Mailbag: Nobody wants your illegally dumped curbside ‘treasures’

Apparently the curb is the new landfill. One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing illegal dumping, and it seems to be becoming more common throughout Costa Mesa.

I regularly see furniture, mattresses, washing machines, beds, doors, junk and many other “treasures” dumped at the curb that sit there for weeks. Apparently, some people believe that if they leave it long enough it will magically disappear.

Today’s featured collection was spotted on Royal Palm Drive. What a bargain! Unfortunately, nobody seems to be shopping.

Here’s a news flash: If nobody has taken your stuff after three days, nobody wants it! It’s time to stop using the curb as your personal storage facility and dispose of junk properly.

And guess what? CR&R will pick up large items. Yes, really. You can actually have that old couch, mattress, furniture or other junk removed without turning our neighborhoods into a junkyard.

You can also use the Costa Mesa 311 app to report illegally dumped items.

So before you put your unwanted “treasures” on the curb, ask yourself: “Would I want to see this sitting in front of my house for three weeks?”

Probably not.
Barry Friedland
Costa Mesa

Business tax will end up costing us all

Government has a way of not paying attention until it needs revenues. The proposed business tax in Costa Mesa could have been indexed for inflation for decades. So much for staying on top of municipal fees.

But now that the city has worked itself into a fiscal hole, thanks to poor fiscal management, and it’s time to find more revenue sources.

You can see the thinking: “Let’s go after those with high gross business revenues and have them pay their fair share. Let’s not be concerned whether there are low profit margins, like your neighborhood grocery store, or if there even are profits.”

Can you just see your grocery bills going up just a tad more? And the proponents state that this fee increase will not tax residents directly, but it will indirectly.

The majority of the current City Council will continue to nickel and dime the businesses and residents. Next will come the raising of transient occupancy taxes (TOT) charged to those using the hotels and motels located in the city.

You can then expect to see a sales tax rate increase in a ballot measure. Then expect overall taxable sales to level out or decrease.

The proposed business tax doesn’t even phase in. This year your grocery store pays $200, next year it’s $15,000. This is a 7,500% increase!

It’s time for our council majority to make significant budget cuts and then slowly phase in tax and fee increases.

Get ready for Costa Mesa to scare off businesses. Then tourists. And then high-end shoppers who can no longer justify the cost of driving from around Southern California to our community to acquire luxury items. This measure begins the slippery slope.
John M. W. Moorlach
Costa Mesa

The writer is a retired state senator and a former member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Moving utility wires is not always a solution

Undergrounding utilities is a controversial subject. It is dependent on two factors: cost and location. It makes sense to have it in newer master-planned communities and areas that are threatened by wildfires, while areas that are vulnerable to earthquakes and flooding are better served by overhead wiring.

The other major consideration is the age of the neighborhood. For example, Laguna Beach, Corona del Mar, the Balboa Peninsula, Balboa Island and Newport Heights have mixed neighborhoods and varied construction years with many homes built in the middle of the last century.

For older homes, conversion to underground utilities is difficult because these homes lack built-in underground entry paths, require expensive service panel upgrades and involve tearing up matured yards or older driveways to safely bury heavy cables.

Other drawbacks involve electrical entry points on the wall and roof, cables that go straight to an outdoor old meter box and underground lines that must enter lower down near the ground.

Old breaker boxes cannot handle new underground set-ups. Owners must pay to replace the entire electrical panel, and old wiring inside the house might not pass safety codes.

Finally, older neighborhoods have tight spaces for new heavy gear, and crowded underground pipes block new electrical lines.

This last weekend the Daily Pilot (“Laguna Canyon Road gets a long-due $43.9M makeover,” Aug. 9) carried an article on the celebration of Laguna Canyon Road which, after 12 years of planning, got a $43.9 million makeover on a 1-mile stretch that included improved drainage systems and undergrounded communication and power lines.

Local news sources have carried articles about areas, which are in various stages of undergrounding. A Daily Pilot article (“Council members shuffle the deck in Newport Finance Committee,” June 28, 2018) spoke of the Corona del Mar project that came in $2.1 million over budget.

As one can see, trying to bring undergrounding to coastal enclaves has been fraught with difficulty. The terrain, the age of homes and the dissonance among homeowners, local governments and Southern California Edison have made it a most divisive issue.
Lynn Lorenz
Newport Beach

Huntington needs new leadership

The incumbent Huntington Beach City Council has struck down representative boards and commissions, as well as civic norms and elements of community involvement. It has attacked our cherished library system and other civic institutions.

It has foisted its ideological idiocy on our residents and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal lunacy, fines, punishments and restrictions. The Pacific Airshow settlement agreement will have massive negative impacts for years.

This City Council has floated numerous schemes to benefit supporters, insiders and special interest to the detriment of our citizens.

The only solution is a complete overhaul of the City Council. This can be achieved by installing a new majority in November.

The election of the Surf City 4 slate (Taryn Palumbo, Erin Spivey, Ben Davis, and Brenda Glim) is essential to bring back integrity, accountability and representation.

This would be a rebuke to the foul four elected in 2022. The MAGAs will now have to face the music for the mayhem they have created over the past four years.

Tim Geddes
Huntington Beach