FULLERTON : Caltrans Assistance Angers Neighbors

Neighbors who succeeded in getting the Volunteer Center of Greater Orange County evicted from its Chapman Avenue office couldn’t believe that Caltrans employees and trucks helped it move to a new office down the street.

“I’m sort of glad they’re gone, but I’m mad because they used government trucks and workers to move,” said Bruce Spielbuehler, an architect who works in an office in the building from which the Volunteer Center was evicted.

Other employees in the same business complex yelled at the Caltrans employees and volunteers, asking if they would provide the same service for private businesses.

But Caltrans officials said they offered to move the Volunteer Center because it saves taxpayers about $250,000 a year by providing court-referred volunteers to clean up the highways in the county.

Albert Miranda, a Caltrans spokesman, said he thought the critics “are just not seeing the benefit this organization provides the entire community. The moving assistance we gave them doesn’t even compare to the benefit they provide. The volunteers clean up our roads and make them safer for everyone to drive.”

Carol R. Stone, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Volunteer Center, said Caltrans is just one of 1,200 local organizations that are provided with volunteers from the center to keep the groups operating.

Her former business neighbors, however, said they did not like the people who had been sentenced by the court to perform community service and who went to the center for their assignments.

“We were getting a lousy crowd of people coming here,” said Paul Janzen, a tenant of the business complex. “Some of them wore baggy clothes, flashed secret handshakes and made lewd remarks to the ladies who work here.”

Stone called Janzen’s remarks offensive and stereotypical.

“I am really appalled,” Stone said. “I don’t understand why these (critics) are so upset. The volunteers are not bad or evil people.”

Janzen said he plans to complain to the Orange County Board of Supervisors and question why the county court system doesn’t handle community - service sentences itself.