Mailbag: Carol Crane and Krista Weigand are the right choices for Newport-Mesa school board

As the national election continues to steal the show, local residents of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa are faced with two very important races in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

Longtime incumbent trustees Martha Fluor and Dana Black are not seeking reelection. With the amount of experience these departing trustees leave behind, it is important we elect two new board members who can hit the ground running.

Carol Crane in District 3 and Krista Weigand in District 6 both fit this bill and would serve our Newport-Mesa communities well. I personally know them both and am confident they are well-qualified.

Weigand has an MBA, knows finances, budgets and balance sheets. She has children at our local elementary schools and has been at the forefront of mental health issues.

Crane is hands-on and is clearly the fresh vote for our future. Her commitment to student advocacy, community engagement and fiscal responsibility are a few of the many reasons why she is the trusted choice in District 3.

They are both strong leaders and parents who we can rely on and have lived in our community for many years. Our district needs communicators, ones who are willing to put differences aside and work for the common good of our community, while bridging the gap between parents, teachers and the administrators — all to the benefit of our students.

Weigand and Crane deserve your vote this election. Please join me in supporting them.

Kate Malouf
Newport Beach

State system better for disease monitoring

Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel had an article in the Daily Pilot in which she argues that the COVID-19 monitoring system needs to allow for local control.

We tried that approach once and failed dismally, Ms. Steel is one of the members of local government who demonstrated just how fickle local control of a pandemic can be.

Who can forget that meeting of the Board of Supervisors where Steel and others sympathized with irrational anti-maskers? Or that summer weekend that some local beach city governments refused to follow state directives to close their beaches, some even going so far as to sue the representatives of state government?

Supervisor Steel, we are doing much better under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s guidance.

Lynn Lorenz
Newport Beach

Rouda’s hands tied by partisanship

Re “Mailbag: Waiting for Rouda to act,” (Sept. 1): With all due respect to Ross Neal’s apparent desire for bipartisanship, but what’s the purpose of “reaching across the aisle” when functionally there’s no one on the other side?

Sadly, in today’s Congress, there’s only one party acting with constructive purpose and fulfilling the traditional role of elected congressional legislators.

While many, like Mr. Neal, may say they desire bipartisanship, collaboration and cooperation between the parties, this simply isn’t possible without there being two willing parties both actively seeking to craft legislation.

Steve Shepherd
Huntington Beach

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