Mailbag: It’s time for voters to learn about the city council races
Running for city council should be compared to being interviewed for a new job in an occupation that should be taken seriously. One would expect that these representatives would have a proven track record and would continue to share these results after four years.
In Newport Beach, every resident can cast their vote across the board for an incumbent or a new candidate in our city.
Together, we hold hands along our coastal gem to make certain that we make a better path for our children, move forward with smart and responsible growth, while maintaining the charm of our town.
Newport Heights and Cliff Haven are unique areas in which thousands of children travel to and from three schools: Newport Heights Elementary, Horace Ensign and Newport Harbor. The models of these dynamics are continuously changing with these schools during COVID; but nonetheless, we have an abundance of children, junior guards and families traveling throughout our neighborhoods and yet safety still remains a major issue in our neighborhoods.
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In my professional years, if I did not perform in four months, let alone four years, I would have been terminated and replaced by someone who could obtain those desired results.
I have interviewed the new candidate, and I will be hiring Nancy Scarbrough for District 2 to represent me in 2020.
As for the incumbent, a nice guy, but you know what they say about nice guys. We must begin to put people, before politics.
I encourage every citizen in Newport Beach to be an educated voter and attend the “Meet the Candidate Forum” at 9 a.m. Aug. 20.
The forum is free and can also be attended via Zoom via this link: bit.ly/2Fy7EjI.
Peggy V. Palmer
Newport Beach
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In Huntington Beach, we now have the list of candidates for City Council that are running to fill three vacant seats.
Voters must decide what kind of council they want to lead us through an unprecedented period of challenges and changes. They must ask themselves some tough questions.
Do we want to add to the well-stocked conservative contingent on the council that is pro-business? Do we want to elect more “community-centric” council members to both replace termed-out Jill Hardy and represent our residents?
Do we want a balanced City Council or not? Do we return to the past or forge into the future? Do we want a council that represents its citizens or its special interests?
It is time to think of the City Council as a whole, as a body determining how local government will treat us and work for us. Which of the candidates will be the best fit for our needs? Which candidates will have our best interests at heart? It is time to place performance over personalities or partisanship.
With less than a dozen weeks to the election, it is time for voters to do their due diligence and educate themselves on the candidates and the issues. Our future depends on it.
Tim Geddes
Huntington Beach
Superintendent decision less than super
If the Newport-Mesa school board had made Russell Lee-Sung interim superintendent for a year it would have made sense.
It would have given the new board a chance to have a part in choosing the new superintendent they would be working with. It would have been fair.
During the year 2020-21, the board would open the position for anyone who wanted to apply, and Lee-Sung could apply along with everyone else.
Just in the past few days the district has sent the following unedited statement:
“Due to Covid 19 and the need for stability and consistency as we start school during a pandemic, the Board of Education will not conduct a recruitment for Superintendent at the current time. Instead, the Board of Education in it’s discretion will decide by summer of 2021 whether to conduct a recruitment for the position of superintendent.”
Apart from not apparently feeling the need to check spelling, punctuation and grammar, this means that Lee-Sung‘s employment with NMUSD may go on for a very long time.
Sandy Asper
Newport Beach
Lawyer doesn’t seem to know the law
Chapman University law professor John Eastman suggests that Sen. Kamala Harris may not meet the citizenship requirement to be vice president of the United States.
How does an American lawyer — one who teaches law, no less — not know that ours is a nation in which citizenship is based on the premise of “blood or soil? That is, if one’s parent is a citizen of the U.S., or if one is born on U.S. soil, that makes one an American citizen.
Based on Eastman’s lack of a grasp on this most elementary issue of the law makes me curious as to why any university would employ him as a professor of law. May I object?
Ben Miles
Huntington Beach
Newport Beach crews keep the city clean
Many thanks to the Newport Beach Maintenance Department for cleaning up the trash on Ocean Boulevard on a recent Sunday morning in Corona del Mar.
It’s just astonishing how much trash is left on Ocean and on the 200 block of the flower streets by all those inconsiderate folks who come to the beaches each day and leave everything from shoes and clothing to dirty diapers, and it’s great to see those city workers helping us clear the trash each day.
Richard Burns
Corona del Mar
Thoughts on protests against masks
Re the very real danger of COVID-19 (Orange County reaches 800 coronavirus-related deaths as anti-mask protest goes on in Costa Mesa, Aug. 15):
1.) Tell me please, what is so hard about taking the leaps in comprehension and compassion that we wear masks to protect the well-being of others, as well as ourselves?
2.) No one has a “constitutional” right to endanger the health of other people.
3.) Learn the facts from the Centers for Disease Control and other reliable sources of scientific data if you think the media can’t be trusted.
Andrea Burrell
Huntington Beach
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