Charter Reform

Re “Clout for Neighborhoods,” editorial, May 9: By entering into an unholy alliance with a consortium of powerful downtown business interests and our insatiably power-hungry mayor, The Times is a party to effectively blocking the public from participating in land-use decisions under the proposed charter. Far from the charter that the public had envisioned when they voted for charter reform, this charter enables the mayor and his appointees to make all the decisions, unfettered by bothersome and time-consuming public participation. These citizen appointees are usually selected from the same business and development interests whose project mitigations now have us sitting for hours in their “mitigated” traffic, with eyes watering and lungs burning, while we breath their “mitigated” air.

The Times correctly editorializes that the influence of money to buy access on the state level is wrong. Yet at the same time, you are lip-syncing the agenda of the powerful by promoting a money-dominated structure for city government.

MARY EDWARDS, Granada Hills