OUR LAGUNA: Eglys praised for park service

Retired Judge Paul Egly was lauded Monday night at the Laguna Canyon Conservancy dinner for his past efforts to preserve open space, but his wife, Mayor Jane Egly, was applauded for her vision for the city’s future.

The mayor was the guest speaker at the first conservancy dinner of the New Year. She took the opportunity to give thanks to her husband for marrying her and bringing her to Laguna and for the achievements of environmentalists.

Egly pledged to consider the impacts on the environment on every decision she makes during the last year of her first term on the council. And she urged everyone to vote in 2008.

After her talk, Egly fielded questions and comments from the audience, including a criticism by conservancy President Carolyn Wood that “nothing ever gets done.”

“I disagree, my dear friend,” Egly said. She cited accomplishments from sewer repairs to the construction of the ACT V Maintenance Yard, to the acquisition of Main Beach and the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park; from a reduction in ocean pollution to the construction underway of a senior center; from the formation of a Design Review Task Force to the addition of about 200 parking spaces in the downtown when the old corporation yard is cleared.

Not that Egly thinks that new parking spaces would solve all the problems.

“We will never “” and you are hearing this from a politician “” ever have enough parking,” Egly said in her deepest, most dramatic tones. “We will never, ever have no traffic.”

However, she said, efforts to resolve parking and traffic concerns will continue. Those efforts include working a deal with South Coast Medical Center for use of its property for peripheral parking.

North Laguna resident Jeannette Merrilees, who commandeered the microphone from Egly, proposed some solutions of her own.

“I am happy to hear about the hospital, but we need something like that in North Laguna,” Merrilees said.

She suggested the city could buy or condemn vacant parcels north of Broadway for parking “” which comes to the same thing because you have to pay either way. She also said the school district property could be better regulated.

It is currently a mess, Merrilees said, because “all the little darlings” drive themselves to school.

Merrilees braced Egly with a demand for her opinion of the suggestions.

“They are all good,” said Egly, again demonstrating her political skills. “But it comes down to the cost per space.”

Council members Elizabeth Pearson-Schneider and Toni Iseman have long proposed a shuttle to parking in available spaces on the outskirts of the North Laguna city limits, but that wouldn’t be free either. It would require at least one, but probably more, buses.

“We will continue to look,” Egly said.

Asked about the fate of Vision 2030 recommendations, Egly said she pulls out the report every quarter.

“We haven’t done everything, but we have done quite a bit,” Egly said, citing the formation of the city’s Environmental Committee and improvements in the design review process.

“It is not a living document, but it isn’t a dead document,” Egly said.

Asked to comment on the pretty flowers planted in front of City Hall despite waning water supplies, Egly suggested writing letters to the editors of local newspapers. She pointed out that water-conserving plants had been used to landscape the front of the Laguna Beach County Water District, which also gave a grant to the Laguna Beach Library to relandscape its front and side yards.

Egly said district General Manager Renae Hinchey, who was in the audience, had helped the council think about cutting water use and the city’s dependence on imported water.

Hinchey will be the guest speaker at the February conservancy meeting.

Meantime, Egly said, every time a project is proposed, city officials should look at its impact on the environment and that includes the water supply.

As for the polluted water in Aliso Creek, Egly said the SUPER Project is an effort to clean the creek. She opined that no one wanted to change the creek’s appearance “” as some conservationists fear “” including Athens Group, which is redeveloping the golf course and inn in Aliso Canyon.

Gene Felder asked if the energy consumption for the Athens Group project would be included in the environmental impact report on the project. Egly said she would take a good look at the report.

Egly’s talk was a paean of thanks to the environmentalists who created the greenbelt envisioned by Jim Dilley and others, including her husband, and to those at the dinner who preserved it and protected it, and those who are eager to continue the good work.

“I look around this room and you represent the best of Laguna,” Egly said.

Among the diners: Mayor Pro Tem Cheryl Kinsman, council members Kelly Boyd and Iseman (who had to duck out early for another meeting), Laguna Canyon Foundation board member Andy Castellano, past Seniors President Louise Buckley,and Festival of Arts board member John Hoover, who will take over the operations committee this year in the shuffle of assignments.

Also: Ed Drollinger, minus Kit, who broke her hip in a fall Sunday night and was hospitalized at South Coast Medical Center; former Mayor Wayne Peterson and Arts Commissioner Terry Smith; Barbara Painter, Bette and Ken Anderson; Vera Martinez, and Peter and Ann Weisbrod, who are celebrating the birth of a new granddaughter, Vienna Rose Beaupre, born Dec. 3.

OUR LAGUNA is a regular feature of the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot. Contributions are welcomed. Write to Barbara Diamond, P.O. Box 248, Laguna Beach, 92652; hand-deliver to Suite 22 in the Lumberyard, 384 Forest Ave.; call (949) 494-4321 or fax (949) 494-8979.