Mailbag: Development is the enemy of water conservation

The Newport Beach City Council seems to have a problem. Its left hand doesn’t seem to know what its right hand is doing.

I’m baffled that council members can declare a Level 1 water alert while seeking to add allowable space for office and residential development to the general plan. Won’t development require lots of water?

It seems to me that if I do my part and reduce my water use by 20%, as I have been asked to do, I only become an enabler of the council’s apparently insatiable addiction to more and more development. I refuse to continue enabling the City Council’s addiction — one that shows almost no concern for our dwindling water supply.

I will vote no on Measure Y in November.

Andrea Lingle

Newport Beach

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Watch the proselytizing

I don’t believe, as does columnist Jim Carnett, that Jesus Christ, “the redeemer,” is “a remedy for our grinding suffering and dysfunction” (“With Jesus, pain is not hopelessness,” Aug. 11).

For him to suggest that I shouldn’t reject that assurance “out of hand” is totally offensive to me, not because of his point of view — he’s entitled to that — but because the Daily Pilot would print his proselytizing views in the Forum section. A section for religion would be more appropriate.

Jesus Christ is not everyone’s savior, and that’s something I do believe in.

Ruth Ross

Newport Beach

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Charter lends too much power

During the candidates forum (“Council candidates focus at forum on park, development and charter” (Aug. 23), charter proponents praised the idea that the charter could increase local control, meaning local elected officials would gain control over municipal functions, such as contracts.

Here’s a way of looking at the proposed charter — characterized as a constitution for Costa Mesa — that might help its supporters understand why so many residents are scared to death of it.

What if the actual Constitution of the United States included a paragraph like the proposed charter’s Section 806? Except as provided by mandatory language in this constitution, the language contained is intended to be permissive rather than limiting and shall be liberally and broadly construed in favor of the exercise of power to govern with respect to any matter that is a domestic affair.

If anyone proposed that the U.S. Constitution should give that much power to a president, I believe every citizen — whether red, blue or purple — would come unglued.

Tom Egan

Costa Mesa