Anti-Airport, Anti-Agran and Anti-Antis

* Since Larry Agran was elected to the Irvine City Council, George Argyros’ polluted plan for a jumbo-size airport at El Toro has been in a tailspin. When Agran took office, polling showed the county evenly divided on the issue. Now, after Measure F, it’s apparent that 70% favor a non-aviation plan for the old Marine base.

What did Agran do to help turn the debate around? He exposed the airport plan as unworkable and was a leader in the fight to defeat it.

Agran is persuasive and knows how to get things done.

That makes some people jealous. But ingenious and enterprising politicians, like Agran, will always have detractors. Thanks to Jean Pasco’s article on Agran (“Irvine’s Next Mayor Comes With High Voltage,” Oct. 10) for pointing them out to us.

KARLEEN MILLER

Costa Mesa

* The article about Agran noted concern among leaders in South County that he will engage in divisive behavior when he becomes mayor in December. Agran dismissed these allegations as partisanship by Republicans attacking a Democrat.

As a former advisor and aide to Agran for 11 years, I want to support their concerns. I resigned as his City Council aide in September 1999 because I could no longer support someone I felt had violated my personal ethical principles.

Your article noted that Councilman Dave Christensen recently disavowed Agran--”I don’t believe in Larry Agran anymore.” When he was elected in 1998, I urged Agran to set aside past animosities with his conservative colleagues on the City Council to help end “litmus-test” politics in Irvine once and for all. Yet now it appears that Agran has no allies left on the City Council.

Several years ago, I met with two leaders of a South County anti-airport group to see what I could do about ongoing friction with Agran’s Project 99. The quotes in your article indicate that problems remain there as well.

Agran has had two years to demonstrate he can reach across the partisan divide for the good of the people of South County. I’m deeply saddened that it appears he is making the same mistakes which led to his defeat in 1990.

When so many decent and sincere community leaders speak out about their inability to work with him, it’s clear that he can’t blame it all on partisanship. A period of goodwill once existed. Now it’s gone and, if Agran doesn’t learn to work with people who have differing views, it may never come again.

STEPHEN C. SMITH

Irvine

* Next month, if a landfill were proposed just outside Irvine’s city limits, would Larry Agran refer to Measure F as having been the Toxic Waste Dump Initiative? (“Officials Are Ignoring the Voters’ Jail Verdict,” Letters, Oct. 8).

Agran also states that “a record-breaking 84.5% of Irvine voters” said yes to F. For the record, exactly 0% of Irvine residents live within a mile of the Musick facility since it is at the eastern end of Alton, a zoned light-industrial area of the city far removed and buffered from all the Irvine voters that are claimed to now be anti-jail. The closest any Irvine resident may ever come to an inmate is the less than 0.5% of them who would be at the train station on Barranca Parkway as an escapee hops the train and heads south.

MICHAEL F. FISHER

Laguna Niguel