Mailbag: Air show and hot air in Huntington Beach

The joke’s on me. Huntington Beach City Council members Tony Strickland, Gracie Van der Mark, Pat Burns and Casey McKeon insisted they would majority-run the city like a business. I thought they meant like a hard-nosed, tight-budget business. Silly me.

The summary of the “nine-page deal with the air show” (reported in the Daily Pilot by Sara Cardine on July 11) was truly gag-worthy. Even the ill-fated Poseidon desalination deal only guaranteed 30 years of bloated returns on taxpayer’s backs. Our starched shirt “conservative” City Atty. Michael Gates managed to limit the bounty for Kevin Elliott’s Code Four event management company to a mere 40 years.

The corrupt, run-out-of-Dodger-town McCourts would have drooled at the lucrative parking deal. Our council and city attorney gave away parking revenues for 3,500 spaces, 600 of which would be for the exclusive use of the vendor for about a month, every year. Nice gift from a city that depends on tourist income.

I was stunned by Gates’ work ethic excuse. He claimed that it took the council “at least four” closed sessions to close the deal. Exactly like the student who whines about their D grade since they “worked really hard.”

To top it off, Gates dismissed some of the financial giveaways as trivial: “None of this exceeded $1 million.” In a city with under 100,000 taxpayers, a million bucks per year is trivial? No wonder Gates fought in the courts for a year and half to keep the deal from going public.

Buzz McCord
Huntington Beach

I leave town every July 4 to escape the war zone, as well as the air-and-noise-polluting air show. I can’t imagine what humans with PTSD and our pets suffer from fireworks and loud jets flying low over Huntington Beach.

Most residents are unaware the city contracts with the “kill“ shelter in Tustin. If every coastal city from Seal Beach down to San Clemente could have their own no-kill shelter, what’s the matter with Huntington? Did we really need a playground on the beach or more playground apparatuses in the park?

And now the majority City Council members ignoring important issues for our residents, more concerned with library books and spending millions of taxpayer dollars on frivolous lawsuits, has been exposed.

To quote Steve Shepherd in the July 14 Daily Pilot Mailbag, “Not once have they expressed even the slightest interest in the environmental or sustainability issues confronting our community.”

Sadly, it might be too late for Huntington Beach. I am ashamed to tell people where I live and currently hoping to move.

Lynn Copeland
Huntington Beach

The Huntington Beach Airshow settlement (giveaway of money) shows malfeasance and malpractice on the part of the Huntington Beach mayor and her gang. I am tired of watching our taxpayer dollars wasting away by incompetent and so-called governmental leaders!

Andrew Einhorn
Huntington Beach

Now that the actual agreement Newport Beach Councilman Tony Strickland and his fellow conservative council members made with Code Four on behalf of Kevin Elliot is public, I understand why City Atty. Michael Gates wanted to keep the agreement secret. The reason given in court was that disclosing the agreement would hurt future litigation. And, for once, I agree with the city attorney. If this agreement is not a gift of public resources directed by the majority toward their principal backer, then the agreement is at least proof positive that Strickland should not be trusted with public resources and that Gates is a terrible litigator.

Galen Pickett
Huntington Beach

Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark’s defense of the odious Pacific Airshow settlement is completely deceptive. H.B. taxpayers should not be stuck with a $10-plus-million, potentially 40-year deal with a company headed by a political pal of our city attorney. Based on this corrupt sellout, the air show operator could even run multiple shows in a year, and residents would have no say in the matter! Since this scheme was cooked up in closed meetings, the public was completely unaware of these political giveaways. It’s not surprising that our city attorney did not want this released. Since government malfeasance and political cronyism are real possibilities, an attorney general investigation is critical.

Carol Daus
Huntington Beach

Little did unsuspecting Huntington Beach residents know they’d be participating, after the 2022 election, in a new game show produced by and starring some unsavory actors — “Let’s Make a Very Bad Deal.” Behind door number one, a ban on “pornographic” books in the children’s and teen sections of the library. Behind door number two, a back-door plan to outsource management of the public library to a for-profit company. Behind door number three, a secret multimillion-dollar settlement with Pacific Airshow to give away a multitude of benefits, paid by for taxpayers, for up to 40 years. There have been many other slightly less deplorable “prizes” as well.

The city attorney and conservative majority on the City Council are the headliners in this show. Instead of doing what’s best for all our citizens, they’ve sidelined the council minority, voting as a block to pass controversial agenda items and resolutions on votes of 4-3 or 4-0-3. Conversely, agenda items proposed by the minority always fail 3-4.

The continual gaslighting is astounding. Last week the details of the secret settlement with Pacific Airshow were released, without mention that it was only because a private citizen sued and prevailed under the California Public Records Act. Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark touted a highly questionable, unverifiable annual $100-million financial benefit to Huntington Beach and surrounding cities, due to the three-day air show, as one of the reasons this costly settlement was such a great idea.

When the minority three City Council members issued a statement regarding the abhorrent settlement details, the mayor accused them of political gamesmanship, casting aspersions on the integrity of the City Council, and using the settlement as a means of campaigning for reelection. Is this the same mayor who, at a recent meeting, sternly lectured us on polarization in the community and called for cohesion?

It’s well past time for this atrocious game show to be canceled and the bad actors fired, fined, disbarred and/or incarcerated.

Michele Burgess
Huntington Beach

Appreciating Apodaca

I applaud columnist Patrice Apodaca for her insightful commentary about the recent tragedy at Fashion Island (Daily Pilot & TimesOC, July 14). Despite mass shootings in Laguna Woods and San Bernardino, far too many people believed gun violence would never make its way to Newport. Sadly, that view simply isn’t true any longer.

Alarmed by mass shootings at Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde and scores of other schools, 50 of my Laguna Beach neighbors and I co-signed an open letter last summer urging President Biden to convene a gun safety summit at Camp David. When we posted the letter online, 1,000 people coast to coast quickly added their names.

The next time the Surgeon General issues a public health warning about gun violence, my friends and I hope he will encourage the president to take a page out of Jimmy Carter’s 1978 playbook, when the former president hosted Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel for two weeks at Camp David until they forged a peace agreement.

Imagine what could happen if Biden invited representatives from the National Rifle Assn., 2nd Amendment proponents, national law enforcement officials and family members of shooting victims to Camp David. I am a realist, so I am sure their initial discussions would be raw and discouraging; still, I am equally certain that in the end they will be able to agree on several new gun safety measures Congress can approve.

America’s killing fields are littered with victims of gun violence. This now includes Newport. The time has come for a summit at Camp David.

Denny Freidenrich
Laguna Beach

Thoughts on Newport elections

It looks like a new day might be coming for the Newport Beach City Council. Instead of voting too frequently as a block like it has for the last seven or eight years, rumor has it that the council members might become a bit more independent. That also means that they will be listening closer to the will of the people in their district. Perhaps in the not too distant future, even the enflamed fliers that befoul every election in Newport will be the exception rather than the rule.

The council is less democratic than it should be because members must be voted on at large rather than by residents of the district they represent, the latter making so much more sense. Candidates consequently need a whole bundle of money to run at large.

It is true that the city is home to some very wealthy people, but that is no excuse to make running for office out of reach for everybody who wants to serve. Wealth is a reality of coastal California, but it shouldn’t influence council elections. Let’s make it so everyone who wants to serve has a chance to do so without having to seek financial backers. Newport’s council would be so much more responsive to the people it represents if we could take some of the money out of politics.

Lynn Lorenz
Newport Beach

Model planes vs. vernal pools

A gang convenes in Costa Mesa every other week to use historic, archeological, and environmentally sensitive city property. They openly lobby the City Council to comply or be ousted from office. So, the council ignores federal, state, and local laws to appease them. But this is no drug kingpin, it’s the Harbor Soaring Society — headquartered out of town — who have insisted since the 1970s they’re entitled to fly their toy planes on the vernal pool watershed of Fairview Park despite having many other flying venues.

This vernal pool complex is so rare that scientists from the federal and state Departments of Fish and Wildlife have told Costa Mesa to protect the vernal pools, as have biologists the city hired to update the park’s master plan, the steering committee the city appointed, the Fairview Park administrator, over 800 members of the Fairview Park Alliance, and 70.9% of residents who voted Measure AA into law in 2016 to protect Fairview Park.

This site is also precious because it is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places as the Fairview Indian Site, and one of only two federally listed archaeological sites in Orange County. California Administrative Code, Title 14, Section 4308c, states, “No person shall remove, injure, deface or destroy any object of paleontological, archaeological, or historical interest or value.” Yet, there are aerial photographs showing damage to the vernal pool watershed, and the vernal pools it feeds, over the past 50 years.

Fairview Park environmentalists were ready for this month’s City Council meeting, where the permanent fate of HSS would be decided. But instead, the city manager gave the hobbyists a six-month extension without public notice or input, pushing the item past the election.

Bizarrely, while HSS continues its activity over the vernal pool watershed, the council is spending almost $100,000 of our tax dollars to restore and monitor three of the vernal pools fed by it. And although state Sen. Dave Min has given $10 million to Costa Mesa for parks and open space, whether it is used as the scientists recommend in the Fairview Park Master Plan depends entirely upon the City Council and city manager.

Will they abide by the laws and scientific facts and vote with the residents, environmentalists, biologists and Native American tribes to protect and restore this unique treasure, or will they continue to cater to a few hobbyists who want to relive their glory days?

Priscila Rocco
Kim Hendricks
Fairview Park Alliance
Costa Mesa