Some consistency between councils would be nice

Don Knapp

It seems to happen in Laguna with regularity (almost every time we

have an election). You can almost bet on the fact that the “new”

council will undo what the “old” council did.

The “old” council voted not to move the city yard, so only

naturally, the “new” council has to change all of that. Why do we

hire expensive consultants and outside “experts” to tell us what we

should do when we will probably not do what they recommend anyway? I

have favored the city yard being moved to ACT V, giving us more room

for a grand parking structure (a.k.a. “Village entrance Project”) to

accommodate our parking needs. When the “old” council voted not to

move the facility, I thought they were wrong. My thinking has always

been that Laguna would be a walking town.

Mayor Toni Iseman’s plan for peripheral parking at ACT V, along

with free tram service, was a huge success this last summer. I began

to see that people would in fact park away from the “village” and

take the free tram to town. They do it in many places in England, and

I could see that an expansion of Iseman’s project with more

peripheral parking lots might just be the answer to our congestion

problems. I could see hope for a walking town. I began to believe the

“old” council had far better vision than I had and that my old

thinking was flawed.

People would use expanded peripheral parking as long as it was

free and convenient. Iseman’s plan was both. With her plan, we did

not have to go to the great expense involved to move the city yard,

and a smaller, less ambitious village entrance would serve us well.

But the “new” council has changed all of that. We will move the

city yard to ACT V. We will intrude upon the serenity of the canyon.

We will (one day) build a grandiose village entrance with lots to

parking spaces, bringing the traffic flow closer to town (ergo, more

congestion?). One hopes that the “new” council’s thinking is not the

start of a clean sweep of much the “old” council’s actions. We should

question other major changes in direction the “new” council may take

us.

* DON KNAPP is a Laguna Beach resident.