Measure W Is Settled, but Not the Debate

Re “El Toro’s Future,” March 9:

The passage of Measure W was a great victory, not only for those who live in South County, but for future generations of Orange County residents.

The news, however, that the Navy is planning to sell the El Toro property to the highest bidder is alarming. Those of us who voted for Measure W did so not only to prevent an airport from being built at El Toro, but also to create the dream of a great park, along the lines of Griffith Park in Los Angeles and Balboa Park in San Diego. That, indeed, was the promise of Measure W.

But, according to news reports, already greedy developers can’t wait to get their grubby mitts on El Toro. If El Toro is to become just another 21st century mega-development, complete with Wal-Marts, Costcos, strip malls and cookie-cutter housing developments, then the supporters of Measure W have been betrayed.

The vision of Measure W was a park consisting of open space, cultural and historic areas, natural habitats and the like for the enjoyment of all Orange County residents and visitors. We must assure that this vision is kept alive and not sacrificed for the sake of greed.

Eddie Rose

Former councilman

Laguna Niguel

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Barbara Lichman of the Airport Working Group and pro-airport supervisor Chuck Smith need to face the music. Not only have Orange County voters killed the county’s airport plans, but the Navy has confirmed that it is disposing of the base for nonaviation use. Smith will try to convince the FAA that they should build an airport. And Lichman is trying to defuse a measure that even a judge suggested was the viable means to ending the airport plan. These people need a wake-up call to reality, and fast.

Mike Baron

Aliso Viejo

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Can the majority of voters on Measure W feel anything but deceived? Where is the “park” in the Great Park Initiative? Remember Irvine’s “Plan for America’s Greatest Park” with all the promotional pictures of families at play?

As the final votes were being counted, the true agenda for this measure was put on the table. Where is the benefit to Orange County by the sale of El Toro to private developers? Where is the traffic going to go for the tens of thousands of homes in the heart of Orange County? Is this legal?

What were we really voting for? Who were the people who knew about this hidden agenda, and either supported Measure W or maintained their silence with the intent of defrauding us all? What do we have now? No park, no airport and tens of thousands of new homes in the near future to crush the already burdened freeway system.

It was true. There is no “Great Park” in the Great Park Initiative. There is no way this can be legal.

Robby Conn

Newport Beach

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It is reassuring that we as Americans have such a forum in our country to express our views and participate in the process. What I find infuriating is the continual subversion of the few to the will of the many in our electoral process.

We live in a democracy, which means in our elections, the majority wins. Our system of democracy does not mean elections are valid only when moneyed elite agree with the results. In spite of our many faults as a culture, we often see that the citizens truly understand the issues at stake in an election.

How many times do we have to vote on El Toro? Why are the pro-airport supervisors so surprised at Chris Norby’s victory over Cynthia P. Coad? And on what moral or political grounds can each and every anti-airport initiative be overturned and challenged by a few individuals who at the very least are wasting money that is sorely needed for infrastructure, education, police and health care?

I want to sue them for violating my right to have my vote count. I want to sue them for wasting my tax dollars on elections and marketing schemes for something we continually say we do not want and denying my community’s children, elderly and poor the support they need. I want to sue them for denying me the police, education and county services, for which I pay dearly, to fund projects that have been voted down at least three times.

Democracy is tedious and seems to thwart the powerful. This is why campaign finance has become the fiasco it is. In the end our government is truly by the people and for the people. The masses really do count. Those who find that the will and rights of the people thwart their agenda have to resort to buying influence. In a strange way, it shows how powerful our system is, and when full participation happens in America, we will have the utopia we all believe in as her citizens.

Stephanie Georgieff

Santa Ana

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So South County turned out in full force and dealt a crippling blow to an airport at El Toro. The only North County city supporting Measure W was Tustin. Now it looks as if there will be a developer feeding frenzy on the buffer zone and 4,700-acre base, adding thousands of residents and cars to the congested roads. The traffic will be far worse than what an airport would have brought. As a result, the Saddleback Valley may have smog alerts rivaling the Inland Empire. But if that is what South County really wants, so be it.

However, this is to put South County on notice not to get any bright ideas of shoving your air cargo and transport burdens onto either Los Alamitos or Long Beach airports. In fact, two out of the five Irvine council members (Mike Ward and Greg Smith) have said that Los Alamitos would be a good alternative to El Toro. The cities near those airports soundly rejected Measure W.

There may have been some token support up here for a “Great Park,” which obviously will never happen. This is due to the lack of private funds that could ever be raised to buy the land from the Navy and then pay for building it.

Since Palmdale and Victorville airports are among the very few that have community support, feel free to drive out there. Just be sure to leave plenty early to catch your flight on time.

Rex Ricks

Huntington Beach

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Re “In Jolt to O.C., Navy to Sell Off El Toro Land,” March 7:

“For Sale: 4700 acres of land, zoned exclusively for park-related purposes; known areas of heavy industrial pollution, but no completed site pollution survey and no plan for cleanup by owner. Owner willing to subdivide.”

Will such land sell on the open market for $1 million an acre? To whom, and for what use? The Navy must follow base closure law in disposing of El Toro land. Deed restrictions on each parcel must recognize the property’s current zoning restrictions (park-compatible only), even if the city of Irvine gains control of the property. The article failed to mention this.

And any buyer would become immediately responsible for cleanup costs should additional pollution be found on their parcel of land. Can you imagine a commercial land developer willing to take on these pollution cleanup risks without a thorough site inspection report? Any land rush at El Toro will have to await a lengthy escrow, I’m afraid. The article missed this point as well.

But given these problems, I wish the Navy well if it does decide to sell off the land in parcels, and I wish the buyers well as they develop their park-compatible land. (Thank God for Measure W.) This is a far better way to reuse this land than building an unneeded, financially dangerous and environmentally disastrous airport at El Toro.

Michael Smith

Mission Viejo

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The passage of Measure W means that Orange County, a dynamic, multiethnic powerhouse on the world economic stage, will be stuck with dinky little John Wayne Airport as its only commercial airport. Those responsible for this situation, especially those who think that John Wayne’s level of scheduled air carrier service can be easily expanded to meet the county’s growing air transportation needs, should ponder the following the next time they book a flight out of John Wayne:

Its annual number of landings and takeoffs is more than twice as many as the airport should be handling. The airport’s 5,700-foot main runway does not meet the design standards for the airliners using the airport.

In November a Delta Airlines MD90 jet blew a tire while trying to stop after landing. This resulted in an emergency closure of the airport for four hours, disrupting flight schedules from Seattle to Atlanta. Finally, and this is the clincher: In February, at Burbank Airport, a Southwest Airlines pilot was unable to stop his Boeing 737 after landing on that airport’s 6,886-foot runway and wound up partially in a gas station. If that had happened at John Wayne, the aircraft could have wound up in a fireball on the Corona del Mar Freeway.

All this while seven miles away sits the former El Toro base, with grass growing through the cracks in its 10,000-foot runways. It’s probably going to take a catastrophic accident at John Wayne to wake the people of Orange County up to what they missed when they approved Measure W. By then, of course, it will be too late.

Norm Ewers

Irvine

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Re “El Toro’s Future,” March 9:

It’s refreshing to see Rep. Christopher Cox continuing to promote the sale of the former El Toro Marine base. Most free-market proponents in Congress are more than willing to bend their ideology by pushing pork-barrel projects to bring jobs and money to their congressional districts. But not Cox; he’d prefer to see billions of dollars flow out of Orange County to support the Pentagon. But would he be so enthusiastic if the money instead went to expand Head Start or fund Social Security and increase environmental protections?

Greg Gilmore

Santa Ana