Mailbag: Leadership choices, audience members at H.B. meeting don’t bode well for the future

I would like to thank equally esteemed local letter writer Lynn Lorenz for her kind words and always salient observations (“Reasons to worry and celebrate,” Daily Pilot Mailbag, Dec. 4) and note that all of the fears of fellow writers Ben Miles and Mike Aguilar expressed in a preceding Mailbag (Nov. 19) were confirmed at the Huntington Beach City Council meeting of Dec. 6 when new City Council members Pat Burns, Casey McKeon, Tony Strickland and Gracey Van Der Mark were installed. Their right-wing supporters in the audience were boorish and uncouth in the same bad manners style of their heroes Tito Ortiz and Donald Trump. The civic insensitivity of this group is the worst in the 20-odd years I have been attending City Council meetings here. It does not bode well that two new members (Tony Strickland and Gracey Van Der Mark) with no experience in serving on the council, were selected as mayor and mayor pro tem. We will see if their elevation to power improves their judgment or further confirms the dire straits our local government is now in.

Now that Erik Peterson is gone, their hero has become City Atty. Michael Gates. It is up to Gates now to show some restraint as a city official to make sure the new council majority doesn’t drive us off a fiscal cliff or land us in further hot water with the county or state government. I am not holding my breath.

I have seen previous councils of various political persuasions over the last 20 years build Huntington Beach into the modern, thriving, diverse, and well-run city it has become. I would hate to see it torn down and the progress we have made kicked to the curb by partisan ideological zealots who have little regard for the citizenry they were elected to serve.

Tim Geddes
Huntington Beach

Not a shot from the heart

Multiple potentially deadly arrows shot in Huntington Beach, not by Cupid but by stupid.

Ben Miles
Huntington Beach

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