Removing Marinapark homes is a worthy sacrifice...

Removing Marinapark homes is a worthy sacrifice

I am angered by the fact that some of the people who are writing

negative letters to the editor about the proposed Marinapark resort

are current Marinapark Trailer Park tenants.

These people have had the privilege of keeping their trailers on

this waterfront, city-owned land at greatly discounted rents for

decades. Across the bay at the Lido Peninsula Resort, those tenants

are paying and they have to look across a parking lot and large boat

docks before they even see water.

Now, what is worse is the fact that the majority of Marinapark

tenants are people who have their main residence in cities other than

Newport Beach. Therefore, they don’t even pay property taxes in

Newport, yet Newport taxpayers are basically subsidizing their summer

vacation homes by putting up with this current use.

I am a 50-year resident of Newport Beach, and I strongly support

the proposed Marinapark resort. Newport Beach taxpayers have a right

to the highest and best use of this property.

LARRY MORGAN

Newport Beach

Grant is greatly helping the area

Jeff Benson’s article “College contracts fund surge,” July 13, in

the Pilot could, if updated, include a National Science Foundation

grant of $14 million to UC Irvine for a program that should help

greatly in improving science, mathematics and education instruction

in the Westside schools of Costa Mesa.

The program, which is called FOCUS (Faculty Outreach

Collaborations Uniting Scientists, Students and Schools), will also

include Compton and Santa Ana schools. UCI will oversee the operation

of this project, which seeks to unite math, science and education

faculty and researchers from the university, community college and

preschool-kindergarten-through-

12th-grade districts and schools by focusing on math and science

teaching.

Needless to say, this is a most promising program, one that

appears to have the enthusiastic support of the local school

district.

LEFTERIS LAVRAKAS

Costa Mesa

Phantom passenger demand shows self interest

I was struck by both the continued regurgitation of erroneous

information regarding airport issues and the unexpected candor

regarding the Airport Working Group’s motives that letter writer

Florence Stasch contributed July 23 (“Working Group part of solution,

not problem”).

Stasch asks someone to share their “real solution to the air

travel problem that we now face” while ignoring the fact that Orange

County does not face an “air-travel problem.” Our county is nearing

build-out and we have an airport operating at only 75% of its

capacity. Any alleged “air-travel problem” will not be taking place

in Orange County. Stasch goes on to stipulate that any solution to

these “problems” cannot cost taxpayers billions of dollars or take

decades to build, apparently forgetting that the now dead El Toro

airport plan was going to “cost taxpayers billions of dollars and ...

take decades to build.”

But perhaps Stasch’s greatest contribution was verifying what most

of Orange County has suspected all along. After nearly a decade of

hearing ever-changing reasons from Newport Beach special interests

that pushing for a second Orange County airport only seven miles from

the first one was about solving some mythical crushing passenger and

cargo demand, doing our fair share for the region, and planning for

Orange County’s economic future, Stasch reveals that the “Airport

Working Group is an organization whose sole purpose is to save

Newport Beach and surrounding communities.” Thanks for verifying that

the real agenda has always been all about saving Newport, even at the

expense of everyone else.

DOUGLAS K. BLAUL

Trabuco Canyon