Next step home

Dear ER:

Thanking Redondo Beach City Council for this common sense decision (Pallet homes fine where they are,” ER July 15, 2021). The next step is to quickly network with our neighboring cities to identify a central location to establish a permanent homeless community to shelter and support those in need. I envision continuing all the services presently offered at Kingsdale Avenue, plus including necessary green space for the new community’s food garden. It has been my experience that a connection with nature is healthy, healing, and can make all the difference in renewing people’s lives. My hope is that our cities collaborate immediately to find that perfect space. There are funds available to secure the site. Volunteers are ready.

Barbara Epstein

ER News comment

Tolstoy of the beach

Dear ER:

The tome “War and Peace” may have utilized less ink than the Easy Reader has devoted to the Bruce’s Beach deal (“The Survival of Bruce’s Beach,” ER July 15, 2021). We get it. Ad nauseam. Ad nauseam. Please stop. Once you quit regurgitating the improprieties of 100 years ago, maybe you can detail the scandal behind the start-up of the drunk-fest on July 4, the scandalous “Iron-Man” competition. Penned with a wink and a nod.

Duane Plank

El Segundo

Beach school

Dear ER:

Congratulations to reporter Mark McDermott for another extremely well-researched, and informative article (“Dispossession: An American dream came to an end at Bruce’s Beach, but the memory of what happened survived,” ER July 9, 2021).  I’ve not read such a comprehensive history of what happened to the Bruce family in the 1920s. For decades, Easy Reader has presented the best in local, weekly reporting and deserve the utmost award for its voluminous output over the last 50 years. Also noteworthy is Bondo Wyszpolski, ER’s Arts Critic extraordinaire, and his current review of talented upcoming artist, Scott Meskill, whose work is currently being exhibited at Shockboxx Gallery in Hermosa Beach.  With each issue, I continue to be enlightened, informed and impressed with the writing of these talented people.  

Georgette Gantner

Redondo Beach

Mirage by the sea

Dear ER:

Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand says, “$10 million is not enough,” for the Seaside Lagoon. So Brand and the new Council majority added another million dollars from the already cash strapped Redondo Beach budget to get us into the deep end with a complete redesign of the Seaside Lagoon. $10 million is just enough to get us in over our heads. In a public statement by Rescue Our Waterfront (ROW) founder and Brand supporter Martin Holmes, he said, “Measure C doesn’t require a $25 million pool.” Holmes lied, in reality it does and probably much more. Councilman Todd Loewenstein said from the dais it would take $30 million. If you are skeptical, look no further than Long Beach’s $85 million pool by the sea. This is a perfect example of Brand and his supporters promising the moon and now…ooops, we need money to fix it. This whole area would’ve been revitalized with a fraction of the public amenities being covered by the public, but Brand and his supporters chose the onerous restrictions created by Measure C. Now all Redondo residents are going to pay big time for this south Redondo Harbor amenity.

The new cement lagoon will be a vastly expanded facility, I wonder if the Mayor thought about the ongoing maintenance budget? In Redondo’s 2021-2022 budget, the estimated cost of construction of just a 50-meter pool at Aviation Park is $13,300,000. The estimated ongoing Annual Operating Costs of that pool would be $1.36 million. Where is the funding magically coming from? Do Redondo residents really want a multi-million dollar pool by the sea?

Paul Moses

Redondo Beach

Quick acting cure

Dear ER

San Francisco’s bold decision to require all 37,000 of its municipal employees (from doctors to janitors) to get vaccinated against COVID-19 highlights the tension between protecting individual rights and the public good as workplaces finally reopen. San Francisco municipal employees will have to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or risk losing their jobs. The California State Legislature and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors act as quickly on mandated vaccinations as they did when they voted to return Bruce’s Beach to the Bruce Family.

Robert Bush  

Manhattan Beach 

The politics of sports

Dear ER:

I really enjoyed Gary Brown’s letter to the editor about keeping politics out of sports (“Pick your poison,” ER July 15, 2021). I had written to this writer and the editor about the same issue months ago —  about the hate Trump politicization of sports. Brown’s comment about the sportswriter and politics is true. But we do have a way to counter this, and that is by writing and informing others about the misinformation being spread, and how politics and sports don’t work together.

Barry Levy

Hawthorne

Required reading

Dear ER:

Thank you so much for this article (“‘Wealthy’ Living Campus” on shaky foundation,” ER July 15, 2021). It is concise and evidently all the time and money spent on pushing this new campus is irrelevant. Maybe this article needs to be shared with the Beach Cities Health District Board. Marianne Teola

ER News comment

Suspect writing

Dear ER:

The tone of this article is inherently biased (“‘Wealthy’ Living Campus” on shaky foundation,” ER July 15, 2021).. The author must have a beef with BCHD beyond the proposed project.

Jackie Balestra

ER News comment

Urgent care, anyone?

Dear ER:

Several years ago, together with about two other handfuls of Beach Cities home and business owners, we addressed the future of the Beach Cities Health District, as to reopening a part of the former South Bay Hospital as an Emergency Room, and for women and family healthcare (“‘Wealthy’ Living Campus” on shaky foundation,” ER July 15, 2021). We were rebuffed. I have been both outraged and saddened by the commercial equivalent costs of BCHD programs offered to residents. And now this “real estate for the richest among us.” Shame on us if this is seriously considered.

Bev Morse

Redondo Beach

Back to the source

Dear ER:

If that land belongs to anyone it’s the Tongva/Gabrielino people (“The Survival of Bruce’s Beach,” ER July 15, 2021). Black Americans who came to California didn’t arrive as slaves. They were colonizers and miners in the gold rush, or Buffalo soldiers who were part of the mass immigration of White Europeans and former slaves who displaced the Indigenous and California people. 

Jovany Villasenor

ER News comment

Poor exercise of money

Dear ER:

Hermosa Beach did not settle because of the “uncertainty” of litigation (“CrossFit gym a $1 million ‘nuisance,’” ER July 15, 2021). They settled because of the certainty of this particular litigation’s outcome. Thanks council members Stacey Armato and Justin Massey. You could have used that million dollars to hire the city manager five more assistants. Or to just waive the fees we used to waive for non-profits that you now like to charge. 

Raymond Dussault

Hermosa Beach

 

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