Mailbag: New construction makes city too dense

Costa Mesa is being destroyed by overbuilding. The process has been a steady, but deadly growth beginning with very bad decisions by councils of the past and continuing with those of today’s council. Now our intersections are gridlocked, our city choked with pollution and noise.

The available land has been steadily used up, so now we have to squeeze high-rise buildings into small lots. Nevermind if those small lots hold poor and elderly people forced to live in small trailer parks.

Greedy landlords collude with developers to oust the poor tenants in order to erect three-story owner-office buildings. The starting price, so we hear, is $600,000. This is supposed to attract Generation Y, but where on earth would young people get such large amounts of money?

Just south of Adams Avenue on Harbor Boulevard is a colossal high-density building in the works; look around, and I’m sure you will see many other examples sprouting up next to Harbor, Victoria Street, W. 18th Street and Newport Boulevard.

This is definitely what Costa Mesa does not need — more high-density buildings. Soon traffic will be at a complete standstill. At the present time, one has to pick times to provide ease of movement and shopping. It is now impossible to choose a best time; they are all the same, crowded and crawling.

My question is: Who is making these planning decisions, and how can we stop it? We must make our voices heard. Quality of life in Costa Mesa is at stake, and the public needs to be heard.

Joan Morrison

Costa Mesa

Slice of life column

Re. “Letters From the Editor: Strange encounters of the Calvin Klein kind By John Canalis (July 21): Thank you for the most human of columns about the young man needing to have his tie tied. I have no idea why, but it made me cry. Your small act of humanity refreshed me.

Jeff Diercksmeier

Costa Mesa

Semi-colons have their place

Re. “A Word, Please: Semicolons have two specific purposes, so don’t overuse,” (June 17): I write in response to June Casagrande’s vicious assault on the semi-colon, which cannot speak for itself. She says in her introduction, “I hate them”; I love them.

What other punctuation mark says so much? A period says, “Stop.” A comma says, “Pause.” A colon says, “Note what follows.” The semi- colon, however, patiently explains, “I know that grammatically I am at the end of a sentence, but I don’t want the reader to stop because the content of the next sentence is so closely related to this last one.”

What’s not to love about that?

Casagrande’s ire should be directed toward the people who misuse semi-colons rather than the efficient dot-stroke that I adore. I am pleased, however, to have discovered another person who shares my unbridled passion for punctuation.

Kris Evans

Laguna Beach