Mailbag: We either keep the airshow or not

We either keep the airshow or not (Former Surf City mayor, planning commissioner file to stop city from paying millions to Pacific Airshow, Daily Pilot, June 29). I imagine the present Huntington Beach City Council deemed the show very important to businesses and hotels located on the shoreline and Main Street, where the people it draws spend their money, then go home. Whoever is challenging the show is shortsighted to the economic advantage and taxes it may afford the city.

Peter Anderson
Huntington Beach

Wishing her a speedy recovery

Re “Huntington Beach lifeguard hospitalized with spinal cord injury,” Daily Pilot, July 7:

Hello Elizabeth. Despite our age differences — you are 21 and I am pushing 75 — it seems we share a love of the beach and water polo. We also share serious injuries and hospitalizations.

When I was a junior in high school, I fractured three vertebrae after falling off a cliff in Santa Cruz. Back then, you had two choices after surfing. Walk a mile to the nearest stairs or climb up a cliff. I chose the latter. Halfway up, I fell about 40 feet. Luckily, I landed in a sitting position. Had I landed on my shoulder or head, I probably would have been paralyzed (or worse).

I spent two weeks flat on my back at Stanford Hospital. When I finally was allowed to stand, I needed a nurse under each arm to help me walk six steps to the bathroom. The next day I was released and sent home to recuperate.

Because we had a pool in our backyard, I swam every day for three months. When I returned to school in September, I was in the best shape of my life. So much so, I ended up as a first-team water polo all-star. The following year, I entered USC as a freshman, where one Trojan was an Olympic gold medal swimmer and another was an Olympic all-star water polo player.

I don’t know the extent of your injury, but from what I’ve read, you clearly are a fighter. Because we share common ground, let me offer this advice: Take it one day at a time. Tell yourself tomorrow will be better than today. If you do that, my guess is you’ll be back on the beach or playing water polo before you know it. And if not, call me. I’ll do everything I can to help you recover. Take good care.

Denny Freidenrich
Laguna Beach

H.B. politics have changed

Having served on the Huntington Beach finance board for eight years at the beginning of the century, I am fairly familiar with the city budget-cutting process. Twenty years ago, the city budget was in equally dire straits if not worse. Department heads were asked to propose cuts, in many cases 10%, and these options were forwarded to the city manager and City Council. Cuts to library services were an option back then. Fortunately, a better attuned council majority than this one voted solidly for the community in its budget deliberations at the time. This council majority has taken to turning a blind eye and deaf ear to community desires and needs to be beaten over the head to do the right thing. Twenty years ago, the City Council majority was not an ideological monolith. Today, the solid block of ideological conservatives running our local government has shown little empathy for the needs and concerns of those outside their political ilk. Overwhelming public outrage spared our library services this time, but there was no outrage or sympathy expressed by the mayor and his cronies to the cuts. The community still lives in fear of having its wishes trampled down the road. We still want and deserve better representation than the catering to political cronies and special interests we have witnessed to date.

Tim Geddes
Huntington Beach

O.C. school districts interrelated

Late last year I wrote about how our cultural wars were extending to our public schools, despite the fact that the majority of parents in a recent NPR poll expressed satisfaction with their childrens’ schools. That approval most likely extends to their childrens’ teachers as well. But in a district north of Newport Beach, the Orange Unified School Board recently took it upon themselves to break with tradition and rules and fired their superintendent and assistant superintendent after engaging in a secret meeting. Since then, there has been chaos in the district as further changes in district personnel have taken place, and the second recall in just over two decades has been launched by parents.

From my experience as a retired teacher, the district has been known in educational circles for many years as the most reactionary and the least desirable among educators. In the 1980s it was one of the lowest paying districts for at least a decade, but teachers could not leave because teaching jobs were nowhere to be found. After the first recall, a trust was formed to watch over the retiree’s promised benefits, and relative calm prevailed as more positive and professional board members were elected who brought stability to the district.

After 20 years, thanks to the new board, the school district was thriving and able to hire more quality educators. So when the second recall was launched last fall to remove two board members, the feeling of déjà vu set in. What does this have to do with other cities in the county such as Newport Beach? First of all, these districts and school boards are paid for by local and state taxes, but since 1978, California schools have relied on the state budget for the majority of their support. What happens in other Orange County cities is important because we are linked by common bonds — a concept which became so much more evident during the height of the pandemic. Trends in one part of a county can spread quickly to other parts and in our public institutions we have the right to expect a commonality of behavior. I know about this firsthand because I have lived in one city for almost 50 years and worked in the other for 37. And I must confess that I have become deeply interested and involved in these communities through the people and their public institutions, and sometimes that means by challenging them.

Lynn Lorenz
Newport Beach