Edelman’s Denial of Project Applauded

Joan Cooper’s letter recently attacking Supervisor Ed Edelman for voting to deny the Montevideo project is absurd.

What costs Los Angeles County taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars are proposals like Montevideo. This project has been before the Board of Supervisors 32 times. How many hours of staff time and dollars of taxpayers’ money is that?

Add to that Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s motion to reconsider and send this project back to the Regional Planning Commission, where we have already held innumerable hearings, and you add more thousands of dollars of staff time.

Supervisor Edelman’s vote for denial of this project was a brave stand against the waste of our time and money and a brave stand in favor of the Malibu/Santa Monica Mountains Area Plan--the planning guidelines for the area adopted by the supervisors in 1983.

Were this project in compliance with the Area Plan, it would have been built many years ago. Instead, the applicant introduces delays into the procedures himself to postpone what seems inevitable--the losses by those investors unfortunate enough to have entrusted him with their money.

MARTY BRASTOW, Topanga