MAILBAG: City must pass proposed climate measure

One of the agenda items at the Tuesday City Council meeting will be a vote on the Climate Protection Action Plan written by the city’s Environmental Committee and the Climate Protection Work Group.

Fourteen months of meetings, attendance at scientific policy conferences, and discussions with Orange County mayors and environmental officials went into the writing of this document, which has gone through at least 10 drafts.

The nearly 20 authors included, among others, a Laguna Beach physicist currently advising President Barack Obama on environmental matters, several mathematicians, engineers, the executive director of the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce, the chief executive of a company that specializes in air quality, an urban planner, and an environmental economist who advises our state government.

They were all unpaid volunteers. In the spirit of the Laguna Beach 2030 Plan, they heeded the call to serve our city and responded.

It now remains for council to adopt, unanimously and in its entirety, the Climate Protection Action Plan.

We need to show up on that evening (the meeting begins at 6 p.m.) and support our council in making a decision for which our city’s next generations will be grateful.

TOM OSBORNE

Laguna Beach

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Green streets aren’t mean streets

What could Michael Hoag (“Our streets can also be green for pedestrian use,” Jan. 16) possibly mean when he defines a green street as “safe and useable, quieter and less smoky,” and where “cars drive more slowly?”

After asserting how over- and misused the word “green” is, he goes on to completely mangle it. What exactly is he advocating? If you want to engage in serious dialogue you must have some real ideas.

Green is where we reduce or eliminate carbon emissions, or regenerate energy or natural resources. Green streets are an oxymoron by nature, unless of course you eliminate cars altogether. Hey, what a great idea.

Imagine Forest Avenue devoid of cars (both moving and parked), but not bikes. Where students from the art school design imaginative planters that are filled with green plants. Where the lights illuminating the street are solar powered. Where the restaurants spill into the streets, like Europe. Where there is a stage on one end for live performance.

And where the community gathers on foot. Now that would be Laguna’s only true green street. The rest would just be marketing slogans.

BILLY FRIED

Laguna Beach

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Don’t leave homeless out in the cold

A “chronically” homeless person is defined as someone who is disabled and homeless for over a year. The number of chronically homeless people living in Laguna Beach is approximately 0.2% of our total city (23,727) population. They need our help desperately, in order to survive.

Homelessness is a human condition that we must recognize in our community, and perhaps try to see ourselves in them.

It’s important to understand there is a unique story for each and every homeless person that makes up this population, just as each of us has our own history.

While it is true that Laguna has shown compassion time and time again for our citizens, I cannot see how some can say that we have already shown “enough” compassion. I equate its capacity to love, which is never-ending.

Providing this population with a roof, a bed, a shower, a post box, and a locker to store personal possessions might cost less to us as a community than leaving the situation as it is.

There is evidence to suggest that the cost to the city for calls to police, ambulance, and fire in response to the homeless is much greater than what it would cost to provide the basic services mentioned above.

While it is not illegal to be homeless, the city has made it illegal for anyone to sleep in a public place. Yet, the homeless have no place to be from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m., and they have no means or desire to leave the community.

Let us be thoughtful and careful as we go forward in this controversy, but if you believe our lives are determined by choice, please choose to support pragmatic efforts to help the homeless from a deep reservoir of compassion. We’ve got to give them help.

Please go to www.lbhomeless.org to read more about efforts to help, with facts and links to the recent ACLU complaint, and the Task Force recommendations.

KRISTY MELITA

Laguna Beach

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Homeless should get what slide victims got

At an open meeting of the Interfaith Council last week, the Rev. B.J. Beu of the Neighborhood Congregational Church noted that our community rose to the occasion and spent $20 million plus to help the Laguna residents whose homes and property were destroyed by the Bluebird Canyon landslide. He asked why we couldn’t apply that lesson to helping our resident homeless individuals.

Council member Toni Iseman responded that it was federal money not city money that was used and that the shelter solution will be expensive.

Perhaps the lesson to be learned from Rev. Beu has more to do with our motivation than the size and source of the check. A homeless shelter solution will cost a small fraction of what Bluebird Canyon cost. I suspect that what is lacking is less money than understanding and motivation.

If the City Council and city senior staff are interested in and motivated to implement the multi-service center that Council approved, money can be found.

There are HUD grants. There is state Prop. 63 money available to support services and infrastructure for the mentally disabled. There might even be some local money, including in-lieu fees. Not to mention the private money that is already being provided by compassionate Laguna Beach residents.

What we need is for the city to act. Rescind the anti-sleeping ordinance and expeditiously implement the Council-approved, community-based Homeless Task Force recommendations. Let’s get on with it.

KEATING RHOADS

Laguna Beach