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
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