Critics’ critique
Dear ER:
I’d like to join the chorus of South Bay residents who get to espouse their craziness in your Letters to the Editor section:
May Gordon (“Bring back the birdman, ER July 30, 2015): Lead the fight to get rid of the feral and domestic cats. They kill way more songbirds than one guy feeding them can ever save.
Edward C. Caprielian (“Times that try dad’s soul,” ER July 30, 2015): Maybe you’re just a blowhard?
Fred Katz (“And good riddance,” ER July 30, 2015): You’re working with your own mayor to get rid of that power plant, right?
Lorie and Martha (dear, dear pro-oil Martha) (“Reuse, don’t ban,” ER July 30, 2015): Plastic bags take 500 years to bio or photo degrade. That means my great-great-great-great-great-great grand kids are going to have to deal with your dog’s sh*t. What a legacy.
Matt Lovell
Web comment
Small thinking for big problem
Dear ER:
Of all of the commissions and advisory committees of the City of Hermosa Beach, none can approach the worthlessness of the Emergency Preparedness Advisory Commission (EPAC). Presumably a holdover of days gone by, the Commission’s “drop cover and hold” campaign is only good for foreplay.
The little Napa 6.1 magnitude earthquake was a result of a lateral movement of just 2-1/2″. Yet that little quake caused over a $1billion in damages and electrical and water outages lasting over 2 weeks. By comparison, the southern section of the San Andreas fault is locked up by over 29 feet. It’s not a matter of if the San Andres will break, it’s only a matter of when. With such a lateral displacement, a significant portion of Southern California will face weeks or longer without water, electricity, gas — pretty much everything people now take for granted. Most if not all of the main aqueducts funneling water into Southern California will be destroyed.
Yet, the EPAC wants to get a “web page” up and running “so in an emergency people can log on and see what to do.” Really? What good is a web page when there’s no communication, nor electricity? Instead of focusing on a web page and other nonsense, the EPAC should concern itself with how the City is going to sustain itself for a significant amount of time without water, electricity, gas, communication and pretty much everything else. Are there sea water, diesel driven pumps to provide for fire protection? Is there any desalination systems? How about adequate diesel fuel storage to run generators? When it does happen, “drop cover and hold” may get you lucky but it won’t quench thirst or put out fires.
Robert Benz
Hermosa Beach
Park the proposal
Dear ER:
I recently attended a Manhattan Beach Unified School District meeting. I feel if the public had known about the proposals for Polliwog Park the room would have been overflowing.
We need the park much more than we need a huge swimming pool or a 28,000 square foot multipurpose facility. I am a resident of over 50 years and am appalled at this proposal. We have the ocean nearby, a lovely pool at Mira Costa High School and one at Manhattan Beach Middle School, as well. And we have the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center at Aviation and Manhattan Beach boulevards.
Our middle school students need to read, write, and do math. The pool and multipurpose facility are going to add very little to their education. Most of the land in Manhattan Beach has been overbuilt. We have become a city of stucco, cement and no place to park. Let’s not make a major mistake by building on the Polliwog Park grounds.
Jane Porter
Manhattan Beach
If not broken, finance it
Dear ER:
I was down at the Redondo Pier and International Boardwalk on Sunday and expected to see a completely trashed area.To my surprise, it looked pretty good. A little paint and maintenance, maybe some refurbishment here and there and the Pier should be good to go. The place was hopping with families, friends, singles, dating couples, old and young.
Just fix-up the Boardwalk and do some advertising about the Pier and we should have plenty of traffic to make money without adding $300 million worth of debt to the city. Don’t let the hate mongers who want to spend our money override your good sense.
Yes, the parking structure needs to be repaired. But if the Pier parking brings in $1.8 million and the Harbor $10 million a year it should be feasible for the city to finance repairing the parking structure.
Gretchen Lloyd
Web comment.
Market basket full of problems
Dear ER:
Our group, Manhattan Beach Neighbors, has conducted a fair amount of research on Gelson’s proposal for Sepulveda Boulevard and 8th Street in Manhattan Beach. We would like to educate other residents about our findings.
- The size of the store is an issue because of the number of parking spots required by city code. Gelson’s is requesting a huge parking variance of 30 percent, or roughly 40 parking spots. None of the requested parking spots on site would be for employees. Gelson’s has not historically provided for employee parking.
- Low priced goods businesses such as a retail grocery store open from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. (Gelson’s store hours), seven days per week will generate an exponentially greater amount of traffic for the neighboring streets, versus the prior automobile dealerships, which were low volume, high priced goods businesses and which had an employee parking lot. There will be between 50 to 60 employees on the Gelson’s site at any one point of time and only 16 parking sites for employees have been incorporated into the proposed plan, none of which are on the main site.
- There are currently no ingress/egress lanes in the Gelson’s plan, so the obstruction to traffic flow on Sepulveda would be meaningful. Even Panda Express, a much smaller business on a much smaller site, has an ingress/egress lane. The developer’s traffic consultant admitted that delivery trucks would require two lanes to turn into the two planned driveways.
- The City’s planned intersection improvements at 8th Street would not alleviate the U-turn risk and the causes of multiple accidents, including two fatalities, in the last several years.
We believe if residents understood more of the facts, rather than opinions or conjecture, they would join our group in opposing this business for this site.
Mark Shoemaker
Manhattan Beach
Baseless based management
Dear ER:
The Manhattan Beach City Council’s virtually unheard of five-year extension of City Manager Mark Danaj’s contract acted to deflect its failures in policy governance and management accountability (“City manager contract extended,” ER, July 30). At the policy level, the council failed to solidify its priorities in critical areas including economic development, budgeting and financing, labor relations, and community outreach.
Consequently, it was unable to differentiate its responsibilities from those of the city manager, resulting in the council’s failure to establish a performance contract for the city manager, as required in his employment agreement.
Absent this contract, the council had no objective criteria to evaluate the city manager’s performance and establish a basis to extend his contract to 2020. Therefore, the council’s given reasons for this extension are without merit and call into question whether or not the city manager’s performance warranted any extension.
The city received an Urban Land Institute’s final report on downtown development five months after the due date, raising concerns as to the city manager’s contract management abilities. The city manager’s Community Budget Study Forum designed to increase resident participation in the budget process faltered with only a handful of residents attending the budget study sessions. Further, Danaj administered a flawed community survey that failed to address why our community continually has a low percentage of registered voter turnout in our municipal elections. Turnout was 17 percent in 2015.
The council’s contract extension further diminished its credibility in managing our taxpayer dollars.
Edward C. Caprielian
Manhattan Beach
A tidy Massey plan
Dear ER:
Hermosa faces over $100 million in unfunded capital projects. Unless Hermosa elects leaders with a plan to pay for these projects, we will lose control over how often the city reaches into taxpayers’ pockets to pay for them.
I am running for City Council this November with a plan to pay for these essential repairs and upgrades to our streets, parks and city buildings without reaching into your pockets. With innovation and smart business development, we can lower costs and improve our quality of life.
We can and must innovate by investing in infrastructure, proven to pay huge dividends. For example, for eight years the City Council has talked about, but not acted on, a plan to put solar panels on city buildings, which would lower costs, clean the air you breathe,and make us more resilient to earthquakes and other disasters. Instead, we are sinking money into lower-performing projects like a police shooting range downtown. Redondo Unified, on the other hand, has installed solar and freed up money that will pay the salaries of roughly 10 teachers. Manhattan Unified is doing the same.
It’s time to bring our hotel tax up to the market rate of 12 percent and bring the two Pier area hotels to town on terms that serve Hermosa financially and fit the height and other requirements that apply to all local businesses. The City should work with the Chamber of Commerce Visitors Bureau to attract business travelers passing through LAX. Smart development will keep our hotels full of the kind of travelers who spend money at our local shops and restaurants.
As an environmental lawyer, former middle school teacher, and married father of two, I am used to tough people and tough problems. In my work as an environmental lawyer, I go after hardheaded polluters so citizens don’t spend their tax dollars cleaning up their messes. I can use those skills and attributes to work toward a better Hermosa.
Justin Massey
Hermosa Beach
