Fairview Park can be rehabilitated At the...

Fairview Park can be rehabilitated

At the Costa Mesa City Council meeting on Nov. 18, many people in

the audience stood and clapped when a speaker exhorted the City

Council to leave Fairview Park the way it is, a beautiful natural

oasis in an increasingly urban city environment. The City Council

then voted to remove many intrusive elements of the Fairview Park

Master Plan, including a parking lot in the lowland area west of

Placentia Avenue.

These people and many others might be horrified to learn that the

City Council intends to revisit this issue this coming Tuesday at

6:30 p.m. Under Old Business is agenda item 2, the final design for

areas A, C, and D of the Master Plan. Unfortunately, the Costa Mesa

Parks and Recreation Commission has asked the City Council to

reconsider and reinstate the “lower area” parking lot. One of the

versions of this parking lot is a new road within the park west of

Placentia that would connect the upper parking lot with the proposed

lower parking lot. This new road will require an enormous amount of

grading and landform alteration that will substantially alter the

natural topography including canyons and arroyos in the park that now

harbor natural plants and animals. The damage is such that the City

Council should require environmental documentation of what it may

want to do. Alternatively, the consulting architect has shown how

trails can connect the upper and lower levels of the park and be

compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Even then, one

version of the proposed trails requires a bridge over a gully and the

consultants are planning on a massive $10-million restoration that

grades some 30 acres of the upper level of the park.

People who love the natural ambience of Fairview Park should

attend this meeting and express once again their desire to leave

Fairview Park alone. This crown jewel of city parks is too precious

to slice and dice. It can be rehabilitated with increased access, and

revegetation and restoration can occur without the landform

alterations contemplated by the final design and without the

destructive road that is being proposed.

JAN D. VANDERSLOOT

Newport Beach

Newport cars are just too loud

It seems that Newport Beach has turned a deaf ear to the

ever-increasing number of unmuffled vehicles that pass through our

community. We selected Corona del Mar as our home because of its

small scale and community atmosphere. Over the last few years, we

have been bombarded with deafening noise pollution from vehicles

which have had their mufflers removed. This is not our idea of the

quiet enjoyment we bought into when moving to here. We believe that

the Corona del Mar City Council’s plan for Vision 2004 will not be

successful in large part due to the noise on our streets. Who wants

to sit and sip coffee in a sidewalk cafe when you can’t even hear

your conversation over the rumble of deafening decibels.

We are simply asking that the existing California motor vehicles

laws be enforced within our city limits. As residents, we ask that

“visitors” who pass through our community show respect for its

residents and tax payers by complying with the existing rules of the

road. We don’t turn a blind eye to speeders and reckless drivers; why

should our ears be deaf to unmuffled vehicles? The California Vehicle

Code not only describes what a muffler is, but what it is intended to

do (“effective in reducing noise”). If we did nothing other than

enforce the code as it applies to vehicles which have completely

removed their mufflers, we could make a big difference in this

community.

Newport Beach Municipal Code and Newport Beach City Council

policies also support the protection of their citizens from noise

pollution by having several codes and policies that address noise

abatement, sound attenuation walls, and private encroachments of

public rights of way. Now we just need to find a way to enforce them

in a consistent, effective, and economical way. Enforcing the codes

on vehicles without mufflers (much easier than discerning legal

muffler modifications) would be the first-phase remedy.

This is a growing concern among our neighbors, with new advocates

surfacing each day asking what they can do to make this change a

reality. The problem is particularly apparent on the east end of

Corona del Mar and the Newport Coast/Crystal Cove communities that

face Coast Highway where the opportunities for acceleration and

high-speed driving are greater than downtown. We would welcome any of

our city officials to spend a Sunday afternoon on our patios and

listen to the code violations hour after hour. As citizens and

taxpayers, we are ready, willing, and able to do what we can to

assist the city of Newport in remedying this problem.

JOHN T. REILLY

and KAREN E. TRINGALI

Corona del Mar

Council should be open about appointments

At next Tuesday’s Costa Mesa City Council meeting, the agenda

calls for appointments to the Planning and the Parks, Recreational

Facilities and Parkways commissions.

By now, almost everyone who has been paying attention knows that

each individual member of the Council will be, in effect, empowered

to appoint his or her personal choice for one seat on each of those

commissions.

The Pilot has printed several letters on the question of whether

or not this process is sufficiently fair, objective and best suited

to the needs of the city. Some critics believe this process smacks of

“cronyism” or worse.

It seems to me that each member of the City Council has a duty to

the residents of the city to consider the qualifications and

potential of the applicants. Some applicants might not have any

preliminary potential. Others will surely merit serious consideration

by each council member.

Therefore, it appears to follow that each member of the City

Council ought to tell the public which applicants he or she

personally interviewed before making a selection. The residents of

the city are entitled to some assurance that the members of City

Council were fair and objective in making their selections.

DAVID J. STILLER

Costa Mesa