MAILBAG - June 15, 2000

The promotion of the Newport Dunes Resort Hotel has been artfully and

professionally crafted by those who will profit from it. It is appealing

to all the local businesses, again for the financial gain involved. The

city of Newport Beach also plans to profit handsomely from the revenue

and business involved.

The location is central to the prime traffic area of our city.

The losers are those of us who live here and try to drive the streets,

which are already crowded with cars and an excess of traffic signals.

This will even further affect our children and grandchildren. The Back

Bay and bay are polluted now.

It is time to stop the lure of money for the city to entice us to allow a

facility of this ilk and dimension here. It is time to preserve Newport

Beach for the resident taxpayers and voters.

MACLYN B. SOMERS

Newport Beach

Reader disagrees with Smith on standards

I could hardly believe it when Steve Smith wrote, “I got nailed by a

comment by one ill-mannered, crude woman with a weakness for making rude

remarks,” (“Congratulations are in order for school bond supporters,”

June 10).

Smith had just finished making a rude, ill-mannered remark about the “low

standards of voters” who cast affirmative ballots in the recent school

bond issue. I voted for the school bond and consider myself to have very

high standards.

I read all of Smith’s columns pertaining to the issue and disagreed with

his position, as apparently others did. Disagreeing with him does not

indicate low standards but simply a different point of view.

JEANNE O’SHEA

Costa Mesa

Thanks to Caustin, no thanks to planning lingo

Hooray for Susan Caustin! (“Traffic models don’t make sense,” June 6).

If it were not for the opportunity we weary travelers have to compare

conclusions among traffic studies of Koll, Conexant, Dunes Resort and so

on, this technical snow job would be the blizzard the experts rely upon.

I listened to our city staff circumnavigate the commissioners’ questions

with responses prefaced by phrases such as “I know it seems

counterintuitive ...” and “... the hierarchy of models ...”

Then, I listened to the Planning Commission candidate and Environmental

Quality Affairs Vice Chairman Barry Eaton take the public microphone, and

I understood.

Is it possible he might be appointed this time to the Planning

Commission? Don’t bet on it. The guy makes things too clear.

It seems a good analogy to compare contemporary Newport Beach traffic

studies to a space voyager running out of fuel on its way back to Earth.

Instead of calculating a conservative route, the spaceman assumes the

planets and his ship are somewhere other than where they are, and relies

on said assumptions to give a comforting result.

TOM HYANS

Newport Beach