A beginning to finish it all off

Dennis Myers

First, let me assure my fans that I am not part of a “group” (“A hard

ACT [V] to follow,” April 23). Do you know how hard it is to have

friends in Laguna Beach when you get branded for wanting to pave all

the hills and wilderness that surrounds our little isle? I end up

talking to myself, which is great in one respect -- I don’t get many

arguments. That’s why it is so nice you have obstructionist friends.

Now let me suggest some solutions that might ease some of the

expressed concerns. It all starts with one of the favorite punching

bags: parking. I think that we should raise parking rates to obscene

levels instead of lowering them. This would discourage visitors

sufficiently so they would go elsewhere. Then residents would have

plenty of downtown parking any time of the year. Since visitors would

stop coming then we would not have them stealing critters from the

beaches.

Also, with visitors curtailed, the Montage would go broke unless

they made their golf course free to attract customers. That would

solve raising Aliso Creek green fees for locals. Another good thing

would be that there would be less wear on city facilities and streets

so there would be no need for any City Yard. With the City Yard gone,

we would have all that space to build a Village Entrance and lots of

parking. That way the Act V lot could regress to weeds and scrub

brush where little critters could play again.

There are a couple of little problems I haven’t figured out yet.

If visitors stop coming our merchants, restaurants, and hotels will

go out of business. That would seriously cut the tax influx into the

city treasury. Without money for the City Council to spend we

wouldn’t need them, so cable TV time would go, further lowering the

entertainment value to locals. Also nobody would want to live in

Laguna Beach and rich people would abandon their mansions, leaving

the town open to gangs to plunder, pillage and destroy. Without rich

people living here the meter maids would not be able to write many

tickets they could collect, so they would go with the City Council.

Oh yes, I forgot the Pottery Shack. It could stay as is and return to

dust.

So you see I really don’t differ with my obstructionist friends. I

single-handedly (or single-mindedly) have saved the coastline, made

the green fees free, restored the canyon to pristine peace and

eliminated the need for the Act V City Yard; the Montage and all the

other merchants are gone; I stopped the Pottery Shack restoration and

all our parking problems are solved. Also gone would be the mansions

and further development, City Council and meter maids.

By the way, we also would not need three newspapers for us to wile

away our time writing these inane columns, and more important what

would be left to complain about? Island fever will be upon us. Ah, a

new problem to fix -- yes? Have to call a meeting of my group.

* DENNIS MYERS is a Laguna Beach resident.