Chef’s best
Dear ER:
One wonderful restaurant that was not mentioned in the article was Chef Hannes on Main Street (“El Segundo Surge,” ER September 10, 2015). It’s easily the best gourmet place for miles.
Nick Tsacoumangos
Website comment
Candidate, bar none
Dear ER:
Hermosa Beach city council incumbent Peter Tucker emphasizes the length of his involvement in Hermosa politics, but I think we should look at the quality.
Here’s just a few of the ways he’s affected Hermosa. In 1994 he was the third vote to convert Classico Restaurant into Sangria (now American Junkie), with full liquor and 2 am hours. In 1996 he was the third vote to let the restaurant expand into the Coast Drug space. Also in 1996 he gave full liquor to Blue 32 (now The Establishment) and Patrick Molloys. In 1997, he gave Pointe 705 (under the Von’s center) a separate bar area. In 1998, he gave 2 am hours to FFFF for their move into the former Casablanca restaurant. In 2007, he voted to rezone Pier Plaza to allow restaurants to add second stories without providing additional parking. That last decision was rescinded only after a citizens’ referendum.
Jim Lissner
Hermosa Beach
Team Hermosa
Dear ER:
The Hermosa Beach City Council needs vibrant, strong, action orientated and solutions-driven leadership representing residents, business owners and guests to propel our city forward. Too many of our bi-weekly city council meetings are consumed with minutia driven, staccato style questioning, a general feeling of malaise and an overall lack of confidence in city leaders, both elected and employed, resulting in agenda items being pushed down the road further and further.
Hermosa needs a healthy, positive council environment that seeks to complete minor tasks quickly and major tasks with precision, compromise when needed, and that holds up to forensic scrutiny.
I have both life and business experience that is unique and different from any sitting council member or other challenger for city council. Leadership requires unbridled tenacity, compassion and the will power to bring people together. I am personally, professionally, spiritually and emotionally prepared to lead, utilizing the wisdom of the aged, compounded with the promise of the future. Please vote November 3.
Trent Larson
Hermosa Beach
O for old, but not forgotten
Dear ER:
Most in Hermosa Beach think the oil issue ended with the resounding defeat of Measure O in the March 2015 special election. With a record 54 percent turnout, 80 percent of us voted “No” to prevent oil drilling in our city.
This November, we face another election, this time for city council. Two of the five candidates — Ken Hartley and Trent Larson — were on the wrong side of this very recent history. They were among the small minority of Hermosans who supported oil drilling.
E&B Natural Resources still has the right to drill for oil from the city yard. Don’t let E&B get through the back door what it couldn’t get through the front door. Look at the candidates’ track records and whether they actively opposed Measure “O.”
Bob Wolfe
Hermosa Beach
Learning from the past
Dear ER:
Former Hermosa Beach councilman Howard Fishman challenges my experience without recognizing that several former Hermosa Mayors (including Jeff Duclos, whom Fishman supports), Hermosa’s Mayor Pro Tem (whom Fishman endorsed), a majority of the Hermosa School Board and a long list of Hermosa leaders endorse me as qualified and ready to serve (“Just in from past councilman,” ER Letters Oct. 8, 2015).
Fishman asks what I would have done to end the MacPherson Oil lawsuit before our City Council burned $5 million in legal fees. I would have stayed on message that MacPherson would get less with a win in court than it would get in a settlement because the City simply could not pay. Had MacPherson pressed on, I would not have voted, as Fishman and council candidate Peter Tucker did, for a settlement that sticks Hermosa taxpayers with paying $17.5 million to an oil company that thinks it can drill in Hermosa, despite the defeat of Measure O.
Finally, based on his conclusion that Manhattan and Hermosa spend roughly the same per capita on their city attorneys, Fishman doubts Hermosa will save money by going out to bid for our City Attorney, a conclusion Tucker apparently shares because he recently voted against going out to bid. That faulty analysis typifies the kind of thinking Hermosa cannot afford, particularly because Hermosa did, in fact, save over $120,000 a year by moving Hermosa’s prosecutions from our City Attorney to Redondo’s prosecutor.
I appreciate Mr. Fishman’s service to our community, but his comments only reinforce my belief that new leadership is in order.
Justin Massey
Hermosa Beach
Sea Lion Beach
Dear ER:
CenterCal president Jean Paul Wardy’s comparison of the proposed, shrunk down King Harbor SeaSide Lagoon to Mother’s Beach in Dana Point Harbor is a joke (“King Harbor ‘legacy’ tenants to be preserved in new waterfront development,” ER October 8, 2015). The sandy beach portion of Mother’s Beach is over two acres. The grass and tree area is about two acres as well. The shoreline is over 600 feet long and it has a separate kids swimming area and SUP/kayak launching over a wide area. The shoreline opens to a wide open and little used area of the harbor. On the west side is an area dedicated to Educational/Institutional, which include two tall ships and an education facility.
In King Harbor’s case, CenterCal is proposing to pave over one acre of our current three acre lagoon park for a driveway into the three story parking structure and retail/restaurant lease spaces. It would shrink the water portion of the Seaside Lagoon to one-third of its current size at high tide and less than that at low tide. It has a narrow opening to an area of the harbor that will likely be where the boat ramp launches. With the boat ramp, gas and oil will flow into this opening on the surface of the water. What little of Seaside Lagoon is left will be overshadowed by a three story, 300,000 sq ft pay parking structure. What family will traipse through a parking garage and through retail and restaurant spaces with kids, diapers, food and beach toys to go play in polluted water? The biggest users of the dinky beach will likely be sea lions. And if they move in, the Marine Mammal Protection Act will keep people out.
Jim Light
Redondo Beach
Keep Redonoans in Redondo
Dear ER:
To those in Redondo who oppose every single development project without even trying to understand them: The Waterfront is the project we need, and the direction in which our community should be heading.
Voter approved Measure G established guidelines for what can be built on the waterfront. The environmental review process was set up to make sure that everything, including traffic and pollution, is analyzed and that the community can provide input.
CenterCal considers views essential, That’s that’s why part of the site is being raised four feet so you’re not looking at concrete and why the project makes the coastline 100 percent accessible. CenterCal is also making the area more bike and pedestrian friendly, with a pedestrian bridge that connects the north and south ends of the site and a 20-foot wide boardwalk. The increase in parking spaces means that there will always be a spot available. The increase is mandated by the Coastal Commission.
This project is incomparable to other projects in the region. With programming, a public market and other components, Redondo residents will finally want to stay in Redondo.
Joanne Galin
Political positives
Dear ER:
Every week I open the the paper and read about another city’s mayor or city council and the improprieties that continue to go on. Thank goodness I live in Redondo Beach.
I am very pleased to have Steve Aspel and Jeff Ginsberg representing the citizens of Redondo Beach. They have shown themselves to be honorable and responsive to the needs of their constituents. I appreciate their willingness to take action on the requests of the residents on the Esplanade.
Patrick Webster
Redondo Beach
