MAILBAG - April 26, 2001

Reader praises new harbor columnist

I’d like to add my voice to those praising the Daily Pilot for its

selection of Mike Whitehead as the new harbor columnist on Mondays.

I have enjoyed the harbor history and current events described in

prior columns. However, in a unique, evolving maritime community such as

ours, it is essential to have someone speaking to both the current

activities and the future of the harbor, and whose voice is both

knowledgeable and representative of the broad range of community

interests focused on our unique water area resource.

Whitehead has been a dedicated chairman of the Newport Harbor Area

Chamber of Commerce Marine Committee and an equally active member of the

city’s broad, citizen-based Harbor Committee, while also running his

Boathouse TV show and working as a delivery and commercial vessel

captain.

His understanding of all of our interests as waterfront residents,

recreational boaters and hosts to many visitors, as well as the evolution

of the harbor’s uses and users, its historic and environmental values,

and where it could and should be going, is very comprehensive.

We need this kind of window into our harbor’s future and how we can

best help the city and its citizens get there. Mike should receive our

support and ideas as a sounding board for the harbor’s future.

JOHN CORROUGH

Balboa Island

Cox definitely has more power than Pilot thinks

I am disappointed. I expect my neighborhood newspaper to report

accurate, verifiable facts, without bias -- a commitment that you failed

to meet in the April 16 article, “Is Cox less powerful than we think?”

In this article, the Pilot cited an unknown Web site named

Young-Congress.com, which apparently reported that Cox was “not even in

the top five for the state, counting both representative and senators. He

just misses at No. 6 for California, and No. 49 out of 435 members of

Congress.”

Based on what criteria? When I turned to the Internet to answer this

question for myself, I found the Web site Young-Congress.com is

unavailable.

The mere suggestion that Cox is not powerful is absurd. In fact, Cox

ranks fourth (out of seven) in the House of Representatives leadership,

behind the Speaker of the House. He is our state’s only elected member of

the leadership in either the House or the Senate, and the only one who

regularly attends congressional leadership meetings with President Bush

in the White House.

These are facts I can’t read in the Pilot, which is too busy mimicking

its owners by dissing our representative -- whom more than 75% of

Newport-Mesa voters in the 47th District supported at the polls last

November.

Perhaps you should rethink your commitment to being our “neighborhood”

newspaper and perhaps we will reconsider you as a credible institution of

the “fourth estate.”

JENNIFER VITELA

Balboa Island

Rules should be identical for bluffs, views

Regarding the city of Newport Beach wanting special programs or a law

watching the growth and views and so forth of Corona del Mar bluffs (“A

plan to save bluffs and preserve views,” April 14).

My point is, why are we having two sets of rules -- one for Corona del

Mar and another for West Newport? If they feel that’s a good idea, they

ought to include it for all of Newport regarding bluffs and views.

CRAIG MAURER

Newport Beach