MAILBAG - April 27, 2007

Patio smoking up to business owners

Re: Proposed ban on cigarette smoking on patios.

Leave things alone. If you don’t like something, don’t go there. People that own establishments should make their own rules.

JAMES WARD

Rancho Santa Margarita

Coast panel gives checks and balances

Re: Should the California Coastal Commission take preemptive appeals of proposed development projects? (Question of the Week, April 20 Coastline Pilot)

The whole reason for the citizen’s initiative that led to the Coastal Act was that local cities were making choices clearly not in the best interests of the California citizens.

Local municipalities who are frustrated with the Coastal Commission appeals process still often forget that the coast belongs to all of us, and not just the developers and special interests who would convert as much of this precious resource to their own as they could get away with. It’s all about checks and balances in the end.

There are plenty of cities making good decisions consistent with their LCPs and the Coastal Act, resulting in relatively few appeals to the Commission.

Unfortunately, the wealthier communities like Laguna Beach and Malibu are full of people who are used to having their money buy them power, which in the end means undue pressure on local officials to cast a blind eye to the nuances of their own plans.

As we often hear in the coastal conservations community — “We will never save the coast, but we’ll always be saving the coast.”

MARCO GONZALEZ

Solana Beach

State steps in where city falls short

I feel sorry for City Manager Ken Frank (“Commission Comes to Citizens’ Rescue”). Poor Frank, no longer able to single-handedly serve Laguna Beach developers, eliminating world famous environmentally sensitive habitat and endangered species for “just a silly house” or whatever else he deems unworthy.

Granted his conduct is reprehensible, but nonetheless it must be so disappointing for Frank to have the California Coastal Commission take account of his recklessness and — over and over now — seek to prevent Frank and his band from killing off historic creeks and what little is left of Laguna’s coastal resources.

And while Frank is correct that it is very expensive and time-consuming for the state to have to police “his” Laguna Beach, he doesn’t seem to realize that the cat is out of the bag — his gifting public resources to private developers is a game that is now over and done.

MARK MASSARA

San Francisco

Gene Felder’s letter last week telling us how the Orange County toll roads could be quickly converted to freeways hit the nail right on the head.

The bondholders should be paid off by the state right now to not only save taxpayers a lot of money, but to also alleviate traffic on the existing freeways.

Most of the toll roads are under-utilized while nearby freeways are congested. It is unfortunate for O.C. that while most other counties get freeways, O.C. seems to get stuck with toll roads.

We should all be contacting our state senators, assembly persons, and the governor to do exactly as Gene suggested. That is, “If the state is to spend $107 billion total in transportation infrastructure over the next decade, a portion of that should be used to pay off the toll road bondholders and be spent in O.C. improving other routes.”

And the answer to last week’s Coastline question asking, “Should the Coastal Commission take preemptive appeals of proposed development projects?” is NO.

The Coastal Commission is, for the most part, just a bunch of political appointees spending your tax money playing power politics.

There is no logic to having these outsiders deciding anything about homes and businesses in Laguna Beach.

We have a City Council, city specialists, city commissions of all sorts, multiple homeowner associations and throngs of activist citizens to resolve these local issues.

DAVE CONNELL

Laguna Beach

Laguna a sanctuary for people

A friend and I went to Huntington Beach the other day. We had never walked Main Street or the pier. We found interesting shops and cafes, but after a hour or so noticed that almost everyone was anglo. Huntington Beach is homogeneous. Everybody seemed similar, uniform, almost identical.

Walking out on the pier, we saw a few Latinos and Asians, mostly fishing. When we got out on the pier, a Huntington Beach police helicopter circled above Main Street and the pier about 200 feet above us and circled again and again.

It didn’t seem like a very friendly place, considering they are trying to attract more people to the area.

We returned to heterogeneous Laguna and Scandia Bakery and Deli on Forest and sat and watched the rainbow of people who live and visit here — and we were glad to be back. Laguna is more than a bird sanctuary. It’s a sanctuary for people who like people and birds.

ROGER CARTER

Laguna Beach

On toll roads and coastal issues