Sounding Off:

Congratulations and many thanks to Dr. Larry Geise for again caring enough about the park system and open space in Huntington Beach to spend his own effort and money to try to preserve what is left of Central Park open space for the general residents of this city and posterity.

Many thanks as well to Mindy White, who worked tirelessly to preserve the area that would have been taken away by the proposed senior center and gave her all to preserve the area as open space parkland. And lastly, thanks to the many residents who worked with them and donated money to the cause and to the many voters who saw and valued the merits of preserving the area as parkland now and in the future.

I might add that all of these people, many of whom are seniors as I am, should not be characterized as they have been, as just disliking seniors. These people love their parks and believe there were other viable ways of providing a senior center without taking parkland for it.

Some also believed, and thankfully Judge David Velasquez fully concurred, that the city staff, who are paid to know these things, and City Council members, who voted for the project, violated environmental laws and the city’s own statutes and would have used state-mandated funds improperly. To top all of that, the staff and council were warned about all these things and more but went right ahead and expended taxpayer dollars in staff time and resources, put the project on a ballot without providing all the information necessary for an educated vote, took the razor-thin vote as a mandate and approved the flawed project. They all need to be held accountable.

Let us hope, at least and among other things, for the following: 1) The city staff and leadership will have learned their lesson and will not throw good money after bad by appealing clear violations of laws and their own statutes; 2) In the future, the city will properly inform its residents of all the facts and all issues, at least of this magnitude, so as to avoid emotionally based decisions, setting friend against friend, senior against non-senior, the name calling and the general divisiveness among residents that this issue produced; and 3) As soon as possible, a new and upgraded senior center can be built that will at once satisfy the needs of seniors at a level we can afford without impacting the existing resources available for all residents and on which, hopefully, all, or nearly all, of the residents can agree.

BOB WINCHELL is a Huntington Beach resident.