Letters to the Editor 10-11-18
Onward, Summer Concerts
Dear ER:
Those of us at City Hall love Hermosa’s Summer Concerts, and we are committed to seeing them continue for years to come. A lot of work goes into planning, coordinating and funding these great events each year, and it has been through valuable partnerships that the Summer Concert series has become a South Bay favorite over the past decade.
Thank you to Saint Rocke and our many local sponsors for making this event spectacular [“Soapbox,” ER Oct. 4, 2018].
As representatives of all Hermosans, the City’s staff and the Hermosa Beach City Council are responsible for evaluating City contracts as they expire. This responsibility includes the City’s event production contract for Summer Concerts. As we review this contract and determine the best way to move forward, please know that we are committed to ensuring a great experience for all involved and to making this event even better for all the concertgoers among us.
We are also committed to ensuring the best use of our valuable public assets and our scarce public resources. So we will be assessing all the public costs, including Hermosa Beach police protection and trash removal, as part of this process. Stay tuned for more updates on the City’s website and at the Oct. 23 City Council meeting.
Suja Lowenthal
Hermosa Beach City Manager
Good deed punished
Dear ER:
No good deed goes unpunished it seems. That sucks and the concerts were terrific for our South Bay community! Leave it to the politicians to mess everything up. Proud my city of Redondo Beach is stepping in and up to the challenge to partner with St. Rocke for a great music festival [“Soapbox,” ER Oct. 4, 2018].
Sue Smith
Facebook comment
A great run
Dear ER:
Welp, back to tired old cover bands I guess. It was a great run Saint Rocke [“Soapbox,” ER Oct. 4, 2018]. Appreciated all that you did, apparently without compensation. Sad ending.
Shelly Meyer
Facebook comment
Rewriting history
Dear ER:
In his letter last week Redondo Beach Councilmember Christian Horvath was dishonest and attempted to rewrite history [“Letters,” ER Oct. 4, 2018].
The fact is California enacted SB 415 to move city election dates to coincide with either state or federal elections, citing such was designed to increase voter turnout. They asked for cities to submit “plans of compliance” by Dec. 31, 2017, while that plan only needed to be enacted by the year 2022.
Redondo Beach had several options. One plan could simply have been to put it to a vote of the people at the City’s next municipal election in 2019. Council members Loewenstein and Nehrenheim favored that plan. They also favored another option, that being to comply with SB 415 by the year 2022 as none of the current council members would be voting to extend their own, exiting terms of office.
Council Members Horvath, Emdee and Gran stonewalled, going so far as to boycott Mayor Brand’s special Council meeting to vote on a plan to submit to the state by Dec. 31, 2017. Prior to that meeting, two of these same three council members couldn’t attend a Council meeting on the issue, preventing a quorum for a vote. This same trilateral coalition of Horvath, Emdee and Gran voted for a plan to ban the public from having say in the matter, extending their own terms of office by over one year.
Extending your term of office was the only option you gave us Councilmember Horvath. We won’t forget it.
Wayne Craig
Redondo Beach
Mural ‘shame’
Dear ER:
What a shame. This wonderful art display contributed to the unique character of Manhattan Beach. I’m sorry to see it go. The “out with the old, in with the new” concept isn’t always the best [“Neptunian Woman’s Club Destroys Mural,” ER Sept. 27, 2018] .
Jeanie Sauder
Facebook comment
Mural payday?
Dear ER:
Wow, never knew about that law. Seems like it should have been 100 percent theirs the moment they paid the artist though. Artist might get a nice payday now [“Neptunian Woman’s Club Destroys Mural,” ER Sept. 27, 2018].
Don Thomas
Facebook comment
Development deja vu
Dear ER:
Watching the Oct. 2 Redondo Beach City Council meeting on Channel 8 until 1 a.m. gave our household CenterCal deja vu, and a short night’s sleep [“Council breaks Galleria hearing until Oct. 23,” ER Oct. 4, 2018]. And all to see the can kicked, again, into the future because the proposal doesn’t meet the community’s needs. Just like CenterCal, and Heart of the City before that.
The developer’s representative for Australian-based QIC did a lot of hand-waving at the mostly white people in several artists’ renderings of their proposed “lifestyle center,” used ridiculously superlative descriptions of astroturf and a 30-foot wide concrete sidewalk, and made one unsupported claim after the other regarding the proposed 59-piece bunch of buildings.
The appellant and several critics of *this particular proposal* (not the idea of sustainable and appropriate redevelopment; everybody favors that) backed up their criticisms and claims with pertinent, substantive data. The usual union reps took too long to say “we‘re for anything that will earn us a paycheck.” Of course! And we all want you to earn those paychecks building something that performs well enough to create funding for more needed redevelopment.
The CenterCal, I mean QIC, fans seemed to say “I’m for this because I’m for this” which, from a philosophical perspective is as lazily unexamined, literally unreasonable, and rhetorically unseductive as it’s possible to be. If anyone wants to convince me to join them in backing this or any redevelopment project, I want to be given reasonable reasons, based on data and reliable forecasts, to give my analytical, taxpaying mind certainty. Residents and voters never got anywhere near that with CenterCal, and I think that’s a major reason why that project never got approved.
I really hope the various stakeholder parties can come to an agreement on how this project can meet the community’s actual needs, rather than just the foreign investors’ needs. Redondo Beach and this region needs a well-planned, well-supported and well-executed redevelopment in the Galleria footprint, so close to major streets and freeway access. We also need a forward-looking, long-term perspective that will ensure we see revenues exceeding expenses and an improved quality of life for those nearby.
Hey, has QIC hired any locals yet as “ambassadors” or donated to any local non-profits yet to be directed to any Council re-election campaign funds yet? If that happens, it’ll be CenterCal all over again.
Sara Burns
Redondo Beach
No on ‘boycott’
Dear ER:
I would like to commend and congratulate locals Mike Bouchard and Dave Tardif on successfully putting together this past weekend’s Lobster Rock event in just about six weeks’ time [“Lobster Rock rocks Redondo Beach Lobster Festival,” ER Sept. 20, 2018].
I was fortunate to participate as an art vendor, but more importantly, I had a blast! I met people who journeyed from the high desert, Ventura County, and other out of town places after seeing coverage on the news. Turnout was great, the bands were amazing, the food was awesome and it made for a fun, beautiful Redondo Beach weekend at Seaside Lagoon.
So why then, would Dawn Esser, a Mayor Brand-appointed Budget and Finance Commissioner for Redondo Beach, take to social media to recommend boycotting against this very local-community, RB small business-supporting event? Esser didn’t like one of the sponsors of this revenue-generating, tourist-attracting event, so she posted a plea on one of the South Redondo FB pages encouraging others to boycott the event.
How is her appointment by Mayor Brand, who pledged to “bring balance” to the city’s commissions, lending itself to that goal? More importantly, how are we supposed to function as a city, and generate revenue, when the very people who are supposed to help that happen are actively working against our residents, our city, and actively trying to hurt our local businesses as a whole?
Erika Snow Robinson
Redondo Beach
Editor’s Note: Esser’s post, which asked people not to attend the Lobster Rockfest, aimed its criticism at a real estate firm which she believed was putting on the event. She said she removed the post when she discovered that the firm was not the event organizer.