Mailbag: Candidates promise to continue changes to the Westside

I am a long term Westside resident. I have seen it all over here. Murders, rapes, gang violence, drug issues, constant police activity, lots of crazy stuff.

For 20 years, I resolved to just accept we were the forgotten, the dumping ground. Then, in 2006, the overlays were adopted. Hope for my area, for my family’s safety, for the renewal of my neighborhood tentatively raised its head. But then the recession hit, and nobody was building anything. As construction activity returned to the entire country in the last few years, finally the fruits of the planning overlays are beginning to be seen.

Even better, we finally have a council that isn’t content to just let the overlay program do its magic but has worked to start maintenance of our city infrastructure, after being ignored for decades, shed light on costly labor negotiations, beautify our tired/aged boulevards, attacked some of the worst crime attractants, filled our city coffers, secured our future and undertaken fiscal policies that ensure investment transparency will continue.

Who could object to any of this? Well, guess who? Those same individuals responsible for years of activism to suppress the Westside and champion policy that was bankrupting our city and holding it down from all natural cycles of renewal. Now they want back in power. Their arguments to “do nothing!” do not resonate with Costa Mesans and they know that. That’s why you will never find any policy statements from them on what their plans are to address any of our issues. So they rely on building fear, uncertainty and doubt about how things are going.

The facts are on the side of Mayor Steve Mensinger, former Mayor Allan Mansoor and candidate Lee Ramos — each of whom is running for council this fall. They have a proud record of accomplishments.

Then take a look at the other camp. Try to figure out what solutions they stand for. Take a look at what they have accomplished in the past, and the issues they are working proactively for (a pet shelter?). Being against improvement is not an acceptable platform; it is the anti-Costa Mesa platform.

I stand proudly with Mensinger, Mansoor and Ramos!

Julie Fowler

Costa Mesa

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Intellectuals should look to Laguna

The epicenter of the United States appears to be moving west, to Seattle, the Bay Area and L.A. World industrial heavyweights are now Asian, not European. The really big, ice-shelf cracking IQs of Wall Street are starting to drift west to Silicon Valley. Even New Yorkers are starting to do yoga, meditate, and eat organic food. It would be nice to be at a pool party in Laguna Beach, and casually say, “Oh, New York — that is so yesterday!”

But we can’t. East Coast people can always say, “Yeah, so where’s your Greenwich Village? Where’s your Norman Mailer? Your Jackson Pollack? Where is your crucible for timeless genius?”

But it could be Laguna Beach.

It is already a magnet for art, and has both a school of art and design and an art museum.

Laguna Beach just needs a problem or two to work on. Great artists, really, can be seen as thinkers who, in poetry, novels, sculpture, drawing, painting, photography, crafts, theater, movies and design, wrestle with important issues. Art allows artists to engage their audiences with serious problems more vividly and profoundly than they could in a straightforward discussion.

Mailer’s novel “The Naked and the Dead” is about maintaining humanity under inhumane circumstances. Pollock’s painting “Blue Poles” is about struggling toward structure through chaos. Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind” is about showing respect for all people.

Well, those are interpretations, anyhow. The point is that great artists confront serious problems in an electrifying way.

Laguna Beach may be on the edge of that greatness.

Steve Davidson

Newport Beach