MAILBAG - Oct. 20, 2006

Meter maid ruined mayoral visit

This past week, I had the good fortune of spending the morning with a certain distinguished visiting mayor of an Austrian city.

“May we play some golf?” he had asked. “Absolutely,” I replied, and off we set for Ben Brown’s.

Things were going swimmingly. The mayor was playing extremely well, and I had recovered from another of my many shaky starts. He enjoyed the golf course and remarked several times about the charming setting. As we traversed the creek, he stopped and remarked at how full it was. It was an awkward moment, but in the end I opted not to tell him that the stream he so admired was polluted; it would have been unkind.

Next, lunch at Gigi’s Café. His wife joined us, and we chatted and watched the early afternoon go by while enjoying the delicious Mediterranean food.

Autumn in Laguna Beach — tough to beat. All of a sudden, the mayor hopped to his feet and hurried to the curb where a parking enforcement officer was ticketing his rental car.

The meter had expired. Bad luck, I thought, but such is life. I watched chagrined as this elderly gentleman politely asked if he might fill the meter and was shocked when he received for his courtesy a response so rude and monosyllabic that I was ashamed to have witnessed it.

Of course, she was well within her purview to cite the vehicle for the infraction. My disgust, however, is at her complete inability to be professional or at least minimally courteous in her denial of his request.

The mayor was gracious upon his return to the table. “It is my fault,” he said. “I should have put more coins in the meter.”

Later, when his wife had excused herself, he leaned over toward me and remarked about the harm a city employee can do when they forget the small matter of public relations.

“I always tell them to use their discretion, to enforce the law while at the same time perpetuating the welcoming nature of our city.”

The Austrian mayor, for his part that day, received little more than a 2-by-4 upside the head from one of our best. Good job. Brilliant. Well done.

RUSSEL RADACH

Laguna Beach

Letter gets his approval

In response to George L. Dodgson’s letter (Coastline Pilot, Oct. 6) , “Council ‘trinity’ could halt church projects,” I say Amen!

NIKO THERIS

Laguna Beach

Columnist should focus on local surfing

Your exclusive, local, surfing expert and columnist, James Pribram, has written about himself … traveling the world, regaling personal exploits, heretofore unknown. Thurston Middle School students have, since the early ‘70s, been urged to sponsor team surfing; to compete with all the other coastal, middle schools in scheduled contests. For some reason, Thurston teams are only sporadically engaged. Why?

Laguna Beach High School has had their fall 2006 team selected, preparing for their contests with the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. And California Interscholastic Surfing Assn. member middle and high school teams. When will Pribram’s Surfing Soapbox name the names — who won, who ripped? Team rosters. The Brooks Street contest (oldest continuous in the nation) may be, at long last, getting two boy and girl life-size sculptures dedicating the contest site, under City Council authority. Not a word in the Coastline’s Surfing Soapbox.

Scott Finn, Thurston faculty, coaches golf there, surfing for the high school team. How about a history on the Brooks Street contest — when it was founded, by whom, winners by year? Who administers the Brooks Street contest? Who officiates? What about skimmers (world championships), body-boarders and the end-of-summer Kavorkian 5000?

BRUCE S. HOPPING

Laguna Beach

Minuteman Project promotes violence

The first thing we have to remember about the Minutemen is that they propose, defend and create violence. We should not be surprised, therefore, when violence follows them wherever they go.

They have provoked violent acts since they first showed up last year to protest the presence of the Laguna Day Worker Center on Laguna Canyon Road. Their signs proclaim it, their racist taunts carry it and even their logo — of the soldier with his rifle — pictures it. Pedestrians and bicyclists have both been hit by their cars, and several of their supporters have been relieved of weapons before being taken into custody.

We should not be shocked by the attack last month, when two men drove into the site on a Sunday (the one day LDWC staff does not work) and tried to run over the laborers who refused to go to work for them, doing damage to both person and property.

The few Laguna residents who support the Minutemen usually end their letters with the disclaimer that they are non-violent. Their hatred of immigrants carries violence in its very venom, as violence is a necessary and integral part of their philosophy — to deport neighbors, to stop immigration with an armed militia, and to disrupt the peaceful community we live in.

Laguna Beach is an incredibly open and tolerant community, and we will continue to allow residents and nonresidents alike to exercise their constitutional right to protest and demonstrate within our community. But then we should not be surprised when people in the near future are hurt or killed. Someone may live by the rifle, but others may die by it.

DAVID PECK

Laguna Beach

Labor Center opponent misguided

The name of Eileen Garcia should be displayed in banners over Forest Avenue, spelled out in lights on the City Hall lawn and extolled to all the children in Laguna’s schools.

This woman has shown, in spite of much vocal opposition, the courage to stand up for the enforcement of the laws of our land by combating the employment of day laborers in our city, even though, were she successful, many poor people would go hungry and lose their housing; lawns would go unmowed, construction projects unbuilt, trees untrimmed, dishes unwashed, tables uncleared, houses uncleaned and myriad other tasks performed by these people left undone. This takes uncommon courage on her part.

We all, being feeling people, pity the little children dependent upon the hope that their father or mother will find some work that day, that there will be some food to eat that night, that they’ll have a bed to sleep in.

We pity, too, the parents who struggle to provide for the family, not knowing where the next $10 is coming from, with nothing left in their pocket or the larder. It’s enough to sadden the hearts of the rest of us who have the good fortune to have it better, to have some degree of security.

But Eileen Garcia (who tells us that her property tax bill is $22,000 per year), in spite of her awareness of the plight of these people, has the necessary toughness, the dedication to principle, the strength of character, to put all maudlin concerns aside and fight for what’s right, the consequences be damned!

Some of these people may have come here without the proper documents, and so none of them, however guiltless, must be permitted to seek employment with dignity, lest one undocumented one benefit. This is truly “tough love,” and few among us have the stuff it takes to demand that.

So I say, “Hurrah for Eileen; she’s better than us all.” So shout down those who would call her “racist” and “selfish.” Let her praises ring from the hilltops, and let us all thank her for protecting us from...from...?

TERRY TAYLOR

Laguna Beach