Grateful grandma
Dear ER:
Thank you, thank you to the wonderful team of people who rescued my dear surfing grandson on Sunday, March 29, 2015 from the wild waves at the Manhattan Beach Pier (“Drowning boy rescued from under Manhattan pier,” ER April 9, 2015).  Thank you to outstanding surfers Natalie Anzivino, Brent Bowen and Kyle Dalbey for pulling unconscious Jimmy from the water, putting him on your boards and towing him in. You are awesome heros.
Thanks to LA County Lifeguards, Captain Kenichi Haskett and Lydia for then helping JImmy on shore. Thank you to the ever ready paramedic team including Steve Fairbrother, who treated and transported Jimmy to the Harbour/UCLA Trauma unit. Thanks to Dillon and Crissy Swartzlander for your care and for alerting Jimmy’s parents. Thanks to the extremely skilled trauma team at Harbour/UCLA and to the Long Beach Miller’s Pediatric Rehabilitation Unit for your help. Thank you to Donna Hesse and Peter Doucette for your eyewitness story of what happened on that scary day. Thanks to everyone else who helped that day. Jimmy was in the Jr. Lifeguard program for a few years and learned much about ocean safety but as was reported, anything can happen when you are caught in a current on a wild wave day.
Thank you to Monsignor John Barry, the parishioners of American Martyrs and the many other churches and to the community of friends and neighbors for your heartfelt, caring cards, calls, delicious food, email chains, Easter baskets, gifts, and the support of teachers and staffs at MBIU and Meadows. Most of all thank you all for your many prayers, which made a huge difference in Jimmy’s outcome. I would call it all a miracle. You are all heros and you all rolled together as an amazing team to help Jimmy in this crisis. We deeply appreciate your help. Thank you.
Jimmy had blunt force trauma to his skull, split his board and Lord knows what damage he did to the Pier as he is a tough young man and an amazing dude. He is walking, talking and healing very well. He is now home and has a way to go in quietly mending, so we do appreciate your continuing prayers. On behalf of Jimmy and his family, thank you everyone.
Mary Sikonia
Manhattan Beach
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Move on, mayor
Dear ER
At the upcoming, June 23 Hermosa Beach City Council meeting Mayor Pro Tem Barragan is scheduled to take the mayor’s gavel from Pete Tucker to begin her nine month term as Mayor of Hermosa Beach. Under normal circumstances this would be appropriate.
However, circumstances are not normal in Hermosa. Barragan has announced she is running for the House of Representatives in the 44th District (which does not include Hermosa Beach). The election will be in November 2016, 18 months from now. By all accounts, running for office at this level is virtually a full-time job.
Since her November 2013 election Barragan has worked tirelessly for what she believed was best for Hermosa Beach. Knowing that she will always be committed to what’s best for Hermosa, I believe (and I hope she agrees) that it’s best for the city if Barragan now steps aside and allows the next council member in line to move into the mayor’s chair in June.
With all that lies ahead for our town, Hermosa needs 100 percent of the attention from its elected officials. Please join me in thanking Mayor Pro Tem Barragan for her service to Hermosa and encourage her to do what’s right for The Best Little Beach Town.
Jim Sullivan
Hermosa Beach
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Move on people
Dear ER:
Hey, people, if you really want to keep Hermosa hermosa, take down your banners already. The election was weeks ago.
Steve Kelley
Hermosa Beach
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People in place
Dear ER:
After the March 3 defeat of Redondo Beach Measure B and the overflow crowds attending the March 19 Legado development Planning Commission Public Hearing, Redondo Beach residents, are now keeping a close eye on the May 12 District 3 City Council runoff election between Candace Nafissi and Christian Horvath.
Nafissi has local residents writing about her in emails to friends and neighbors, walking her neighborhoods and running phone banks.
Are residents aware the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce Candidates PAC’s funding of campaign activities for her opponent? Information in a recent, 2015 public financial statements show that a Long Beach public affairs and digital strategy firm, Pear Strategies, has been getting paid to produce mailers and videos and to handle social media for Christian Horvath’s campaign.
One of the Pear partners, Weston LaBarr, just happens to hold the Redondo Beach Chamber position of Director of Government Affairs. While Pear is consulting for the Chamber and supporting the Horvath campaign, Pear is also consulting for the Beverly Hills-based Legado Companies. Pear Strategies is responsible for assisting Legado with public outreach to the Redondo Beach community. Legado has the proposed 1700 S PCH Mixed Use project (at PCH and P V Bl) with 180 apartments and 37,600 sq. ft. of commercial space. This project is pending approval and is scheduled to come before the Planning Commission on May 21.
Isn’t this a big conflict of interest? If elected, Horvath, who is endorsed by the Redondo Beach Chamber, if elected, will be responsible for voting on major development projects like Legado. Nafissi, who supports more reasonable development plans for the City, is running a grassroots campaign with nothing to hide.
Jane and Jeff ABrams
Redondo Beach
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A whiff of Washington
Dear ER:
I spent the early part of my career working in local and national politics. Despite its crucial role, our national politics has devolved into a brutal and mean-spirited business that relies on damaging and wasteful tactics. This may seem academic, but it means that nothing gets done. This past election cycle in Redondo Beach made me feel like I was back in Washington. To be sure, the AES plant and waterfront redevelopment is a looming issue for the city. It’s an issue large enough and complicated enough to allow for over-simplification and misrepresentation of options. Those are two strategies that have come to define party politics nationally and have created an environment in which progressive solutions are impossible. It’s why we mistrust Washington and it’s what’s on our doorstep in Redondo Beach.
I was confident, as were level headed people like former councilman Bob Pinzler, that Measure B was a weigh station along the road to redevelopment, not the final plan. There are Internet trolls and local, one-issue belligerents who will dispute that all day long, pointing to a never-ending litany of dire potentialities, but it doesn’t matter. While those people are getting pale and typing furiously, there are people actually working to move the community forward, meeting with constituents and partners, dealing with new issues as they arise and working towards solutions for old issues. Leaders lead. Measures pass and get amended by impact studies that lead to new measures which impact and override old measures. Leaders wake up every morning, balancing options, opportunities and setbacks in a way that nets out best for the city and its residents. That’s how government works.
What prompted me to write this letter is my dismay in seeing how that spirit of aggression, obfuscation and party politics, rather than subside after the Measure B vote, has accelerated in the unfolding of the District Three city council runoff.
We live in District Two, but immediately after the run-off was announced my wife and I received an unsolicited email from our councilman Bill Brand using fear, blatant misrepresentation and obfuscation tactics to raise funds for one of the district three run-off candidates, Candace Nafissi. I understand that Brand and Nafissi are entitled to disagree with her run-off opponent Christian Horvath, but the tactics being used were untruthful, weak-minded and sought to exploit the base fear of Redondo Beach citizens. That’s not leadership.
Based on that email, I looked more closely at the District Three run-off and was dismayed at the level of coordinated and blatant factual misrepresentation coming from not just Nafissi and Brand, but what appears to me to be a state-level political party apparatus.
Their strident oversimplification and comic vilification of Horvath belies a deep disrespect for the voters of District Three (and Redondo Beach residents generally) and a win-at-all-costs, facts-don’t-apply-to-winners mentality that has poisoned our national politics. I’m not OK with that at any level, least of all a neighborhood level.
I encourage any reader and the South Bay newspapers to fact check the documentation littering District Three stoops. Particularly as it relates to the representation of the other candidate’s positions and experience. There’s too much here to document, but I will spare room for one example.
One flyer quoted U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu as saying that Nafissi had, “worked on my staff from 2005-13.” She did not. It’s an easy fact-check. Lieu didn’t say that. Did someone really fabricate a quote from a U.S. Congressman? Why? I can understand being artful with language under pressure, but as part of everyday business?
This doesn’t lead me to believe that Nafissi is a bad person, but it does lead me to believe that, at best, she’s letting others wield more influence within her campaign than any sense of truthfulness, duty or respect that she may have personally.
This all makes me wish that I lived a few streets up in District Three. But alas, I’ll have to write a letter to the editor and look forward to the next city council election in district two.
Owen Leimbach
Redondo Beach
Too big for Redondo
Dear ER:
I’ve been doing a lot of research on the two candidates in the District 3 runoff, and I came to an important conclusion: Candace Allen Nafissi would be the perfect candidate for Los Angeles City Council. Nafissi works for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, so she’s up to date on issues affecting the City of LA. She has been featured in a LA-area magazine and most of her endorsements are from outside of Redondo Beach. Further, she’s taken master’s level classes, and she herself has said that she’s too good for Leadership Redondo, as she has a better working knowledge than anything they could ever teach her. Clearly Redondo Beach is just too small for her, and she’s a better fit for a bigger city like Los Angeles. She’s only been living in District 3 since July, so another move wouldn’t be difficult.
Christian Horvath, on the other hand, has lived in Redondo Beach for 10 years, owns a small business in Redondo, has been on the Board of the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce and even won the Redondo Beach Volunteer of the Year Award for all of his community involvement. Horvath is the local choice and the right choice for District 3.
Allen Vick
Redondo Beach
