Letters to the Editor 8-21-25

Highway 14 revisited

Dear ER:

Housing policy isn’t a basketball game. Sacramento can’t fix the housing shortage by handing out floor seats — or cramming more units into cities already at capacity. Driving up Highway 14, past miles of empty land, I thought about Sacramento’s absurd housing mandates. As a longtime Manhattan Beach resident, I see the results firsthand: more density forced onto already overcrowded coastal cities while vast open land inland sits untouched. The logic is backwards. By requiring every city to add a fixed percentage of housing, dense areas only get denser while rural ones hardly change. Instead of using thousands of acres of open land for new communities, Sacramento forces congestion, parking shortages, and oversized projects into neighborhoods already at capacity. Nowhere is this more clear than the Hirose El Porto project — a hulking structure that violates the city’s 30-foot height limit, overwhelms the neighborhood’s character, and clogs an already bottlenecked entry and exit point. City council members claim their hands were tied. There is always a choice. Adding a handful of “affordable” units in ultra-premium coastal areas doesn’t solve a housing crisis — it’s political theater. Expecting cheap coastal housing is like expecting the Lakers to sell NBA Finals floor seats for $10. That’s not how markets work. The California coast is expensive because it’s scarce and desirable. Pretending otherwise only creates distortions, not solutions. Shame on Sacramento for pushing these policies, and shame on our city council for rubber-stamping them. Voters should cut through the silver-tongued promises and start demanding policies grounded in reality, not fantasy. 

Bob Sievers

Manhattan Beach

Fire range shots

Dear ER:

The money for the application for full federal funding of a new Redondo Beach Police firing range was largely spent in the last fiscal year and we did not use all the budget (“Redondo’s deficit thinking,” ER August 14, 2025). The application is filed and we are awaiting the results. The current firing range is dilapidated and loud. Due to it being open air, the hours are severely restricted.  Our police officers deserve a better facility and it would benefit residents in both better trained officers and a dramatic reduction in noise. Redondo receives a lot of its budget from a variety of grants and writing grants costs money.  It would be penny-wise and pound foolish to abandon writing grants for a short term money savings. There are other areas where I think the Council should have delayed or rejected funding, but this is not one.

Jim Light

Mayor

Redondo Beach

The circle game

Dear ER:

It is quite a turn of events. A year ago the Redondo Beach Fire Department wanted to be absorbed into Los Angeles County Fire Department under the guise of increased capacity. Wisely, Redondo residents rejected that misguided notion. Now RBFD says they have the capacity to take away the entire Hermosa department from the Los Angeles County Fire Department

Paul Moses

Redondo Beach

Proposed public-public-partnerships.

Dear ER:

The Hermosa Beach City Budget Capital Improvements spreadsheet, discussed at the June 10 council meeting, shows Hermosa is on the precipice of fiscal disaster. Without strong leadership Hermosa may well be on its way to insolvency.

The Streets and Highways spreadsheet above shows an Unfunded balance of $24,080,000 through 2030.

The Sewers and Storm Drain spreadsheets show an Unfunded balance of $8,550,000 through 2030.

The Parks & Recreation spreadsheet shows an Unfunded balance of $500,000 through 2030.

The Public Buildings spreadsheet shows an Unfunded balance of $27,225,000 through 2030.

This totals to $60,355,000 in unfunded Capital Improvements Projects. The spreadsheet does not include  big ticket items like a new police station, and a new City Hall.

Perhaps we should be asking can Hermosa Beach, a small 1.4 sq mi. city go it alone or should we become part of say Manhattan Beach.

Residents and business owners of the two cities  have duplicate city yards, finance departments, public works, community development and  Parks & Rec departments, not to mention duplicate City Halls.

The answer to this question is way above my pay grade but maybe it’s time to start thinking outside the box and explore a partnership with Manhattan Beach.

Maybe we shouldn’t look exclusively at Public/Private Partnerships and big new midtown hotels to bail us out.

Maybe we should investigate Public-Public-Partnerships.

Anthony Higgins

Hermosa Beach

There goes the neighborhood

Dear ER

Beautifully written. I feel the pain (“A death in the family, ER August 14, 2025). As I’m writing this a home close to ours has been demolished and in a few weeks, the house next door goes as well. But, at least the author has those decades of memories, something the bulldozers can never take away.

Duke Noor

Hermosa Beach

Catalina Classic on Sunday, August 24