SOAPBOX The Village Voice: By Wayne Eggleston
City Council Must Consider Community Priorities First Priority No. 1: Preserve Unique Village Character
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eing a City Council member is not an easy job. I was on the City Council for 12 years and decisions are not easy as there are always conflicting opinions and issues and differing groups of people with passionate views. In reading Mayor Jim Evert’s column in the last issue of SC Times, it brought up the differences of opinions among our many residents. How do we balance retaining our positive and unique heritage and lifestyle with the creation of jobs and development. That is not an easy task, as these can be conflicting priorities. In 2009, the city had an independent study done, Vision San Clemente, and while many voiced support for economic development, which would increase the local economy and increase city revenues, the highest priority of 86 percent voiced strong opinion for preserving our unique village character followed by protecting our local environment. So what is our unique village character? Some examples: archi-
tecture, beach lifestyle, protected and sacred public view corridors to the ocean — windows to the sea, walkable neighborhoods, historic downtown village, heritage aspects, schools, small Wayne Eggleston mom-pop stores are very important to the quality of our residents. The latter has united this community together for generations. All the volunteer and nonprofit organizations giving back to San Clemente is remarkable. In order to support local development, we need to be “business friendly.” You have heard this term many times over the last several years. Does that mean we just give away preserving our unique village character to developments and local businesses? In my opinion, in order to be “business friendly” we also need to be “community friendly” defined as preserving our above unique village character.
They must be in harmony for each other to exist. Several weeks ago, the City Council voted against considering a large, partially underground 400 parking car structure in the Pier Bowl costing up to $12 million. It was decided that during four months of the year, it would be busy, but for eight months it would not. This is an example of listening to residents, and a lot of them, expressing their outrage against such a proposal. While it might have benefited a small group of businesses, it would have a very negative impact upon residents who make up 95 percent of the tax base in that area. Congratulations to the City Council for balancing “community friendly and business friendly” interests. Another example was the vote for the Ralphs Center on South El Camino Real. All of us in that area of town need a new supermarket, but there were many issues to consider. When I asked the Ralphs representatives where they have similar
developments with three massive levels of structured parking and mixed use, he proudly said they had a number of them: on Olympic and Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles. For me, that said it all. We are not Los Angeles and certainly do not want these type of massive developments in San Clemente. As a result of the vote, we now get a beautifully designed, one-story Ralphs with adequate parking, minus the traffic mess. Congratulations to the City Council for balancing “community and business friendly” interests. I will continue to point out and write about “business friendly and community friendly issues” and the harmony between them in future columns, as these land-use decisions dramatically affected the our unique village character of which 86 percent of the respondents in the Vision Study voted as priority No. 1. SC PLEASE NOTE: The opinions offered here are those of the guest columnist and may or may not be shared by the San Clemente Times. We appreciate, however, their willingness to share their views, and we invite responses to be sent to letters@sanclementetimes.com.
Letters to the Editor (cont.) (Cont. from page 8) U.S. Marine Corps, federal authorities and local residents. An editorial in the December 29 issue of Los Angeles Times suggested that what the TCA is trying to do is attempting to sneak its way through the approval system and into the State Parks by building the 241 in small sections, one piece at the time. If four miles are built now to Cow Camp Road near the Ortega Highway, why not a few more later on, and then a few more and so on? As it is, those four miles to Ortega will reach close to the proposed 14,000-unit Rancho Mission Viejo development and when that’s finished, a few more miles could open more developments in the open back country and so on. This incremental growth of the Toll Roads, a step at the time, will eventually fulfill the dreams of the Dahls and Everts of the business world of ever expanding growth and development. Let us now hope that our city manager and city attorney won’t find some clever way to allow Mr. Dahl back into the TCA or that Messrs. Baker and Brown will not vote for Mr. Evert to take his place because otherwise nothing is ever going to change.
Media Ignorant of Nuclear Woes Ron Rodarte, Dana Point
With the Japanese nuclear disaster still endangering the planet with the threat of spent nuclear fuel dispersal from reactor No. 4 and millions of tons of highly radioactive water now spilling directly into the Pacific Ocean, it is the common practice of the American media to pretend that the San Clemente Times January 12–18, 2012
disaster is over. The European Union mandated a study by all members to implement changes to the nuclear energy sector from the lessons learned from Fukushima. The French, who more than any country in the world has invested 3/4 of its energy production to nuclear generating stations, has just mandated upgrades to the 58 nuclear facilities at the cost of tens of billions of euros that may cause a closure to some of the facilities and possibly spell the financial end to nuclear power in France. On the other hand, American pundits seem to convey the image that the safety of nuclear energy is in the good hands of experts. Any Japanese citizen will counter that notion with the experience of believing those same guarantees in the Japanese press. The introduction of leading and misinformed options on a three-question survey is a symptom of a practice in drawing a curtain of ignorance across the public eye. Are we an American public who value the easy money in endangering millions of American lives or are we an American public who can learn from the disastrous misfortune of others and act to prevent the same in our country? To submit a letter to the editor for possible inclusion in the paper, e-mail us at letters@sanclementetimes.com. San Clemente Times reserves the right to edit readersubmitted letters for length and is not responsible for the claims made or the information written by the writers. Please limit your letters to 350 words.
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