, and the traffic engineer. "Their actions seem to be arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory," said Mr. Miner. "I think they can be attacked on those grounds with a good probability of winning the case. There is no reason why the resi- |