PR campaign ahead
Dear ER:
Citizens of Redondo Beach, from the most eastern part of North Redondo to the most southern part of West Redondo, be prepared! AES corporation is going to unleash a public relations campaign including certain city council members, tv ads, signs and various other means. Their goal? To frighten you, goad you, bully you, gently assure you, that you must vote no on measure A, so they can ramrod a new power plant down our throats.
How can you defeat a multi-national corporation that spends millions to win, you may ask? Very easily, vote YES on Measure A. Do it for your health, your children’s health, your property values, and for your future, which together we can shape as we like, rather than [leave it to] some corporation whose future stake is on profits, not our community.
Joe Schiller
Redondo Beach
Don’t be fooled
Dear ER:
While watching the recent school board meeting about their resolution to oppose a new AES power plant, I was surprised to see a dozen or so residents, all retirement age, who support the new plant (in addition to their handful of known AES supporters). I was suspicious since I remembered AES hosted a cocktail get-together at the Chart House to coax residents into testifying on their behalf at a city council meeting last year.
Once again, AES treated their attendees to a pre-school board meeting dinner at a local Mexican restaurant and actually bused these people to the meeting just as they did for the past council meeting (hello — buying votes?) There were five people paid by AES to attend the meeting: three women who shepherded the pro-power plant attendees and two AES-paid residents in addition to Eric Pendergraft, President of AES. These “handlers” distributed written instructions and scripts to the “professed” pro-AES attendees. So don’t be fooled that this pro-AES testimony represented a grassroots movement favoring a new power plant. The testimony was just another show with AES pulling the puppet strings once again.
AES will spend hundreds of thousands to try to lure or scare residents into fear (higher taxes and lawsuits which are both absurd) and equates to inaction. Inaction by residents guarantees us a new power plant. Don’t be fooled.
Vote Yes on A! Vote Jim Light in District 1 and Bill Brand in District 2.
Deanne DiMascio
Redondo Beach
Red flag
Dear ER:
Lack of “Dispersion Modeling Analysis” raises a red flag. Redondo Beach residents living close to the proposed power plant are concerned about a dense harmful and poisonous toxic plume. Ask yourself, “Why is AES trying to get an exemption from performing a “Dispersion Modeling Analysis” for the proposed new plant in Redondo Beach?” Is it because they will be exposed for attempting to shove tons and tons of particulate matter into our lungs before it has time to dissipate? If the plant is safe and if AES was a good neighbor, they would fully inform the public and specify how much particulate matter will be flowing into adjacent buildings, homes and schools for the next 50 years. Where is the modeling? Where is the poison going? Why is AES hiding the data? Vote: Yes on Measure A.
Fred Reardon
Redondo Beach
Scare mailer
Dear ER:
AES will spend upwards of $500K to try to defeat Measure A with mailers, telemarketing calls, TV advertising and hiring resident advocates. They are trying to hide behind organizations like “Protect Redondo Beach, No on Measure A”, “Redondo Beach United” and the website revitalizeredondo.org. They are funded by AES; it states it on the mailers!
The latest mailer is trying to make you believe we are all going broke with increased taxes to pay for a park! The city and taxpayers will not have to fund the park. There are many public and private organizations that will provide funding, such as California Coastal Conservancy and Annenberg Foundation, which has given Palos Verdes millions of dollars and funded the Portuguese Bend Preserve. Redondo has never received a dime from these organizations because the city does not set the vision and put the zoning and plans in place for park and recreational areas.
Available funds from these organizations are therefore never requested or received. For public park and open space development, you first must set the vision and the zoning, and then the funding and implementation comes. Measure A sets this vision and zoning that our city won’t do.
There are many success stories up and down the coast of taking private and public land and developing it into open space and parkland without bankrupting taxpayers. These were not ‘takings’ or the use of eminent domain, but cooperative agreements with willing sellers who benefited nicely, as will AES when Measure A passes and allows 40% of their property for commercial development.
Don’t let AES scare you with meritless pocketbook issues. They did this with the UUT tax, stating our electricity rates would skyrocket if they had to pay this tax to the City. They don’t even supply Redondo’s power; it goes to the grid. Don’t be deceived by them again.
The decision is yours. Vote YES on Measure A! Funded by residents for residents!
Dawn Esser
Redondo Beach
In response to Dawn Esser’s “Scare Mailer” letter to the editor printed on January 31, 2013, she publicly discredits our citizen led PAC, “Redondo Beach United for a No Vote on Measure A”. She has many inaccuracies which call for correction.
“Redondo Beach United for a No Vote on Measure A” is a citizen founded PAC not funded, sponsored, formed, nor controlled by AES. We have created no mailers! Our PAC, FPPC #1354264, is solely supported by residents and citizens who stand together for a “No Vote on Measure A”, because it’s wrong for Redondo Beach. We are not necessarily advocates of AES nor for a new power plant. We share in a common goal to defeat Measure A.
All PACs are fully transparent and required to file 460 contribution forms, which become public record. Information about a PAC can be requested from the City Clerk. A simple fact check by Dawn Esser – would have clarified this for her. When No Power Plant states “truth matters” it seems of paramount importance the necessity to validate claims.
The website RevitalizeRedondo.org is independently owned and maintained as are the FaceBook Pages www.FaceBook.com/
School board courage
Dear ER:
I want to applaud the Redondo Beach Board of Education for their courage in passing a resolution against the rebuilding of a power plant within a stone’s throw of many of our students. While bullied into watering the resolution down by a large number of individuals recruited by AES, the statements in the resolution questioning whether or not the plant was needed and the wisdom of locating the plant in the middle of a residential and commercial area were significant.
It was amusing to hear some of the AES apologists arguments, such as the plant has been there a 100 years so it must be safe, that it hadn’t hurt their son or daughter since they turned out fine, or that we should be trust the government’s judgment to protect us. Aren’t these some of the same people who tell us the government can’t be trusted not to come take their guns away or to regulate much of anything.
Make no mistake about it, the rebuilt power plant will be the number 1 single polluter in Redondo Beach and will lead to more premature death and disability than any other single source of pollution. AES’s own filings indicate fine particulate contamination will be over 6 tons per month from this so called “clean” plant. Just read AES’s application for at energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/redondo_beach/documents/applicant/AFC/Vol_1/. Look at the charts in section 5.1 (air quality) and see for yourself the increase in toxins, including the most dangerous small fine particulates (defined as smaller than 2.5 microns). Also, watch the EPA’s brief slide show at epa.gov/airnow/pm/pm.html that describes some of the adverse health effects of these poisons.
If our city council had the courage of the school board and taken a position to resist the AES plans, there would have been no need for Measure A. The failure of our elected representatives to protect the health of the South Bay residents left us citizens no choice but to stand up for our own health. Please vote YES on Measure A and NO to rebuilding the AES power plant.
Roger Light
Redondo Beach
“Main Attraction”
Dear ER:
Thank you ER for Bondo Wyzpolski’s front page story of 1/24/13, “Main Attraction.” We, and our senior cyclists friends haven’t had a motivating enough reason to re-travel the South Bay’s bicycle route to El Segundo until Bondo’s report on the premier opening of El Segundo’s Museum of Art.
Just before Thanksgiving our group shelved all future plans for cycling excursions. My husband Chuck and I wondered if and when our group would once again get peddling. Then ER’s story broke about the premier opening of El Segundo’s Art Museum, which we shared with our group as a cyclists’ place of cultural interest, a must museum to visit. Breaking the inertia, with mounting enthusiasm as along our bike ride we rekindled our fond memories at each familiar rest-stop. We cycled to El Segundo’s Art Museum anticipating its treasures. Upon entering the museum’s long building, we realized that its elongated shape is perfect for exhibiting treasure troves of skillfully excellent graphic masterpieces, as a long, large conduit of pure simplicity perfect for displaying volumes of diversified art.
Dora Perez-Meyer
Torrance
At it again
Dear ER:
Watch out Hermosa Beach School Board! Ceremonial Mayor Kit Bobko is at it again. He’s bragging of joint council/school board meetings. Again it’s a stunt to glorify one person, Kit Bobko, before next fall’s council election.
Bobko is most apparently running again for council. He’ll be filing for a third term run in August. He’s got no other place to grandstand, especially after his pathetic run for United States Congress. Some are still wondering what he did with the $56 thousand in campaign money he was given from bar owners and others for that superficial run. Is it legal for Bobko to use that money for a fall council campaign?
Bobko’s in his 6th year on council. His first partial term of 3.4 years filled a seat which was won but given up by Howard Fishman due to family illness. However, at an unnecessary and essentially useless joint council/school-board meeting January 23rd, Bobko made all council and school board members state their names along with their years in office. This so he could then, lastly, announce that he was the Mayor and was finishing his second “full term.” It was a cheap self-serving political stunt.
By state law, the school board is autonomous and completely independent from the city council. If Bobko prefers to serve on the School Board rather than take care of fixing sewers and decrepit street pavements (his elected job) he should instead run for school board, rather than tricking parents of students into believing he’s doing something significant for the schools, when he’s not, just to get council election votes next fall.
Howard Longacre
Hermosa Beach
Darn near nothing
Dear ER:
As yet another election rolls around I find myself mildly depressed… so sad. Redondo, once again you are offering me the usual suspects as my choices to be responsible for “running” our city? Isn’t it time we put an end to the GOBN (the Good Old Boys Network) that has been running Redondo for far too long?
Really, just what have they done for you lately? That’s right, darn near nothing.
1. Constantly putting things off from one week to next instead of acting, being reactive rather than proactive.
2. Can any of them take a stand on the AES issue? (We’ve only been kicking this thing around for years now.)
3. Tout their “experience” in the system, (only showing that they have, in fact, learned how to ‘work’ the system., and not necessarily on our behalf either.)
4. Isn’t it about time for a fresh perspective? (How much experience did President Obama have but we gave him a chance)?
Council members who are running for mayor should have to give up their seat on the Council, much as someone running for national office. Aren’t you tired of the same old rhetoric? We’re all on the same page, and, to quote Jeff Beck, “nothing is being done.” You cannot concentrate on one part of the whole, when you have to fix the whole problem, not just a part, or the whole body suffers as a result.
Come election day I know what I’m going to do…and that is NOT CAST A SINGLE VOTE FOR ANY INCUMBENT FOR ANY OFFICE.
Lamont Cranston
Redondo Beach
Happily ever after
Dear ER:
Here is the solution for Mira Costa athletics: Let’s fire the remaining few coaches and put Joeseph DeMonda in as the athletic director. He obviously knows more about athletics than the current staff despite its 25+ years in education. For the “Biggie,” hire all mommies and daddies as coaches and let’s go back to mommy and daddy ball where their kids get to play all the time — no running, no one raises a voice, and they have one-hour practices. That way, everyone will live “Happily Ever After,” like at Disneyland. Plus we will be preparing these athletes for the real world where it’s just like this. We can even send out a memo to the other schools on the schedule stating, “We are just playing for fun, let’s not keep score” — problem solved.
Coach Tom Judson
32-year high school coach
Hermosa Beach
Related: Redondo school board passes power plant resolution
Related: Museum on Main to open Sunday in El Segundo
Related: Sanctions limit Mira Costa baseball coach’s involvement with team [UPDATED]
