MAILBAG - Nov. 22, 2007

Potential school sales need protesting

Warning to mobile park residents: Those strange-bedfellow-making politicians are at it again. You may be aware that the board of trustees for the Huntington Beach School District has sent notices of Termination of Lease to two schools currently leasing the land and buildings of Burke and Gisler in the district.

Some believe this is a prelude to sale of these sites and of the sites for schools Kettler and LeBard. However, you probably are not aware that such sales may affect you. The board claims it has no use for these sites (i.e., they are surplus). Terminating existing leases and requesting tenants to vacate within two years indicate that the board does not wish to continue leasing these sites and they seem to want to not keep them as schools.

That implies that they must be pursuing sales. To whom could they sell, and for what use? Commercial and manufacturing uses are out of the question because these sites are surrounded by residential zoning. Leave them as public service areas? What public service — schools? Four new libraries? Museums? Or rezone the sites as open space for parks and recreation?

But schools seem to be not what the board wants. And libraries, museums and parks could occur only if the city changes its mind and becomes willing to buy the land since, as the board recently stated, the school district is not in the park (and presumably, library or museum) business. That leaves residential developers. But if these sites are developed as single-family or multifamily residential, they would most likely cause an increase in the school-age population in the very same areas that the board would have so “wisely” disposed of assets required to serve that same population!

Ah, but what residential use could they be put to that would not draw children into the area? Senior citizen housing — maybe! And now comes the effect on mobile park residents. Once the four sites are rezoned and construction begins on four senior housing complexes, does anyone not believe there would be a push, greater than ever seen in the previous 40 years, to remove seniors currently residing in the mobile parks around the city, in particular, those on Beach Boulevard and on Pacific Coast Highway simply to make money for developers?

No longer could those residents claim that they have nowhere to go. I urge you all to join the majority of residents in the district to protest any sale of these sites as contrary to acute oversight-foresight and to demand that the school board either use and maintain these schools for educating students, since that is their business, or at least to lease them to others who can and are willing to do so.

MICHAEL A. RAINER

Huntington Beach