Prison time won’t make victims whole Five...

Prison time won’t make victims whole

Five years is not nearly enough! In fact, former Mayor Pam Houchen

should have to pay the condominium conversion fees to the city for

all of the properties she was involved with. Why do we keep letting

crooks run our city?

CATHY EDMAN

Huntington Beach

Throw book at errant ex-mayor

I would like to know what the law says about the type of sentence

an act like this deserves. There was a mention of 40 years somewhere

in the Independent article. If 40 years in a federal penitentiary is

the standard punishment and she ends up walking with five at “Camp

Martha Stewart,” I think that I will be even more sick to my stomach

-- not to mention the fact that this episode will finally prove to me

that people with money and power really are above the law.

Due to the fact that Pam Houchen is a totally competent and

intelligent person who blatantly abused the powers of her office, and

knowing that what she was doing was illegal and highly unethical, I

find it hard to feel pity for her family, who will have to deal with

their mother going away to pay for her atrocious crime.

Furthermore, I feel that Houchen should receive prosecution to the

fullest extent of the law. The fact that she had full awareness that

what she was doing was wrong, and the fact that she is an elected

city official who we as a community must trust, she deserves no

breaks at all. In my opinion she should be tarred, feathered and

excommunicated from our community -- forced to live in a cardboard

box in downtown Santa Ana.

I can’t tell you how sick this whole episode has made me feel, and

it only makes me wonder what else is going on in City Hall. This

episode has shattered any trust that I might have had in the

administrative sector of our city.

When I am approached by parking enforcement officers for parking

in the alley behind my house while unloading my groceries, they write

me a ticket every time without any consideration of the circumstances

of the situation. It makes me sick to my stomach to know that I will

probably never receive special consideration from the law, and if

this scam artist gets off with anything less than any other person in

this situation, I will go nuts.

TODD HUTTON

Huntington Beach

Houchen’s lasting development legacy

Former Mayor Pam Houchen may be prison-bound for her illegal

conversion of several apartments into condos. However, her legacy

also includes voting to develop the Bolsa Chica Mesa and having

seriously misplaced priorities on airports that have affected

Huntington Beach.

Long Beach Airport approaches drop as low as 1,500 feet over our

city. But Houchen was completely silent about it. Also, I never saw

her at any airport meetings, even ones held in Huntington Beach.

However, she was willing to “protect” us from El Toro.

In the Los Angeles Times on Nov. 1, 2001, Houchen said: “The

county’s plans for operating the airport will have a significant

negative impact on Huntington Beach.... A vote by a majority of

supervisors last week to approve an environmental review of the

airport has forced city leaders to wake up and smell the jet fuel.”

Let’s examine this. El Toro’s western runway is 10-plus miles from

our city’s easternmost boundaries. However, the majority of the

western departures would make an immediate left turn to join the

established flow departing John Wayne, while the rest would have

turned right after passing John Wayne’s inbound flow.

In addition, no studies or environmental reports were done on

western takeoffs or approaches -- including the fatally flawed county

plan that our supervisor and Assembly candidate Jim Silva would not

budge from. Then there is the alternative “pilot’s plan,” which would

eliminate the east-west runway and fly over 54,000 acres of

unpopulated open spaces.

So why did Houchen sound the alarm over El Toro and not Long

Beach? Perhaps she wanted to get in on the action with Irvine

Councilman Larry Agran’s political machine, which awards no-bid Great

Park contracts to cronies. She certainly could have made a ton of

money doing conversions on all the housing units to be built at the

Great Park. Too bad for her, she won’t be able to cash in.

REX RICKS

Paradise, Calif.

On opponents of desalination plant

I came to my senses and left the unfit-for-human-habitation

climate of New England in 1966 for Southern California. Shortly

thereafter I moved to Huntington Beach, where I have happily (except

for tolerating our corrupt politicians) lived since. I have always

viewed the NIMBYs as ignorant obstructionists living someplace far,

far away, such as the city of Irvine, taking idiotic stances against

a much-needed airport while their “leaders” slowly transform their

Great Park plan into a source of graft to be dealt with only by

future felony trial juries.

Now I am being told that fresh water is not as important as

obscure sea creatures, unfettered release of brine into the ocean

(that is where it would have come from, after all) or the stoppage of

the (gasp!) construction of an eight- or 10-mile distribution

pipeline.

What is most sad to realize is that the opposition to Poseidon’s

desalination plant proposal do not understand that they are NIMBYs

themselves.

ED SEBELIUS

Huntington Beach