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Letters
Searching for a "reasonable person"
Dear ER:
Its deja vu all over again. Flipping through the channels, I found a special
Hermosa City Council meeting devoted to gripes about last summer's Fourth of
July, people talking, jazz music, barbeques, and anything else which might pop
into an idle mind.
The result: the council proposes mandating a special permit if you have more than 100 people over for a meeting.
Why 100? How about 50? Is there a two-for-one credit for over the age 60? The stupidity, un-enforceability, and pure arrogance of this constitutionally questionable move is reminiscent of past cynical councils. What's next? Perhaps the reemergence of Hermosa's crooked former police chief to head up this new "party check" patrol; busting into homes suspected of having a bunch of people to take attendance and check bathrooms? Unfortunately, the humor is lost on business owners, who can now expect ramifications in the City's quest for the Gestapo days of old.
Dismissing police reports to the contrary, the council elevated isolated complaints as justification for changing law and policy for all; anointing a "Reasonable Person" to decide how loud is too loud. While considering closing the beach in order to reduce "crowds," its questionable that the Council knows what is "reasonable."
Trading the objectivity of a sound meter for the subjectivity of "perceptible noise" will only further denigrate neighborhood relations. Presumably, a single complaint from xenophobe could sanction a neighbor's genre of music. The reason the sound meter is such a problem for some, is that the meter doesn't lie.
Given the fact that Hermosa is the densest City in California with an average age 34, the Council should draft a law prohibiting anyone with too much time on their hand, from complaining about noise, young people or people having fun. Otherwise, the council should concentrate on more useful initiatives, like the storm water diversion project, which was supposed to happen last July.
Burgie Benz
Former councilman
Hermosa Beach
Searching for a reasonable solution
Dear ER:
It was good to hear from former councilman Benz, again. Unfortunately, the only
time we seem to have the privilege of hearing from our old friend and colleague,
it is in print and it is always negative. Still, I always welcome his input,
knowing as I do, that his passion stems from deeply held beliefs and convictions.
Of course he and I have had variations of this discussion many times over our
time together on the council and have recognized that we must respectfully agree
to disagree on this subject. Nonetheless, his questions and accusations merit
the courtesy of a response.
I guess the first point that needs to be made is that this special meeting was not an idea we created but was requested (nay, demanded) by a large number of our citizens, those same people who we were elected to be represented. There was a large and vociferous reaction to the events of the last 4th of July celebration. So it was that we found ourselves in a full chambers, listening to the demands of our citizens that something be done to protect them from the abuse, property damage etc. that came at the hands of drunken revelers.
Which brings us to the core of our disagreement. Benz has always been the loudest voice championing the issue of personal freedom and the right to live free from unnecessary intrusions of government. In this, he makes a passionate and persuasive argument, one with which I sided with on several instances when we were on the council together. However, I believe that it is an issue of balance. The rights and freedoms offered by our society have to be balanced by equal responsibilities. Whereas people should have the right to party with their friends and fully enjoy "the pursuit of happiness," there is a responsibility to see that they do not unnecessarily deny others their right to the same happiness. This seems to be the critical point that has been missed. Responsibility without freedom is tyranny but freedom without responsibility is anarchy.
I would agree that these measures we have been forced to take are far from perfect. This is not the sort of thing that government does particularly well. But when individuals only want to exercise their freedom and refuse to acknowledge their responsibilities, government is required, by its citizens, to step in and enforce those responsibilities. While admittedly, these enforcement efforts are probably a little ham-handed, they could have easily been avoided had the revelers shown even a modicum of concern for anything besides their own personal gratification.
We have been advised to use the "reasonable man" theory because it, unlike the seemingly more objective decibel method, stands up in court. As Benz has said numerous times, there is no sense having a law on the books if it is unenforceable.
Police have always had the ability to shut the party down. Unfortunately that occurs after the damage has already been done. The idea of the permit is to require some common sense things like adequate bathrooms for a crowd of several hundred. I am sure that even Benz would agree that a neighbor's yard shouldn't be filled with puke, piss, and beer bottles just so some pencilneck and his "guests" can have "fun."
In conclusion, I would suggest that if people seek to act like animals, with no concern for anything or anyone except themselves, it is they, not we, who belong camping in the wilds on the 4th of July.
John Bowler
Councilman
City of Hermosa Beach
Clifton for columnist
Dear ER:
I have two suggestions. The first for Easy Reader Official Letter Writer Dawn
Clifton, who subjects us nearly every week to her observations. Either convince
the Easy Reader to hire you -- you virtually have a byline column anyway --
or run for public office. The second suggestion is for the Easy Reader to use
a semblance of editorial judgment and dedicate less space to the same individuals
time and time again. Which, come to think of it, with the printing of this letter,
you're on your way to doing.
Doug Piwinski
Hermosa Beach
Dear ER:
Listening to the complaints about noise and crowds in Hermosa, one is struck
by the unintended consequences of policymaking. The city can't use parking and
access to ward off the July 4 invasion of undesirables because of the coastal
commission, though the louts we want to keep out have no interest in the ocean.
The neighborhood noise from bars is largely coming from people who must stand outside to smoke. The taxes to deter drinking and driving are now detested because they are hailed by shouting revelers.
It would be amusing if it weren't so...loud.
Tim Ferguson
Hermosa Beach
Ta ta Tawa
Dear ER:
I am writing to bid a fond farewell to Easy Reader reporter John Tawa. I have
grown to respect John tremendously, both as a journalist and as a genuinely
nice human being. I particularly appreciate the fact that John was always willing
to take the time to interview people in person, rather than through a quick
e-mail or phone call. Also, John went behind-the-scenes to do in-depth reporting
and not mere thirty-second sound bites.
On a personal note, many readers may not know that John would, in my estimation, qualify as a candidate for Father of the Year. He has put the needs of his family first, and the results have been extraordinary.
On behalf of many John Tawa fans (and I know there are many of us), we wish John only the best, although I know with certainly that I will feel a true sense of loss each Thursday.
Joyce and Bill Fahey
Manhattan Beach
Editor's Note: Tawa has been Easy Reader's Manhattan Beach news and beach cities sports editor for the past two years. He is moving on to Torrance-based Student Sports Publications, where he will be allowed to indulge himself full time in his first love - sports writing.
Warm heart for cold nose
Dear ER:
Recently I had to put my dog to sleep. She was 16 years old. This was one of
the hardest decisions I had to make. My dog "Poochie" was one of my best companions
and my family loved her very much. She was taken to Hermosa Animal Hospital.
The staff handled this delicate appointment with warm and caring feelings. A
week later, they sent me a sympathy card, signed by the entire staff. The staff
at Hermosa Animal Hospital is the greatest. I will remember their kindness for
a long, long time.
Sharon Wickwire
Redondo Beach
Why Gore?
Dear ER:
I would like to read in John Jackson's Shadow Government column why I should
vote for Al Gore and the Democratic party. Why is the platform of the party
is better for the future of this country. And I would like you to skip the pro
life, pro choice issue because it is only one issue...and this is the one that
I hear everyday...it is old stuff. And I would like to read this without any
attacks on the other side, or how bad Bush is and his dad was...you know what
I mean. Just positive ideas...It is a big assignment, I know, and it is not
going to be easy but I am positive you can do it.
Lise Coté
Palos Verdes
The Heights of Compromise
Dear ER:
I would like to second letter writer Jerry O'Connor's suggestion that we name
the community on the east side of Sepulveda Blvd. Manhattan Heights. My original
proposal, East Hills, sparked lively neighborhood debate about what our name
should be. Some neighbors favored a name without "East," while some did not
support being the second "Hill" section. Jerry's suggestion addresses both concerns
and also fits out community perfectly. So, how about it, folk? Manhattan Heights?
Joyce Fahey
Manhattan Beach
Multiple choice
Dear ER:
East Manhattan
Manhattan Beach East
MB East
MBE
EOS - East of Sepulveda
Sepulveda Hills
East Hills
Manhattan Hills
Karyn Zoldan
by e-mail
Neighborly neighborhood
Dear ER:
We live at 213 South Aviation Boulevard in Manhattan Beach. We think that "East
Hills" has a nice sound to it. We like our neighborhood and find that our neighbors
are helpful. They take our empty trash cans in from the street, watch our property
when we are out of town, knock on our door when they see that we forgot to turn
off our car lights... There are often car accidents on Aviation Boulevard. Neighbors
help victims by calling 911 and offering first aid, and comfort.
Charles and Joyce Golden
Manhattan Beach
Lingua Lobster
Dear ER:
"The lobster must of known..." ("On the Waterfront" ER September 7, 2000). Now
really, I know it sounds like "must of" when someone is talking. But someone
on the staff of a newspaper should know that it's supposed to be "must have".
Let's be careful with our language. It gets bastardized enough as it is without
newspapers adding to it.
Chela Cowden
Redondo Beach
Tucker up
Dear ER:
I too enjoy Marc Tucker's right-on cartoons. After reading the "Easy Reader"
for 30 years, I think the only improvement needed would be to add another weekly
cartoon, drawn by the multi-talented Marc, of course. A bit of controversy is
just what the status quo loving South Bay needs and I'm sure he's just the artist
to supply it. Is that the chant of "Hire Marc, hire Marc, hire Marc" that I
hear in the background?
Dawn Clifton
Manhattan Beach
Dear ER:
We've all been shocked recently by tragic stories of family violence-a man who
shot and killed his wife and then himself at a crowded car dealership; another
man who cruelly abused his young son, choking him into unconsciousness. These
are disturbing images we'd rather not dwell on. After all, we live in a beautiful
and relatively safe community. We take pride in our clean beaches, upscale restaurants
and shops, and fine schools.
But it's time to realize that we cannot make domestic violence go away by ignoring it. It's time to realize that if one woman is battered, if one child is abused, if one person is caught in the cycle of violence, then this is not a safe community. It's time to say domestic violence is unacceptable.
Please join Beach Cities Health District and a coalition of local agencies in fighting domestic violence. During the month of October, to commemorate Domestic Violence Awareness Month, BCHD is sponsoring a series of educational workshops and community events to raise awareness about the problem of family violence.
Please call the Health District at 374-3426, ext. 110 for a list of activities, if you are living with domestic violence, there is help. Please call the 24-hour hotline at 1736 Family Crisis Center at 379-3620.
Jo Ann Woodward, RNNP
Beach Cities Health District
Redondo Beach
Dear ER:
John Jackson (Shadow Government, September 21st) pronounces his points in opposition
to Proposition 38 "unanswerable". Behold, the answer to the "unanswerable."
It is not the "same thing exactly" as Jackson argues to say, that a child "is
trapped in American citizenship" as in a public school. There are no compulsory
citizenship laws. But there are compulsory school attendance laws. Citizenship
can be acquired or revoked at the individual's choice. Without Proposition 38,
the only choice available to families is to move or pay private school tuition
- an economic burden that removes even that choice from our most disadvantaged
children. By definition you are trapped when you cannot move.
Furthermore, it does not take a public school to form citizens. It is the family, not Jackson's public schools that "are incomparably the most important agencies for creating our sense of citizenship in childhood and exercising it as adults." The family is the core institution of human society - the training ground for all other social institutions. In the secure stable environment of a loving mother and father vulnerable children are raised to productive adulthood.
Family is the first school that prepares us to participate in the religious, civic and political life of our society, training us in the virtues that enable us to place the common good before our own private interests.
Proposition 38 recognizes that fact by amending the California Constitution with these words: "Parents are best equipped to make decisions for their children and have the right to select the educational setting that will best serve the ... needs of their child."
Rather than slavish conformity to the status quo, a truly compassionate response to the "plight of parents who must send their children to under-funded, inadequate and even unsafe public schools" is to vote YES on Proposition 38.
G. Rick Marshall
Torrance
New gifts
Dear ER:
A note to those of you who are more than comfortable and give generously to
your charities of choice. May I suggest a different way of giving? There are
people around you who, given what you might consider chump change, could make
a significant lifestyle change. It could be the money for a car or enough for
a down payment on a house. It could be tuition so your housekeeper can get her
kid out of that awful neighborhood school, or clothing money so a shy 12-year-old
can show off some glad rags.
There are a thousand ways that a chunk of money at a given moment can change the history of a person or a family. Saying to someone that you have noticed his or her circumstance is a gift in itself. And then the unselfish gift becomes a gift to the other and ones self.
David Wachtfogel
Manhattan Beach
Vouching for vouchers
Dear ER:
Oh, the high drama in the beach cities! Will Manhattan give Dolan his lordly
$10K/year "incentive" to keep him at his already lavishly paid post? Could that
possibly entice him to remain at his sinecure??? Or should he just be allowed
to plunder the coffers at will?
After all, we couldn't possibly think of having someone else do whatever it is he does to facilitate....hmmm, I don't know, the already moneyed?
And over in Redondo, will the council vote itself a quite significant raise in salary? Could it possibly? Oh the burning anticipation, the humanity! How could a mere citizen even hope to predict these things? I mean, they're the sole arbiters in the matter: of the myriad ways in which they might go, which will they choose? It's just too cosmically enigmatic!
My poor groundling brain can't cope!
And the answers are: yes and oh hell yes! They WILL give Dolan (one of their own) that outlandish sum in MB and Redondo's council WILLl take the 20+% raise! Whew! Thank Gawd that's over! The suspense was killing me! I'm all wrung out! Man, they actually both voted in the affirmative on questions they themselves posed and stood in sole arbitorship on whether or not they'd give themselves more of the city's monies. Gee, who'da thunk?
Who needs the Ahmanson? We get our own monthly farces right here at home. Living in the beach cities is a never-ending parade of side-benefits.
Marc Tucker
Manhattan Beach
Dear ER:
In everyone in the beach cities a corporate flunkie? No sooner do we finally
have letter writer David Wachtfogel shed his All Authority Figures Are Gods
propaganda and display one human value in his critique of BCHD than letter writer
Mary Lackides poses a smoke screen of base diversionary rhetoric.
For Mrs. Lackides info, at one point, when we were a good deal saner, the entire raison d'etre for such operations as BCHD (formerly known as "hospitals") was to be constantly prepared to aid people in life-threatening and series conditions. After that, they attended to other lesser medical problems but usually left such to a GP. This was known as 'prioritization.'
Then came businesses disguised as medical concerns, calling themselves HMO's, and the entire arena began transforming into profit-only, zero output (care), maximum input (monies) embarrassments, as witness the sad short history of HMO's, which have been the dismantlers of hospitals.
BCHD is one such corporation, presently gobbling up real estate at an horrific rate (something hospitals would never do) for speculation purposes and elaborate, long-term, immensely profitable buy-back schemes with cities like Manhattan Beach.
The bells-and-whistles dumbshows BCHD puts on are all profit-only activities thoroughly unrelated to a hospital's primary purpose, and almost every single "health enhancement" patty-cake exercise is something the target clients could do on their own or through reading a book on exercise/nutrition/whatever for guidance.
The area media rarely publishes any criticism in business conglomerates like BCHD, as witness the Garrison Frost puff-series a short while ago (let's see that make it past the editing process!), so it would behoove citizens to pay attention to Mr. Wachtfogel's needed but lukewarm criticisms and ignore the flak-catching of Mrs. Lackides. They, the residents, have no idea how much they're losing with bloodless automatons like BCHD.
Steven Francis
Hermosa Beach
Dear ER:
I wonder if any more American athletes will disgrace themselves and further
jeopardize the already tarnished image of the U.S. Olympic Movement?
Gary Hall's needless threat to smash the Aussie swimmers like guitars proved to be largely vacuous bravado. Amy Van Dyken vowed to "leave a big spit" in Inge de Bruijn's lane, then intimated deBruijn was a man after losing to the Dutch speedster. Marion Jones' contemptuous dismissal of all her competitors as unworthy and irrelevant, including her teammates, was arrogant and insulting.
Despite the medals, their egos have exceeded their achievements. Petty athletic tyrants could learn much from the genuine heroes who never lose and always win with honor and distinction in the Special Olympics.
Larry Fox
Redondo Beach
Dear Easy Reader:
The other day, my son, a senior at Mira Costa, came to me saying he needed $75
for a textbook for his AP Statistics class.
With two sons, one of whom has already graduated from Mira Costa, I've shelled-out plenty of funds for science lab fees and workbooks, but I was shocked that Mira Costa-a public school-is now requiring parents to pay for textbooks. According to my son, this is because he's enrolled in an AP course and not a regular math course.
I pay a substantial amount of both property and income taxes. When we recently remodeled our home, I paid out thousands for a required school tax, just like every builder of a new or remodeled home does-and there's certainly no shortage of those in the beach areas.
And Mira Costal can't afford textbooks for their brightest math students?
Scott Alden
Hermosa Beach
Dear ER:
Want to build a new housing tract in Long Beach? You'll need city approval of
your tract map. And approval is supposed to be granted only if your planned
subdivision receives positive "findings" on seven requirements in five areas:
conformance to the city's general and specific plans, proper density, environmental
issues, physical suitability of the site for the type of development, and easements.
One of those required findings is especially significant for a controversial proposal to construct homes adjacent to Oil Operators' contaminated site on Baker Street in the Wrigley area. That finding must confirm "THAT THE DESIGN OF THE SUBDIVISION OR THE TYPE OF IMPROVEMENT IS NOT LIKELY TO CAUSE SERIOUS PUBLIC HEALTH OR SAFETY PROBLEMS."
Here is the city planning staff's finding as originally presented to the Planning Commission: "Negative impacts to the general welfare and quality of life of the public are foreseen as a result of this development. These impacts relate to noise, unhealthful air, lack of open space, increased traffic, and odors from the water/oil reclamation site. The residents of the proposed development would not have a quality, safe and enjoyable living environment. Thus a positive finding can not be made."
But this was the city's finding for that same property just 17 months later: "No public health or safety hazards are anticipated to be associated with the proposed subdivision or improvement." You might think that something changed in the neighborhood that made for a different environment. No, except for increased truck traffic on the two nearby freeways. Or maybe more mitigation measures were added to the proposal to protect residents? No, but for some inexplicable reason, the city even dropped a requirement that the developer build a sound wall and plant a number of trees to protect the new subdivision from the adjacent 405 Freeway.
Another finding by city staff illustrates how Long Beach puts developers before residents: "The possibility of (a) traffic accident spilling over and affecting the proposed project is an imminent danger waiting to occur"--yet no wall or trees. Clearly, developer profit is a higher priority than resident safety.
This project was fully entitled in the mid 90s, but the tract map has expired and new approvals are needed to revive the development. Why is Councilman Grabinski, elected as a champion of our neighborhoods, now giving this development such strong support?
Richard Gutmann
Long Beach