Bluff-Top Gripes

Regarding your article “Homeowners Fear Strawberry Fields Aren’t Forever” (April 30): How nice it is to finally see an Escondido city official voicing some concern over the fate of the San Elijo Lagoon County Park and Ecological Reserve, after years of Escondido either failing to meet, or barely meeting, even minimum standards of sewage treatment, and then pumping said sewage through the same valley Doris Thurston now so dearly cherishes.

As for Gary Hahn and his fellow homeowners, there appears to be no concern for any ecological damage that may have been caused by putting 100-plus houses on what was once a very pristine, but mainly sandstone, bluff-top area, an area I was fortunate enough to have hiked through many times as a youth.

Their concern about the impact of a 150-room hotel on the “delicate balance of the hotel-motel business in North County” appears ludicrous, considering the fact that the nearest hotel is over a mile away and has only 102 rooms itself.

As homeowners and taxpayers, there is no question that the people of Sandy Point have a right to express dissatisfaction when their property values are threatened. The question is whether a newspaper with the credentials of The Times should dignify the self-centered sniveling of a very small minority of Cardiff-by-the-Sea homeowners by printing their complaints.

I think not.

“There go the bluffs!” There goes the neighborhood! The bluffs, and what you call a neighborhood, were gone the moment you decided to close your gate to the rest of the world.

Enjoying the “bucolic suburban lifestyle” of Cardiff-by-the-Sea while sequestered in a gate-guarded community--get real! Ask Jack Smith: That’s an oxymoron.

SEAN McCANN, Oceanside