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Letters
Watered down
Dear ER:
I whole-heartedly agree with Beach Cities Health District Trustee Carol Frey’s vision of an aquatic center (to be financed by the health district) to be built on the Metlox site (ER Letters Nov. 16, 2000). This is almost the same vision that over 3,000 Manhattan Beach voters envisioned last June when they voted yes on Measure 2000-A. That ill-fated attempt by many to re-zone the public owned land from commercial to public use was soundly defeated by a 2 to1 margin.
Now our city council with a two-thirds mandate is on the fast track to put as much retail, hotel and office development on the site as they legally can. The people have said they want development traffic and congestion, not a healthy environment in a natural setting.
It’s really too bad that the BCHD didn’t support Measure A when they had the chance, before the election. Maybe if they had we could be working today to bring on aquatic park to reality instead of going through the motions to approve Manhattan Beach’s latest massive development, the Tolkin project.
Those who cried wolf, claiming "there’s no money anywhere to develop the site for public use," were obviously wrong in their stupid, short sightedness. Two-third of the people listened to and believed that wisdom. The will of the people has spoken. People want school district headquarters, a hotel and shops, for all to spend all their money in. That’s what’s important, the majority has said.
Only in Manhattan Beach does one’s well being mean so little to so many. Good-bye aquatic center, you were never meant to be. Too bad the voters were led astray.
Dawn Clifton
Manhattan Beach
Going dry
Dear ER:
Eager to add to his substantial income, Hermosa City Attorney Mike Jenkins is ensuring ever more billable hours by advocating laws and moratoriums based on political rather than legal justification. Who can blame him? Like his predecessor, Cassy Vose, Jenkins will realize much more profit by defending the city from likely Constitutional challenges than if he were to fulfil his role as an independent legal advisor. Hermosa’s recent restaurant moratorium, which summarily prohibits a legal use in a commercial zone, is a conspicuous example.
Owners and lessees have a great deal invested in commercial property. Elimination of a property right based on an "emergency" that has yet to be explained will only invite litigation. Perhaps more damaging than wasted city funds toward attorney fees, is the uncertainty created from the City Council’s impulsive down zoning. Needed capital to maintain and upgrade commercial property will be redirected elsewhere, as investors wisely avoid Hermosa’s political and legal quagmire.
Robert Benz
Hermosa Beach
Dear ER:
I must point out that that your November 30, 2000 cover photo relating to World AIDS day was actually taken at the recent Veterans' Day eve ceremony held at the Hermosa Beach Veterans' Memorial. Photographer Courtney Creal did a spectacular job with the photo of a Veteran lighting a memorial candle for fellow Vets. Easy Reader should be commended for covering these stories. Both war and AIDS have prematurely taken the lives of loved ones, but please don't dishonor either group of by simply inserting a convenient photo.
Steve Crecy
Hermosa Beach Veterans' Memorial Committee.
Sue LAX
Dear ER:
For the better part of 36 months now, the City of Hermosa Beach and its neighbor cities have been deluged with jets flying low over our cities late at night. These fly-overs are not a mistake on the part of LAX (Los Angeles World Airways) or the FAA. No, these jets are directed to fly over our beach cities by the FAA in order to save fuel and time so the costs can be lowered. We hear them every night around bedtime, but most of us ignore them as an end product of urban growth and transportation.
Prior to 1997, all flights taking off or landing at LAX flew on a east-west line over the Pacific Ocean and then turned north or south only after these jets were well out over the ocean. Noise and safety issues were minimal to the surrounding cities of El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and PV. Since that time however, the number of flights over these beach cities has increased approximately four times in number. Late night landings have been directed by the FAA and LAWA to fly various approach patterns over these South Bay cities to avoid long fuel consuming approaches on the old east-west leg. These government agencies might also be testing the patience and nerves of the residents as to when they will decide "enough is enough." The result has been a constant number of low flying jets overhead and major increases in noise over our residential communities.
These flights consist of both passenger and freight aircraft taking off and landing late at night and in many instances well below the minimum safe altitudes specified in the FAA’s own take-off and landing regulations.
LAX and the FAA have denied doing this by taking the position that if the affected cities and its residents can’t prove that incursions are occurring, then by their ‘strange’ logic these are non-occurring events. An anti-Airport Noise citizen advisory committee was appointed by the Hermosa Beach City Council to study the noise problems and report back on whether the committee believed that the facts it gathered were sufficient to support a law suit against LAX and the FAA. The Committee completed its studies and concluded that legal action should be been taken as early as August, 2000. No legal action was taken.
The committee, whose membership includes a diverse group of professional engineers, lawyers and residents of Hermosa Beach. Its chairman Mike Cassidy, along with Councilmen Sam Edgerton and JR Revitsky, sit on a LAWA Advisory Round Table along with representatives of the other South Bay Cities. They have been lied to, put-off, and generally squelched any time hard data is requested on the number of takeoffs and landings occurring over the South Bay.
In the meantime, the City has decided to purchase a $100,000 radar detection device that is supposed to be used to document the location of aircraft flying over the City. But the FAA carefully avoids putting aircraft in the same area more than once or twice.
A lawsuit needs to be brought requiring an injunction stopping these illegal take-offs and landing approaches over the South Bay.
The citizenry is being stonewalled by a large and cleaver bureaucratic agency consisting both of the FAA and on a smaller scale by the City of Los Angeles and its Mayor, who desperately want LAX to be able to expand the number of flights to four times the number that are flying over our cities today. In fact, the LAWA 2015 plan will, once approved by the City of LA, will create a super-airport. The current facility will be enlarged to accommodate additional taxiways, and high-speed ground and rail transportation accessible from the 91 and 405 Freeways all at the expense of the South Bay homeowners living adjacent to this "Airport Disneyworld."
Only lip service has been provided by LAWA to proposals seeking expansion of smaller regional airports, including Palmdale, Ontario or El Toro. The City of Los Angeles is only too happy to allow all growth necessary in air traffic to occur at LAX. The more the better, so far as Mayor Riordon and the LA Chamber of Commerce business base enhancement are concerned.
The Hermosa Beach City Council did request the City Attorney and an environmental consulting law firm begin to study the legal and environmental issues prepatory to bringing a lawsuit against LAWA and the FAA. But so far nothing has resulted from these legal feasibility studies.
LAWA and the FAA will continue to direct jet aircraft over our homes if no challenge is brought. We the homeowners will be guilty as well for not requiring that immediate legal action be taken to stop this on-going trespass of our airspace.
This is the time for municipal leadership to step up to the plate. But I fail to sense a majority of the Hermosa City Council is willing to support a suit challenging LAX’s and the FAA’s actions. The residents of Hermosa Beach must demand these elected leaders unify and have the guts to demand that a legal challenge move forward immediately.
If the Council fails to act, these giant bureaucratic agencies will have won and the South Bay will be the big loser for the loss of the quality of life as we know it today, and worse if a disaster in the form of an air crash occurs in our back yards.
The safety issue, while not spoken of very much, is not a question of whether it could happen in our own neighborhood, but rather a question of when it will happen. Unless the City moves forward immediately with a legal challenge to LAX’s expansion plans, we will regret ever having chose to live in the South Bay.
JH Deutsch
Member of Anti LAX Impact Advisory Committee
City of Hermosa Beach