Don’t Exclude Public From Land-Use Planning

* Re “Leave Urban Planning for Professionals,” June 11 Orange County Voices column by Gideon Kanner and Michael M. Berger:

Was it ignorance, arrogance or both that prompted Kanner and Berger to write their opinion?

In an ideal world, especially one seen from an academic ivory tower, land-use planning should indeed be debated by professional planners and by conscientious representatives. This, however, has not been the case in Orange County. As Shirley Grindle pointed out in her excellent May 28 Orange County Voices column, developers, not professional planners, have had the run of the county, motivated by greed, not by civic responsibility.

An airport at El Toro, a golf course at Mile Square Park and a [proposed] toll road through San Onofre State Beach are recent examples where special interests have determined land-use planning. They illustrate the brutality by which the citizens’ enjoyment of their communities is being trampled by special interests and by lack of professional land-use planning in Orange County.

How long will it take Kanner and Berger and their friends to join a NIMBY group once a deep-water cargo port is being planned in their city, Santa Monica?

HANNA HILL

Irvine

* Kanner and Berger need to come down from their high and mighty horse. Most civilians would gladly stay out of urban planning; we have much better things to do. But the track record of the Orange County planners regarding an El Toro airport is so deeply flawed that even we “untrained” civilians can easily spot the charade.

I recognize the problem isn’t with the “certified” urban planners. The problem lies with a county political system that has historically allowed special-interest groups and developers to dictate what’s “right.”

Thankfully, however, community activists now represent a significant influence on the process. Does such influence present other risks? Certainly. But I’ll gladly accept those risks versus a situation controlled solely by greedy developers, their political cronies and yes, the urban land-use planners hired by these same individuals.

STEVE HIRASHIKI

Aliso Viejo

* Kanner and Berger don’t appear to know what their role in land-use planning is. Their role is to implement land-use policy, not make it.

Land-use policy is made by the various affected groups.

DAVID HILTS

La Palma

* Kanner and Berger succinctly stated the problems inherent in Measure F and South County cities’ efforts to stop the proposed El Toro airport.

South County people live in a pristine area due to the foresight and planning of professionals who made decisions with the future in mind. They created a beautiful community. Yet now those same people are unwilling to allow the rest of Orange County to benefit from the advantages a state-of-the-art airport could provide.

Their NIMBY attitudes are nothing new. Everyone wants to protect his or her own turf.

However, the extreme effort to which they have resorted for wresting control of the situation is very unusual. As Kanner and Berger pointed out, the changes in decision-making mandated by Measure F could, in the long run, prove to be a prescription for social and economic disaster.

Somehow, I think the price is too high just to keep an airport from being built.

CHRIS PONSAR

Anaheim

* Was this written with tongue in cheek? Kanner and Berger cannot be serious.

To state that the electorate has absolutely no say in what its city plans to do with some vacant land is idiocy. The planners do what the supervisors tell them to do and apparently leave out some of the troublesome facts and embellish some of the favorable facts.

Now, if they would put silencers on the airplanes for both takeoff and landing, I believe there would not be any objection. Or if there were to be no increase in pollution. Or if there were not to be any significant increase in traffic.

Do we need another airport? I don’t think so. One can get wherever he wants to go from John Wayne Airport. If not, there is Los Angeles International Airport.

What about Ontario, where they are enlarging the airport. They seem to have plenty of space.

Every week they are building more houses here in Orange County whose value will be severely depressed by an airport at El Toro. You cannot tell me that all the homes will be insulated and therefore not affected.

Under this assumption, your home is your cell, and you never go out to the backyard to enjoy our Orange County weather. Ask the people in the flight path at LAX if they like it, particularly the lowered value of their homes.

LEWIS E. HEMPHILL

Laguna Niguel

* Kanner and Berger appear to reside out of Orange County and practice in Santa Monica.

Like most attorneys they are not only versed in law but also rank amateur psychologists, semanticists, able to predict the future.

If they have no vested interest in either side, why take a side? Their statement about the public wresting land-use planning from the professionals and putting it in the hands of rank amateurs reminds me of how school boards operate.

Elected rank amateurs with axes to grind dictate to the professionals how our school system should run. Kanner and Berger never made a distinction about who the professionals were. Perhaps they thought it was the rank amateurs Supervisors Chuck Smith, Cynthia P. Coad and Jim Silva.

The fact is the general public is tired of politicians and their hidden agendas.

CLAUDE WIESMAN

Laguna Niguel

* There is a clear and fundamental assumption being made by Kanner and Berger. To presume that so-called “professionals” are in place in Orange County to make an unbiased decision on the El Toro land-use issue is ridiculous.

The laundry list of errors continues to grow. As I recall, years ago March Air Force Base [in Riverside County] was considered a better location for an airport to address regional requirements. This was obviously ignored by “professionals.”

An environmental report on El Toro had to be overturned in court because it contained errors and must now be redone. And despite the continued claims that demand will be 28 million annual passengers over time at El Toro, demand continues to fall or remain relatively steady at John Wayne Airport.

The planning process nationwide is not in a vacuum, and I find it incredibly naive or divisive that Kanner and Berger would fail to consider the weight of external factors that go into urban planning and development, especially the element of special interest.

There are many ways to resolve the regional transportation needs and they do not involve putting an airport at El Toro or Los Alamitos or even expanding John Wayne Airport.

The reality is that the El Toro reuse issue exists because of a few wealthy individuals who want to become more wealthy and a community that wants an airport out of their backyard.

MICHAEL ULLMAN

Trabuco Canyon

* I was puzzled by a column that instructed “civilians” to stay out of land-use planning.

In a perfect world, where planners were always unbiased and created projects that were best-suited for citizens and their communities, I would have no problem staying out of land-use planning.

The truth is major land-use planning in Orange County almost always benefits powerful developers or the will of a supervisorial majority that is out of touch with the population it represents.

Then there is the fact that mistakes do happen. Environmental impact reports can be incomplete and misleading, as has been proved in the case of El Toro. To alter this problem, the voters of Orange County overwhelmingly passed Measure F, which gives the voters a final say in major projects.

This still leaves the planning to the planners; it only shifts the approval to the people, not the Board of Supervisors.

This still allows for the construction of airports, jails and landfills, but only if the county can convince the public that the plan is reasonable and acceptable.

Planners are highly educated and skilled, but it is the people of Orange County that must live with these intrusive projects. It is not only helpful but logically necessary for the people to have a say in the planning process.

CHRISTOPHER KOONTZ

Orange

* Orange County does allow freedom of speech. Thus the two lawyers from Los Angeles are free to compare their academic stance to our real life.

Orange County citizens are clear on how and why they felt and voted for Measure F, requiring a two-thirds majority vote on airports, jails and toxic-waste dumps.

These attorneys, along with Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and the mayor of El Segundo, have been spewing their propaganda at us to develop another airport.

The people have said we want all the information first, as well as all the information on other alternatives and then we’ll vote. Is that asking too much?

Who are these planning professionals whom Kanner and Berger refer to? Politicians? The writers somehow feel that the decision of three supervisors deciding the destiny of millions of people is the preferred method.

But aren’t the supervisors planning under a ballot box land-use issue, Measure A? They are like a downhill train without brakes that can’t stop.

MARY SCHWARTZ

Santa Ana

* To justify their stance, Kanner and Berger use the false analogy that we wouldn’t trust writing the fire code to well-meaning amateurs. I suggest that if the fire department couldn’t put out fires, the community would be prudent in writing a fire code.

These so-called planning professionals have left us with a degree of urban sprawl unequaled in human history, plagued with unsightly strip malls and traffic nightmares.

That their self-created organizations certify their skills provide little solace. The book “The Jungle” put an end to the packing companies’ certifying their own skills and sanitation. It should be remembered planners are public servants, which means they are to serve the public, not themselves.

It must have escaped the authors’ attention that the public is losing faith in their elected officials, state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush being the latest example.

Planners, city councils and supervisors often go with the money. The public’s input is patiently sought only because the law requires it. Nothing requires the legislative body to heed it.

The protection of environmental impact reports has proved to be inadequate in that they are paid for by the developer and city, all too often synonymous. Any adverse comments are glossed over or “mitigated,” usually at public expense.

BRUCE M. STARK

Seal Beach