S for schools
Dear ER:
As 32-year homeowners and residents on Silverstrand Avenue, in what is considered an “impacted area” for the proposed new North School on 25th Street, we say “Yes on Measure S.” The $59 million Hermosa Beach City School Board Facilities Bond Measure will be on the June 7 ballot. Not only will this measure provide funds for much needed classroom space for our severely overcrowded schools, it is an opportunity for Hermosa Beach to build a brand new, state-of-the-art, shining star, environmentally sustainable municipal building for all of us to point to with pride. Our children deserve it, our community needs it, and we are confident that the generous and thoughtful community that we are will be able to mitigate any traffic and other impacts anticipated by our North School area neighbors. Let’s do the right thing and vote “Yes on Measure S!”
Dency and Moira Nelson
Hermosa Beach
S for stupid
Dear ER:
Hermosa Beach’s good schools add to property values and safe neighborhoods. We are fortunate to have schools rated in the top five percent of the state. If the Hermosa School bond passes, the school district will tear down and rebuild North School to accommodate up to 500 students. This location is a bad choice for a new school. The streets are too narrow for two cars to pass at one time. Three of the feeder streets don’t have sidewalks, other streets have cars blocking half the sidewalk, putting the children at risk. It is not a central location for children to walk to. Hermosa should use Valley School as its central elementary and move the junior high back to Pier Avenue. Keeping schools centrally located fits with Hermosa’s desire to be carbon neutral. Please don’t pass a bond that will have a payback of $127 million until we have a workable plan for all Hermosa Beach students.
Blair Smith
Hermosa Beach
Opportunity for parking
Dear ER:
Manhattan Beach residents overwhelmingly want to keep the “small town character” that makes Manhattan Beach so desirable. Even the City’s General Plan calls for “small town character” and businesses, which serve the residents. Somehow the Downtown Draft Strategic Plan offers an “opportunity” for a tourist center and businesses that draw people from miles away. Residents said no additional parking downtown and definitely no large scale parking lots. Yet, there is a proposal to build a new city hall with three stories of parking underground. That means more cars, more traffic/congestion, more people and other undesirable issues.
Residents stated no mid-block crosswalks. These would negatively impact parking and are unnecessary, yet the draft plan includes them in two separate chapters. Is anyone in City Hall listening to the residents?
We, the residents, need our City Staff/Council to listen to the residents displeasure with the draft Downtown Strategic Plan and act accordingly before things get worse.
Jon Chaykowski
Manhattan Beach
Bag the bag ban
Dear ER:
While Hermosa’s storm drains spew plastic ladened rivers of toxic brew from every rainstorm, folks who rarely venture to the beach celebrate the symbolism of the ban on plastic grocery bags. Kudos to Hermosa’s faux environmental movement for forcing dog walkers to purchase their poop bags. Instead of useless bans that have little to no benefit other than making some folks feel good, and far more environmentally beneficial use of time and effort would be toward the lobbying and financing of collection basins or storm water diversion projects.
Robert Benz
Hermosa Beach
Hahn shake deal
Dear ER:
Janice Hahn is welcome to be as delusional as she wishes when reflecting upon her political career, but she certainly cannot expect the rest of us to buy her self-serving nonsense (“Local politics Hahn’s bread and butter,” ER March 31, 2016). She wants everyone to believe that her late father Kenneth Hahn had very little to do with her political rise — “riding his coattails hasn’t worked all that well.” Does anyone seriously think she would have been as successful in Los Angeles County politics if her name had been Janice Smith or Janice Garcia? Apart from her years as a teacher it would appear from her Wikipedia entry that Hahn has had only one other stint in the private sector – working as a lobbyist for SoCal Edison. So I find it difficult to believe she has built her own network of political supporters instead of inheriting them from her father and her brother.
The other risible claim that Congresswoman Hahn makes is that she is leaving Congress because she finds it too partisan for her tastes. According to the Washington Post’s Congress Votes database, Janice Hahn voted with her party 96 percent of the time in the 112th Congress, ranking fifth among the 200 Democrats in the House. She followed up that performance with another 96 percent showing in the 113th Congress, good for seventh among the 202 Democrats. For someone so servile to her party’s leadership to bemoan the lack of bipartisan cooperation is certainly amusing in a sad, yet telling way.
I’m sure Hahn will enjoy her potential role as a County Supervisor, but I am equally sure that once she becomes bored with the routine she will start casting about for yet another taxpayer-paid position in LA County. The Janice Hahns of the world aren’t the cure to our political dysfunction. They are largely the cause of it.
John Ward
Redondo Beach
92 acres and counting
Dear ER:
AES has a 51 acre power plant for sale today. SCE has 20 acres of right-of-way that will be unnecessary once the power plant is gone. The city has 21 acres of pier and harbor awaiting redevelopment. What would you do, given the first opportunity in over 100 years to reimagine 92 acres of prime waterfront real estate, the largest area under consideration along the coast of the second biggest metropolitan city in the United States only, 30 minutes from LAX? Would you be creative, imagining that parts of the 92 acres could be parkland, wetlands, botanical gardens, a dog park, a museum, a theater, a performance amphitheater, a swimming pool, a skateboarding park, a fitness facility, a research center, an educational facility, and harbor access?
Or would you maximize developer profits by turning it all into some combination of restaurants, bars, offices, hotels, movie theaters, condos, apartments, and townhomes? Don’t spend too much time letting your dreams percolate.
Mayor Aspel has already shot them down and continued the city down the path towards cookie cutter development. That happened when the Mayor broke the 2-2 City Council tie to extend the Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with CenterCal. Why did he vote to extend the ENA? Apparently someone with financial authority at the city authorized CDM Smith to overrun the cost of the DEIR by $600,000 without the authorization of council or any transparency to the taxpayers that they blew budget so badly. To cover their tracks, they needed CenterCal to pay for this overrun so that the city didn’t need to. CenterCal agreed as long as their ENA was extended.
By aligning the current sale of the AES property with the original August expiration of CenterCal’s ENA, the city could have combined these properties and worked with a single developer. That developer could have produced a single, integrated master plan (ours is over 20 years old). That developer could have used a much bigger canvas – 92 acres instead of 21 acres for the CenterCal Waterfront– to spread cost, revenue, impact, and density over a much wider area. That developer could have produced a truly balanced approach for our waterfront. One developer for both sites has less overhead and more ability to spread cost of infrastructure improvements so the residents get more balance.
Rather, we have a cookie cutter development — Grove by the Sea at the CenterCal site and an unknown development at the AES site. Two developers compete to crunch in as much density as possible to achieve a payoff for their investment so the residents get two separate monstrosities. Thanks for the creative, imaginative Leadership Redondo.
Martin Holmes
Redondo Beach
Level with the sea
Dear ER:
Along the 25 miles of coastline between Marina del Rey and the Port of LA, there are dozens of malls of all shapes, sizes and types, but only one harbor. I challenge Redondo harbor development proponents to show us one marina without surface level parking. Marinas have surface level parking for a good reason. Hauling gear, family, food and friends to and from a multi story parking structure to a boat, kayak launch point, et cetera, does not work. And let’s not forget all the great beaches that have surface level parking lots: Torrance Beach, El Porto, Zuma, Malibu, Bolsa Chica. Perhaps we should build malls on those as well. We all would rather look at a 45 foot tall, two football field long parking structure rather than a surface parking lot. Walls look so much better than ocean and harbor views.
Jim Light
Redondo Beach
