MAILBAG - Jan. 10, 2008

Costa Mesa can provide skate park example

Since Huntington Beach must demolish the current skate park and is unsure what to do about a new one, I suggest they need only look a few miles down the road for an example of the perfect solution — Costa Mesa’s Volcom Skate Park!

Costa Mesa’s Volcom Skate Park is an exemplary park and Huntington Beach should take a clue and follow their best in class practices in this regard.

This skate park is a clean, safe environment for kids. The park was set up with strict rules that are enforced (kids must wear safety gear, no profanity, no littering, etc). The police and parks/recreation staff stop by periodically to enforce this, but it literally only takes a few minutes of their time.

Huntington Beach has a police station across the street from Worthy Park that could wisely spend a few minutes as part of its beat to enforce the codes. This would eliminate any rif-raf some are concerned about.

Volcom sponsored the park, so I assume they have and may continue to help financially in trade for their name on the park. Getting a sponsor from a skateboard company for a Huntington Beach skate park would help with the financial concerns others have.

It seems to me the current park is used a lot by the kids. Do we really want to take more away from them? It seems the kids have so few places these days. Perhaps if we could implement a park in the manner that Costa Mesa has we could have a wonderful free sports activity available for our youth.

I encourage anyone who thinks a skate park would bring a “bad element” to stop by the Volcom Skate Park in Costa Mesa, off Arlington Road by the county Fairgrounds, and check it out. The kids there are absolutely respectful and follow the rules.

Wake up Huntington Beach! It can be done, it has been done, and Surf City should follow the example!

KIM WEBB

Huntington Beach

City Council leadership needs improving

In his letter to the Independent (“Five year redevelopment plan lacks real vision,” Jan. 3), John Scott has it exactly right about the lack of vision that has gone into the city’s redevelopment plan for southeast Huntington Beach.

We are living right on the Pacific Coast, on land that is potentially among the most valuable and beautiful real estate in the nation. Yet, for some strange reason the city has abandoned the great potential of this waterfront land and has relegated it to the ugliest kind of industrial uses. It’s not surprising that our neighbors in Newport Beach call Huntington Beach a “Seaside Santa Ana.”

Huntington Beach needs dynamic and courageous leaders to clean the mess that southeast Huntington Beach has become. We need a City Council that will stand up for the citizens and will not kowtow to powerful corporate interests.

The oil companies made the dangerous toxic dump at Ascon, and they also made fabulous profits from their oil drilling. They are responsible for the mess. They must clean it up completely. It’s not an ordinary dump. It is dangerous to the health of the community. It is cowardly and absolutely unacceptable for the city to let the responsible oil companies off the hook by saying it is “cost prohibitive.”

Oil companies right now are raking in unheard-of profits. We learned in kindergarten to clean up our own mess. It’s a very simple ethical concept.

The lack of vision of some civic officials is why they allow the dreary status quo of projects like the ugly old dinosaur, the AES power plant, with its destructive once-through-cooling.

It’s why they welcome Poseidon, despite its failed desalination technology, into the city.

This foggy eyesight and lack of courage is why so many city planners and council members approve every development project that comes before them.

It’s why they are willing to let off the oil companies so easily. This lack of leadership is the reason why it took a grassroots group of hundreds of citizens to stop the OC Sanitation District from dumping half-treated sewage into the ocean in which we swim and surf.

There is an opportunity for a greater future for our city, and John Scott is right: We need leadership with a vision. Let’s hope the November City Council election gives us the opportunity to elect leaders that have a truly great vision for our city.

MARINKA HORACK

Huntington Beach