Mailbag: Violence isn’t the answer to political rallies

People from north to south and east to west amount to a significant and demonstrative minority who support former President Donald J. Trump. Ignorance is bliss until that ignorance is confronted by a hard hit in the head by a skateboard. While I find the past president to be duplicitous, despicable, criminal and vile, I cannot support violence against his wrongheaded supporters. To borrow a phrase, the keyboard is mightier than the skateboard.

Ben Miles
Huntington Beach

I am dismayed at recent Daily Pilot reporting on the Huntington Beach City Council’s mismanagement of municipal planning (Huntington Beach again fails to pass housing plan, leaving Surf City out of compliance with state, Daily Pilot, April 5). I am dismayed — but not surprised. No one should be surprised, as the city attorney and the recently elected council majority made no secret in their campaigns that they would prefer that Huntington Beach have even fewer housing options than it now does. And as far as affordable housing units go, the current council majority and city attorney make no bones about “affordability (yes for me, but no for thee)”.

So, the council threw away a perfectly good housing plan, not because it had some fatal flaw, but because they do not want any more housing built in Huntington Beach, whatsoever. The housing plan that had been prepared, and revised, and revised and revised again is the smoking gun in this case. The rejected plan satisfies every building preference the city has built into previous housing elements — restrictions on the height of buildings and the density of housing and still finds room in this “built out” city for 13,000 new housing units. Over the eight-year life of the plan this amounts to an anemic growth in our housing stock of only 1.7% a year. And we are told that this is an existential fight, that we can either die on our feet or … build one extra unit for every 50 that already exist? No one should misinterpret the earnestness with which the mayor and company issue these grandiose statements as evidence that they actually believe any of it.

This is not a case of “we can’t build 13,000 units,” it is a case of “the leadership of this city does not want to plan for 13,000 units.” Councilman Casey McKeon admitted as much when he introduced a plan to nullify state law and “outlaw” the builder’s remedy. Council members McKeon and Pat Burns admitted as much when they proposed that the city “self-certify” the housing plan. I am sure the regulatory bodies in Sacramento as well as the attorney general are aware that ordering city staff to break housing law could well run afoul of state law, in and of itself. It certainly speaks to consciousness of guilt.

In the end, it is the homeowners and business owners of the city who will pay when those legal bills come due. And we have all been now placed in danger of summary judgment. If your house is not a mansion, and if your house does not have a dock, and if your house does not have a panoramic view of the ocean — if you live in an ordinary house tucked away in one of the neighborhoods of the city with shrinking schools and city services, which will be squeezed by our legal bills and penalties — what will happen to the value of your home?

Galen T. Pickett
Huntington Beach

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