Battle for Tustin Base Continues

Re “Stop Legal Battle Over Tustin Base,” letters, April 15:

Maralys Wills’ letter claims that the Santa Ana Unified School District should “examine the generous offer made by Tustin and start building the schools they need.”

Apparently Wills is unaware that Tustin’s “generous offer” involved a questionable substitution for the land that the Department of Education approved for Santa Ana student use. Tustin has traded close to four times the land within the Santa Ana district, which was used to grow crops, for a smaller odd-shaped parcel outside district boundaries that is described by an environmental scientist as being among the most toxic parcels on the former Marine Corps air station.

Santa Ana students desperately need school sites but not land that will make them sick. If Tustin reexamines giving Santa Ana students a poison apple and begins to fairly share Tustin’s windfall from the federal government, there would not be any need for litigation.

COLETTE MARIE

McLAUGHLIN

Santa Ana

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Re “School Districts, Tustin at Impasse Over Use of Land at Closed Base,” April 11:

The glaring sticking point on the Tustin-Santa Ana land dispute at the taxpayers’ vacant Tustin Marine base is the large chunk of land for an unneeded golf course.

There are at least five golf courses within a seven-mile radius of the Tustin-Irvine area alone, while Santa Ana is built-out, desperately needs space for its overcrowded schools, and would need only 100 acres out of almost 1,600.

Engraved in granite in FDR’s memorial is a challenge:

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

SAM CASTELO

Irvine