Anger Over Golf Course Plan

* I simply cannot believe that the Board of Supervisors continues to persist in its plans to destroy the Mile Square Regional Park hobby area.

The depths of the county bankruptcy are now a mere memory, so surely the pressure to “enhance” revenues has abated.

Sadly, we must all now conclude that the only possible explanation for the supervisors’ actions must be centered on a “moral bankruptcy.”

Are these people oblivious to the wonderful good that has come out of that 137-acre parcel of grass and asphalt? Have they completely forgotten the needs and the dreams of the children they once were?

I grew up in Fountain Valley. One of the primary reasons my family moved to Fountain Valley originally was because of its proximity to Mile Square Regional Park.

My father and I frequently enjoyed flying our aircraft models at the park’s hobby area. Eventually my father even became president of the Orange Coast Radio Control Club, an organization that has never turned away a young person interested in airplanes.

As a child attending school, there were times when we would take field trips to the park. My dad and some of the other club members would teach us how these models worked. We’d even get to take the controls for fun. I can’t tell you how special those outings made us children feel.

Recently, on the occasion of my father’s 50th birthday, I stopped by the hobby area to reflect upon those times. And in this age of drugs, gangs and violence, I could see the hobby area as a small island of hope because I was seeing new, young faces doing the same things I did as a child.

The families of Orange County simply do not need yet another golf course, especially if it means destroying such a unique family recreational resource as the Mile Square park hobby area.

JOHNNY KARNOFSKY

Norwalk

* The Pharisees of county government have just committed the violation of a tenet held sacred by all public agencies.

That tenet holds that public agencies are the stewards of public parklands, and that they are charged with the protection of the natural and man-made resource elements of the environment for the benefit of all people.

Parklands are not to be sold, given up or degraded in any way. They are to be used by the public as a place for rest, recreation, education, exercise, inspiration and enjoyment. In other words, don’t mess around with the public’s parklands.

For 30 pieces of silver, the hobby area at Mile Square Regional Park was lost forever to arrogance, greed and false promises of riches. A way of life was wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

The hobby area was more than a place to fly model airplanes and race model cars. It was the pickle barrel at the neighborhood general store, it was a checkerboard in the park, it was where old friends met to swap stories, tell and retell tall tales and solve the ills of the world.

It was a place to make new friends, reacquaint with old ones and exchange ideas, a place to pass on to the next generation the wisdom of our elders and to learn about our past.

The county prophets of demise falsely perceived that since Mile Square Regional Park’s hobby area seemed to draw a relatively small number of users--3,000 to 4,000 documented users per month--it should be converted into a third golf course.

If you were to follow that twisted logic, then all of our county parks are in jeopardy of becoming extinct or at least becoming golf courses.

If you were to venture into any of our wilderness parks and some of our urban parks at various times of the day, week or season, it would not be unusual to find yourself alone.

Those moments of personal solitude, if for no other reason, make our parklands worth preserving.

They are revered sanctuaries for wildlife and people and not to be sold to the highest bidder.

RICHARD HUFFNAGLE

Supervising park ranger

Mile Square Regional Park