LETTER OF THE WEEK

For Fountain Valley residents who are trying to figure out just what’s

causing all the ruckus in town, it’s important to get a little background

on the issues (“Fountain Valley council members face off about flier,”

Aug. 17).

What’s with making everybody park their cars in their garages?

This brouhaha began with proposed “improvements” to the Slater Avenue

and Euclid Street intersection. The city’s plan would sacrifice on-street

parking for Fountain Valley residents so nonresidents can drive through

the city a little quicker. Residents who live in homes, apartments and

condos along Slater Avenue and Euclid Street have attended Planning

Commission hearings and complained bitterly. The city’s numbers don’t

make sense, and it’s a typical case of “ready, fire, aim” planning.

It is this unpopular scheme -- and the objections to it -- that

prompted City Council comments exploring the possibility of forcing

Paradise Manor homeowners to park their cars inside their garages. If we

treated the town’s homeowners as if they were renters, and made them all

share their garages, and filled every garage with a car, the consultant

and staff can show that there won’t be any problem. But that would be

discriminatory, unless we made everyone in the city park in their garage.

A better idea would be to abandon this unworkable plan. But the city

peddled this project as part of the Euclid Corridor Augmentation and has

funding from the Orange County Transportation Authority. If we don’t

spend the money soon, we will lose it, and city folks might be

embarrassed. Will common sense triumph over bureaucratic inertia?

Who’s doing these fliers attacking the City Council?

Some owners of large recreational vehicles are as mad as hornets. They

want Fountain Valley to continue to have the weakest laws in the area

regarding storing RVs on public streets, and they don’t want the current

laws enforced. Otherwise they would have to pay to store their vehicles.

They don’t want to give the rest of us an opportunity to vote on

toughening our parking ordinances. They’ve recruited Chuck Conlosh as

their front man and added a pile of patriotic rhetoric to hide their

unpopular position.

I didn’t have strong feelings about the RV issue until I listened to

people with big RVs claim they moved to our city because we had the

weakest rules they could find. Others testified that they bought big RVs

only after they realized they could get away with storing them on

residential streets as long as they moved them a little after the police

marked their tires. We may not want Irvine-style rules, but do we want

lower standards than Garden Grove or Santa Ana?

GUS AYER

Fountain Valley

* GUS AYER ran for Fountain Valley City Council in 1994 and is

president of the Green Valley Homeowners Recreation Assn.