MAILBAG - July 28, 2006

Why is city manager paid so much?

As a longtime Laguna Beach resident and someone who makes less than a fifth of City Manager Ken Frank’s salary (and does just fine), I think he should donate his raise to the marine safety program. That might buy us half a lifeguard.

Why do you need more money, Frank? You make five times as much as half the people I know. And shame on you, City Council. Are we putting in more meters in more neighborhoods to pay for this?

Perhaps Laguna should downsize and split his responsibilities among others in city government. Car allowance? I have to pay to park a block away from my house!

Is Ken Frank our equivalent to the Pentagon’s $1,200 toilet seat?

JANET KOELLE

Laguna Beach

Fight mansions, not day labor war

Poor Laguna Beach, a beautiful ship without a sail.

So sad this lovely city has no management direction and no organized plan on how to maintain us as a lovely seaside village. They ? the Design Review Board, the City Council and the city manager ? allow mansions to go up in spite of citizen protests. Other cities have passed ordinances prohibiting mansionization. Three cities recently did this to protect their cities from being ruined: Fountain Valley, Downey and Westminster. They, the city council and manager, felt the need to protect their cities, and they had the guts and leadership to do it.

No such help from our powers that be. We have monsters going up all over the city, tearing down hillside, trees, scrub and riparian areas. We were once a beautiful little beach town ? no more. Could it be money that drives them? Could it be tax dollars? Why do they do nothing and always pass the buck to some department or another? Who knows the answer? I surely don’t. I sure know one thing, though ? we need a new city government, from the manager on down.

But the illegal immigrant yard really got them active and making decisions right and left. In no time at all, they decided to spend more of our money, plus the $21,000 from the festival to lease the yard. They even feel it is a wise move to buy land for this illegal project.

Are they blind to the fact that this is not their duty as our manager and council? Their duty is to protect us, their tax-paying citizens. Spend our tax dollars on us! Their obligation is to us. The illegals who thrive off us through our health care facilities, our schools, all of our services, also overcrowd our jails.

If our leaders are so blind as not to see that by breaking federal law and cheating us (their taxpayers), they are harming us in so many ways, they should step down. We need a manager and council that can solve the above problems for us and who really care about us as a community. These problems have gone on too long. Check out Fountain Valley and Costa Mesa city leaders. You could learn a few things.

YVONNE MEREDITH

Laguna Beach

Public safety departments in crisis

Recently, your paper ran an article regarding the inability of the Laguna Beach Police Department to recruit and retain qualified employees (“Police Struggle with Hiring,” Coastline Pilot, July 14).

The problem is so severe that the department has had to withdraw from regional programs, consider hiring part-time officers working for other cities and ask employees to defer planned retirements.

Situations like this do not materialize overnight. They occur through administrative and council failure to recognize and deal with developing problems. Further, the problems are not limited to the Police Department. Public safety in Laguna Beach is in a sorry state.

Laguna Beach lifeguards have been forced to publicly confront the city manager and council in an attempt to address serious staffing shortages and operational policies. Laguna Beach firefighters are experiencing even worse problems.

Over the last 18 months the city has conducted five recruitments for paramedics.

Agencies typically establish a list from each recruitment and use it to fill vacancies for a two-year period. Only four paramedics have been hired from these recruitments. One failed probation and another left after six months for a higher paying job in Newport Beach. One recruitment produced no viable candidates.

Other fire departments in Orange County are not having these problems. So the obvious conclusion is there must be legitimate reasons that the City of Laguna Beach is perceived as an undesirable place to work by potential employees.

It’s not possible to go into great detail in this forum, but the obvious categorical problems are working conditions; compensation and benefits; and equipment and training.

Public safety in Laguna Beach is in a state of disrepair and will continue to get worse with a city manager and city council that continue to ignore obvious problems.

More importantly, the current conditions affect the safety of officers and the community.

It’s time for community involvement since the people elected to set public policy and manage operations have failed to perform.

ANDREW HILL

Laguna Beach