Like the student who stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square, it is both inspiring and scary to watch a person you know dare to fail in their efforts to stop a colossal evil. Maggie Hempen and the women who put on the first Healthy Girl Festival last weekend did a great job standing up to systemic evil, took a risk and did something at the Festival of the Arts grounds on Saturday.

We should applaud and encourage people who are willing to stand up and make a difference.

The core message of the Healthy Girl Festival, which ran from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., was to empower girls and refuse to support negative images, stories and representations of women.

One focus of the event was “Miss Representation,” a film by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, about the way that American culture, led by many elements in American media, demeans women. The film sparked a movement at http://www.missreprsentation.org with a variety of ways of engaging family, friends and communities to change the conversation about how we value females in society. One simple social media element is the hashtag #NotBuyingIt.

Newsom’s goal is to get people talking about what really matters in the lives of girls and women, to focus on their interior lives rather than the porn-star, air-brushed images that film, television and print media try to sell us.

There were also speakers who covered more serious issues like human trafficking, eating and behavior disorders and the environment.

More than just saying “no,” the festival was focused on positive images and input that is fun, cool and engaging.

Five women from the Soroptimists Club, which focuses on improving the lives of women and girls around the world, organized the Healthy Girls Festival. Hempen, a local Lagunan who has made our town a more festive and fun place for decades, used her powers of fun for good.

Maggie would have been excited if 100 people showed up and they had 15 vendors. Instead they had over 650 attendees and 45 vendors.

The event featured some great, hard rocking girl bands like Yours Truly, which features two Laguna Beach High School students; they ended their set with an insanely good version of “Barracuda” by Heart. Shaena Stabler and Denny Rambo killed it with her classic rock act, and the event wrapped up with a salsa demonstration that had the whole crowd doing the cha-cha-cha. Nothing says “positive energy” like the cha-cha.

If you’re going to change the world, start with a great party!

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

Two men died April 2 unnecessarily in a Laguna Canyon car accident. While the police continue to investigate what caused the 4,674-pound Tesla to crush a late-model Honda Accord to nearly half its size, there is a lesson for all of us who drive around Laguna Beach, especially Laguna Canyon Road, aka “Blood Alley” for all the deaths on that road…slow down and pay attention.

Let’s plan and design for better safety.

We’re all guilty in one way or another. It’s easy to be late, to take a call, make a call, text, eat, drink, speed…the list goes on. The streets of Laguna, particularly Laguna Canyon Road, are dangerous enough with hills, seven-way stops, pedestrian crosswalks, narrow roads and other obstacles. We don’t need to add to it with cell phones, speeding or half-baked stops.

If someone wants to merge on Laguna Canyon Road, make space. If you’re coming up to traffic and you have to merge, find a safe place to do it. Don’t accelerate and pass in the merge lane. Let your ego go, and let the other driver in. Your brake is as easy to use as your gas pedal.

The reasons why we make stupid decisions don’t really matter when it costs someone else their life.

Alberto Casique-Salinas, 47, and Armando Garcia-Gonzales, 38, worked for my neighbor’s company, Stewart’s Landscaping. Alberto had been working for Steve and Liza Steward since 2005. He was supporting his four children and his mother, who is raising them in Mexico. He also did a lot of the work on my yard—he was a friendly, hard-working man who mixed his sweat and toil with our community to make it a better place to live.

Armando was new to Stewarts but was already establishing himself as a dedicated worker and reliable. His wife and three children are now fatherless in Santa Ana.

The Stewarts sent out a letter to the community last week explaining that their workers had died and that the Laguna Beach Police Employees Association was taking donations for the families—you can make checks out to “Alberto and Armando Memorial” and mail them to LBPEA, PO Box 4611, Laguna Beach, CA 92652. Half of the people who received a letter have already responded with calls, letters and donations.

We can do better.

The police will determine what caused the accident and make appropriate charges against the Tesla and Mercedes drivers. The families will likely get a settlement.

No amount of money will replace a child’s father.

As we hear more plans and debate about a Laguna entrance, expanded parking development and other ideas, it might be wise to develop a master plan for the city, particularly the entrance and exits to our town. We need to address traffic flow, public safety, and possibly rethink how we currently manage bikes, pedestrians, crosswalks, flooding and, yes, parking too.

There are great minds, like William McDonough + Partners, who are brilliant at taking the competing needs of a city and creating a master plan that is beautiful, environmentally healing, cost-effective and generates returns rather than simply creating costs. Safety should be one key driver for why we need to overhaul the Band-Aids we have on a city entrance, exit and downtown that don’t work.

In the near term, we need to support the devastated families of two men who were killed coming to work to make Laguna Beach a better place, and we need to work on what we can control—our own safe driving skills. For the future, we need to develop a master plan for our city that specifically addresses safety, traffic flow, environmental concerns, creates sufficient parking and is financially sustainable.

Previous plans and designs for our town did not effectively manage the current demands and uses that are needed today. Before we start debating the details of a village entrance and parking structure, let’s take a step back to strategically plan and design for the current and future needs of Laguna Beach with the right intent.

No one designed Laguna Canyon intentionally as “Blood Alley.” We know it’s dangerous. Let’s plan to wash the blood off of our hands.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom…

–John Updike’s “Seven Stanzas at Easter.”

I think I met a real angel the Saturday before Easter on the beach. He was picking up cigarette butts. That day and the following week reminded me why we are willing to trade so much time, money and other resources to live in Laguna Beach.

Now if we only had a plan.

John Updike wrote a poem for Easter that makes the point that if a body of believers is going to organize around an idea, like the resurrection, then make it real or don’t waste your time pretending.

There are people in Laguna who work to bring heaven to Earth in big and little ways.

Beach clean-ups are a little way to make the world a better place. When my family and some friends were cleaning the beach from Oak Street to Main Beach during the Eco Warrior led Adopt-A-Beach program recently, I caught up with a man I didn’t recognize picking up trash ahead of us.

There are a lot of cigarette butts and straws at the Pacfic Edge Hotel’s deck bar, and as we stopped there to sift sand, we introduced ourselves. I can’t recall his name, but what I do remember is that he was from Colorado Springs, Colo., and he has been coming to Laguna for 35 years to vacation.

A man who is willing to invest a Saturday morning of his vacation picking up trash on a beach that’s not his own is an angel or a saint or something mythical, magical and real. He was by himself. He was quiet and he was doing a simple and beautiful act for his “neighbor,” for people that he may not know but he has come to love.

After the beach clean up, the high school boys’ and girls’ tennis teams hosted a parent-student tournament. My son, Willem, and I played about five hours of tennis on a warm and sunny day against a variety of other parents and students. It’s the kind of activity that gets parents talking about how great our school is.

Principal Joanne Culverhouse (known as “Dr. C”) showed up to say, “hello” and watch some sets on her day off. I kept overhearing parents saying things like “why don’t we do this more often?” Playing doubles tennis with parents you might not have met is a great way to get to know people you might not otherwise.

Our family has been lucky enough to have Dr. C as a principal since our kids started school at El Morro Elementary. I’m continually amazed at the way she delivers her personal care to our families. She is another real-life angel.

So as we played our sets on the high school courts—courts that are a shared asset with the City for joint use — it is obvious that they are in horrible disrepair. The courts are so cracked, chipped and dirty that some teams have refused to play our high school boys at home.

Over the past few years, tennis parents have worked with frustration to try to get the school board and the city to fix the courts. Laguna Beach taxpayers passed a bond that created a fund to guarantee Laguna Beach High School facilities would be kept up to minimum standards. That obligation isn’t being met now.

The real problem with the courts is a problem in our school district and city at a strategic level; we don’t seem to have a real strategic plan. We can’t fix high school tennis courts. We can’t figure out parking for less than $200,000 per new space. We fight over tactics because we don’t have a vision for how to organize our city and schools in a way that generates more than it takes.

Laguna needs a strategic vision and plan and a real angel, “weighty with Max Planck’s quanta,” to bring us together to execute it.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

“So when Jesus calls us to love our neighbor, this is more just a command or an ethical statement or a rule of life; it’s about the very nature of reality. We are deeply connected with everyone around us, and our intentions and words and and thoughts and inclinations toward them matter more than we can begin to comprehend.” –Rob Bell. “What We Talk About When We Talk About God.”

Two of my close friends (above) from college are authors living in Laguna Beach who write about community and spiritual things. They are both on the road this week and have been making news, but what struck me is how what they are saying resonates with what we are doing here at home.

Cathi was covering the new head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, and his remarkable ability to approach the public, particularly the press with humility, love and blessings.

Francis’ blessing of the non-Roman, non-believers is remarkable as is his apparent focus on serving the poor. One hopes that he will be transparent and honest about serious reform in a church that has recently been found full of transgression and lacking in public confession.

Rob was in San Francisco, at Grace Cathedral, doing a tour for his new book when he was asked a simple question about his position on same-sex marriage, he responded, “I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed, and I think the church needs—I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

The Huffington Post ran a story on Rob’s position (he is a best selling-author and pastor), which has sparked more news stories and debates about gay marriage. Author Anne Rice wrote on Facebook and Twitter, “’Rob Bell Comes Out for Marriage Equality.’ This is great news. I am an admirer of Rob Bell, and I hope this will be a wonderful thing.”

Rob followed his original comments with this:

“The powerful revolutionary thing about Jesus’ message is he says ‘what do you do with the people who aren’t like you? What do you do with the other? What do you do with the person who is hardest to love…?’” Bell responded. “That’s the measure of a good religion…I think people are drawn to your message when they realize that you don’t have an agenda and that you are actually interested in them and you do want to serve them. … Serving actually does change the game.”

In an increasingly connected world, learning to get along—learning to confess and apologize as well as forgive are a corollary requirement. It is essential as last week’s letters to the editor clearly identified.

It’s also inspiring when a friend who has been repeatedly attacked, refuses to react to negative pressure, stays the course and creates positive energy in our town.

Rob has been helping James “Jamo” Pribram develop his talks about traveling the world to help fix environmental problems through partnerships with local environmental activists.

Jamo focuses on productive solutions.

Despite a jealous and demented series of attacks by a former environmental activist in town, James’ group, The Eco Warrior Foundation, now represents the California Coastal Commission’s Adopt-A-Beach Program locally.

There are days when we have to stand up for what is right, days when we have to apologize, days when we have to forgive and days when we have to ignore the dementors.

This Saturday, I will be practicing acts of service at Oak Street with Jamo from 9 a.m. until noon, cleaning up our local beach and ocean that I hope can forgive our many transgressions, because, to quote Rob again, I believe that “serving actually does change the game.”

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

There has been a lot of conversation the past few weeks about whether or not Laguna Beach schools should start before Labor Day and why our school board is putting the interests of the teachers’ union ahead of the interests of the students and parents that they are elected to primarily serve.

It has been enlightening to see how many parents have come together to oppose the random calendar change that Sherine Smith and the Laguna Beach Unified Faculty Association (LBFUA, our local teachers’ union) created.

The late Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.” In the case of Laguna Beach, the issue of when summer stops and starts is a deeply local issue. It doesn’t matter what a person’s political party preference or ideology is, summer is the main event in our town and Labor Day is the holy week for our tourism, vacations and preparations to restart the year.

You’re either for summer in Laguna Beach or you are for a superintendent and school board that are willing to put LBUFA’s demands ahead of students’ and parents’ wishes and needs.

If you listen to the end of the podcast on the Laguna Beach Unified School District website for Jan. 22 (http://www.lbusd.org) you will hear the discussion that clearly indicates this calendar changed happened entirely to support LBUFA’s demands.

Finally, the school board has sent a message to parents this week agreeing to revisit the calendar issue and discuss it with them—after weeks of parents having to organize and demand input, standing in cramped school board meetings for hours and having to work through a barrage of half-truths and pathetic excuses that attempt to explain how a bad decision could find its way through a process designed to avoid public input.

It is encouraging that the school board is starting to listen and engage the public. It is encouraging that the school board has started to post agendas, meeting minutes and podcasts on their website.

The process is changing.

If the school board is serious about defending students’ and parents’ interests ahead of LBUFA’s, that will be most encouraging of all.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

This year will commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Brown Act, the California act that is supposed to guarantee public notifications and access to government meetings. Unfortunately, our local school board continues to avoid public participation either by design or gross negligence. Neither is appropriate.

Last week the Indy reported parent outrage over the school board’s change of the school calendar. School will start before Labor Day rather than after it. Sparking the indignation is the vacuum of communication and public discourse over the change.

Most parents and students do not want a school board and superintendent making decisions for them without their input. Avoiding that input misses the entire spirit of public service.

As an example of the district’s failure to communicate, minutes of the school board’s meetings have not been posted on its website since November. Apparently “the dog ate my homework” excuse works at the board level too.

What a fabulous example for our students.

Nor are school board meetings available as webcasts. A simple solution might be to ask one of the students in the high school communications department to record and post the meetings on YouTube and create a channel for the school board. It would take little time and generate little cost. (A podcast of the Jan. 22 meeting was added to the website in recent days.)

Of course, you’d actually have to want to make the meetings public.

When parents filled the chairs at the last joint meeting between the city and the school board to protest the change, Theresa O’Hare made a snappy response over her shoulder to parents in attendance claiming that the change was “agendized” and it was “too bad that no one showed up.”

The agenda item to discuss the calendar change for the Jan. 22 meeting was listed as, “School Calendar, Mr. Vlasic.” That description in no way signals a proposed end to Labor Day vacations or any change at all. And you would have had to drive to the district office to find the piece of paper to read the agenda.

At last week’s meeting, Superintendent Sherine Smith presented a survey of teachers and parents about their interest in starting school before Labor Day weekend. This was the entirety of the presentation:  75% of the teachers and only 43% of parents responded. The superintendent did not provide the actual results of those surveyed, but somehow it inferred to her that we all want to end summer early.

People get fired for showing up at business presentations with no data on critical surveys that have significant impact. Fortunately, being prepared isn’t a job requirement for our superintendent.

Feigning ignorance is fine.

My guess is that the real issue is managing truancy prior to the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday and Friday when school is out.

I’m guessing, though, because the basics of solution selling are not apparent in the school board presentation. So far, there is little engagement or planning with public involvement.

It’s just insiders talking to insiders about what insiders want.

It’s easy to say you want public input, but design signals intent. The lack of transparency on agendas, presentations and solutions show no design to include, communicate or receive public input about school board decision-making.

Our school board either needs a wholesale change in the way they are engaging the public or they need to be recalled. No public official has the right to this behavior in our state.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

Over the holidays, the Indy focused on the past—fond memories of holidays past and the parts of Laguna we miss as we entered a new year. As I read some remarkable stories, it made me think about the present and the new additions to our town that give more than they take.

Laguna Beach is known for being a wealthy community, and I don’t primarily mean financially. Living in a place of such amazing natural beauty should generate an abundant attitude and positive energy.

A dynamic exchange of the things we love with those around us creates true wealth and good karma. The more we put out, the more joy, light and love comes back to us and vice versa.

The list of things I love about Laguna wouldn’t fit in this column, but there are some stand-out new additions to our town this year that deserve mention.

One building on Coast Highway holds two of the best new adds: The Wine Gallery and FM radio station KX 93.5.

Chris Olsen, who lives in Laguna and also co-owns the Wine Gallery in Corona Del Mar, expanded the brand to 1833 S. Coast Highway last year. They have the perfect supper menu that’s paired well with the carefully selected vino on hand and a woodfire pizza oven that makes the lightest, crispy pizzas. If you haven’t been yet, get in there. You’ll be glad you did.

On the second floor, is Laguna’s new FM radio station. KX 93.5 reminds me of the best of college and public radio in one place. They refuse to play Top 40 dreck. Describing their format as “generational alternative rock,” the DJs play tunes which you may have never heard from the ‘60s to today. The station is  member supported (join now, please) and non-commercial, which seems like a perfect fit for our artist and neighborhood vibe.

Speaking of non-commercial, the newest non-profit in Laguna is James Pribram’s Eco-Warrior Foundation. “Jamo” as he’s known, has been traveling the world to put a spotlight on environmental issues. He also has been working with the Montage and Boys and Girls Club, developing essay contests and beach clean ups in Laguna.

The foundation, whose nonprofit status is pending, will expand more beach clean ups and youth essay contests as well as create multi-media educational tools for environmental programs. It’s exciting to see the ways that Eco Warrior has captured kids’ imaginations and engaged their enthusiasm for cleaner beaches and oceans.

The best new art project in town has to be the Waterman’s Wall on the Hobie building at Beach and Forest Avenue. A lot of people came together to make it happen, but it wouldn’t exist without Randy Morgan, Clay Berryhill and Mark Christy.

Randy is the artist who developed the bronze-like relief sculpture, Clay helped organize and finance the project and Mark made his private building’s wall available for the installation.

The wall depicts a day on the beach with a wide variety of legends from Laguna—lifeguards, surfers, skim boarders, film makers and stand up paddlers among them. The names of the watermen (and women) depicted are less important than the essence that Randy was trying to represent, the variety of ways that Lagunans embrace the beach and ocean.

When the Waterman’s Wall was installed, the group who created the project made it clear that it was a private gift on private property to the people of Laguna Beach.

No tax dollars were involved.

There are a lot of artists in Laguna with a wide variety of talents. Their choice of content and execution is always open to criticism, but the wall was widely celebrated when it was unveiled by local legends, city officials and lots of people who enjoy our coast.

It is a great contribution to the heritage of Laguna Beach.

These new additions dramatically enhance the positive energy quotient in town giving joy, life and light.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

I almost didn’t paddle out Monday. By the time I got to Salt Creek, the wind was blowing at least 15 knots from the north, and although there was an overhead windswell, it just felt too wild and cold.

Then I remembered that my wife’s 15-year-old cousin, Matthew, was arriving from a 25-degree snowstorm in West Michigan that night. I needed to get out there and get my stoke on.

Matthew had contacted us last fall about spending two weeks with us doing his Winterim, the January independent study program his high school requires, learning to be a waterman. He wanted to study surfing.

When I was 15 and also living in West Michigan, my older brother and I would surf and windsurf anytime there was enough storm activity to generate wind and swell, even with snow flying, waterspouts popping up and lightning snapping. We never experienced glassy overhead swells.

I needed to start thinking about surfing like an excited and nervous 15-year-old high school student seeing Southern California for the first time. Even our worst days look pretty good.

Some of my friends from Michigan and Chicago have moved to Laguna over the past decade. It seems like a visit or two is all it takes, and they start talking about how to sell their home, their business, change their lives and move to heaven-on-earth.

Not that living in the Midwest is terrible, but if you must get your gills wet every day the icebergs and snow on the Great Lakes are problematic.

Laguna resident Ian “Kanga” Cairns, a co-founder of modern, professional surfing and one of the best coaches on the planet, offered to share his private curriculum and spend the day with us helping Matthew understand what surfing looks like at the next level.

My favorite section in the “Kanga Surf Training” is titled “Courage In Heavy Surf.” It reads “Respect in surfing is earned through riding gnarly waves with agro and passion and all surfers who aspire to the pro ranks must learn how to love being beaten by hell waves and come up laughing.” Classic Cairns.

On our first night in Laguna, we’re watching “Bustin’ Down the Door,” the film about Ian, Shaun Tomson, Michael Tomson, Peter Townsend and Mark Richards, who revolutionized competitive surfing in the mid-70s and created the surf industry.

Matthew and I will be free diving the kelp and reefs of Laguna, SUPing the coves and pinnacles on flat days, cruising San Onofre State Beach on longboards and watching a variety of surf films from a wide range of perspectives.

There are nearly as many expressions of surfing as there are watermen; the art of surfing is about the different elements that bring joy to each individual in the water.

It continually surprises me that I don’t see more Lagunans in the water and on the beach every day. Yes, there are a myriad of reason to avoid the beach when it’s windy, when it’s raining, when it’s too hot or too cold. But there are so many better reasons to find the reason to be in the water on those days that I can’t stay out. It’s like exploring for me; finding the nutrient in all the guano.

A friend asked if I enjoyed retracing my steps, going slow, riding mushy waves… For me, there was never a pro career and never will be. Surfing is a vocation for me and my job is to share my love for the sea, for the water and the spirit that I find with others, one way or another. It’s not about “liking” it. It’s that I can’t imagine not doing it.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to / The love you make. From http://www.dudespaper.com

This week has been too full of trauma and ill tidings of the horrific. Sometimes it helps me to reset and focus on the now with a little Dudeism, the religion formed around the film, “The Big Lebowski.”

This week, we have grieved over the worst event that can occur in a classroom. I want to explore the best that goes on in our local classes.

Poetry is one of the finest and simplest gifts that Mary Blanton, Laguna Beach’s Teacher of the Year, brings into her third grade class at El Morro.

Before the holiday break, she teaches a unit on composing poems. This week, my wife Sarah, a former editor of literary journals and author of her own blog and book of poems, visited the class to talk about the value of poetry. She described how to write poems and to share some of her favorites. Then the kids shared some of their own poetry too.

I can’t think of what else I’d prefer to receive from my lads than the expressions of their feelings about life in words and on paper. After this week, I went looking for poetry treasures when our own boys were at El Morro.

Poetry forces a person to focus on the now, to create art with words and to share how one sees the world. When done well, poetry fosters connections between people and generates bonds and community.

To push aside the holiday madness and whatnot, sometimes the best way to decompress (after a bit of eggnog, hot buttered rum, gluhwein, aquavit, boerenjonges or whatever keeps your mind limber) is to put some words on paper and express yourself in poetry, preferably to someone you love.

Consider an excerpt of ee cummings’ poem, “i carry your heart with me”:

“here is the deepest secret nobody knows/ (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud / and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows / higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) /and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart / i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)”

Turn off the news, be in the now, and author something of your own this week.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

Between last Thursday and this past Tuesday, Laguna Beach demonstrated how a community can get things done without requiring government intervention.

Aside from the fantastic waves on Friday and Saturday, the best part of my week was the unveiling of the Waterman’s Wall at the Hobie Surf Shop downtown.

A lot of people came together to make the Waterman’s Wall work. Local Randy Morgan had the talent and vision to create a mural of Laguna watermen for Lagunans to enjoy. Clay and Delphine Berryhill organized the private financing and much of the project management while Mark Christy donated the space, a blank wall on the Beach Street side of Hobie Surf Shop.

David Vanderveen

The mural is a selection of lifeguards, surfers, skimboarders, stand up paddlers, and filmmakers who have contributed both to the wall and to Laguna. In a town with as rich a history as ours, you can’t perfectly capture everyone, but you can keep making more art.

A surprisingly large number of people came out to see the wall unveiled. Beach Street was shut down for an hour or so with the crowd. Everyone was there to celebrate two traits that make Laguna special; people who regularly get their gills wet and local art.

It turned out beautifully. The celebration at Mozambique afterwards was packed with a cross section of local friends and families.

I was less excited about Tuesday night at the City Council chambers and another round of overreach by a city leaning more toward a nanny state than a city of adventurers who manage risks and challenges in the sea.

Kelly Boyd, our new mayor, captured the evening best when he voted against a Social Host Ordinance (SHO) that he had voted for on Nov. 13 despite revisions that made radical improvements.

“I’ve noticed that we keep passing more things that don’t work. I’ve come to the conclusion, unless you show me that it’s going to really work, I’m not going to pass it,” said Boyd.

Recently, the city of Laguna Beach felt like it had become a local government out-of-control.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, councilman-elect Steve Dicterow set up a meeting between Howard Hills, Tijana Hamilton and myself with City Manager Robert Pietig. The room was a little tense, but cordial. I have to admit that simply having real dialog with clear expectations helped create a process with strong engagement on both sides.

Before that, the “process” simply felt like a series of meetings designed so that the city could talk at the opposition.

Last Thursday, as a lot of the town was celebrating the Waterman’s Wall and the uniqueness of our community, the city unveiled their updated language in the social host ordinance based largely on the suggestions of Hills and the opposition group, which had dramatic improvements to previous versions.

At the council meeting this week, seat were filled with high school students and parents who came down to present their research and opinions about SHOs around the country and why Laguna’s was a bad idea.

Teague Hamilton, a Laguna Beach High School senior who will be attending University of Santa Barbara on a tennis scholarship, requested that the city stop confronting kids and find ways to both incentivize good behavior as well as make kids feel welcome in their own town.

The council voted 3 to 2 for the SHO with Boyd and Dicterow courageously opposing it.

Progress in community means helping each other find ways to agree and move forward when we are in opposition. The SHO isn’t perfect, but I felt like everyone in the room won last Tuesday. That works.

Local resident David Vanderveen is a parent and entrepreneur.

You’d think that in a city of 24,000 people, we wouldn’t have much insider politics. Unfortunately, our local public agencies, boards and councils are working both privately and at odds with citizen interests.

The good news is that this behavior is illegal and actionable.

There appear to be regular and consistent Brown Act violations in the development, construction, meeting planning, first reading and first vote on the Social Host Ordinance (SHO), which is being considered locally.

All U.S. government was created by the citizens, by the people of this country. The ultimate power, the sovereignty, resides with us. It is a minimum requirement that government business be considered, created, discussed and voted on in public.

There is good reason why the process matters in a democracy; it’s how we get agreement to support an outcome, even when we don’t agree with the outcome itself. It’s how a community maintains unity in the face of disagreement.

If the people feel that their local and state officials are short-changing the process and making deals in backrooms, not incorporating divergent voices and, in fact, not serving the public interests but their own personal goals to create legislative trophies, then the people have tools to reprimand and overthrow their elected officials and remove state and local government agents.

The idea for the SHO was developed by the school board and socialized with the city. At the first meeting on the SHO language, council members Elizabeth Pearson and Verna Rollinger appeared to believe that they were “supposed to” pass it. The insiders at the school board came ill prepared to debate facts. They believed it was a done deal, already agreed to privately. The only facts presented were by high school students and parents who actually did research on the impact of SHO laws around the country.

Fortunately, councilmembers Toni Iseman and Jane Egly did respect the work and integrity of the discussion and did table the proposed language for further review and development.

Since that time, the process has been a sham.

Our high school students felt threatened if they protested the SHO at school. School officials publicly refuted those claims, but I saw the fear firsthand in my living room from student activists. More recently, students claim that assistant principal Robert Billinger called students into his office to ask them to speak in favor of the SHO.

The school board and administrators need to stop lobbying, harassing and bullying students, particularly when it comes to free political speech. A school is not a legislative body. Educators and administrators lose their academic credibility when they try to force student activism in a direction that serves their personal interests.

The Laguna Beach Unified School District needs an overhaul. High school should be about serving the students’ educational needs, not administrative agendas.

We don’t have a drug and alcohol problem at the high school. We have a problem with a school board and school administrators who are drunk on their own political power and are behaving inappropriately.

The city isn’t doing any better. When anti-SHO activists were told before last week’s vote that it was already decided, it was evident that the process is a charade.

SHO ordinances are beginning to be challenged in courts. Rhode Island is the first case and more will follow. Civil rights activists are organizing nationally and locally to fight the overreach of local government. If the state laws are problematic, then the goal should be to change laws in accordance with our respective constitutions, not simply expand police powers.

There are problems of abuse in Laguna, mostly of abuse of power.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

One of the nicest parts of the campaign season is when candidates graciously acknowledge their opponents after the voting is decided. All the negative emotions melt away, and we see the true humanity that campaigns mask.

After the elections, our country needs to focus on rebuilding our communities.

Last weekend, during another hot Indian summer day, I spent a couple of hours stand up paddling Laguna reefs and coves with Howard Hills. At the end he asked me to join him for a burger at Umami Burger in Boat Canyon.

I had to stop and think about that.

When Umami Burger opened, I had a bad experience there and solved it by buying Adolfo’s burgers. I had sort of decided never to go back. But then thought better of it.

Howard and I split two different burgers that I have to admit were mighty fine burgers. Like my Umami moment, Howard told me what he liked about every candidate personally, despite political disagreements.

When we respect our neighbors, and we respect ourselves then we can tolerate others with different ideas. We can have dialogue, discussions, healthy arguments. Our community is richer.

It’s a shame when political discussions devolve into emotional reactions.

My wife, our friends and I are strong supporters of drug and alcohol awareness and prevention programs. We attended a program in the high school library this week that highlighted some local drug and alcohol issues.

Detective Larry Bammer from the Laguna Beach Police Department did a great job helping parents understand the variety of drugs that kids might get into and how to identify them. He talked about everything from alcohol and marijuana to prescription drugs and opiates. He highlighted that there was one DUI arrest last summer of a Laguna Beach teen, and that there were 29 police contacts with teens around alcohol. Only 40% of police contacts regarding alcohol are from local teens. The simple math is that we had roughly 12 kids from Laguna Beach last summer or less than 2% of the high school population who had a police contact involving alcohol.

Every kid who gets into trouble needs help, but this is no epidemic.

A friend of mine asked a simple and obvious question, “How big is the problem in Laguna Beach? How many kids are caught with what types of drugs at school?”

Assistant principal Robert Billinger claimed that he couldn’t release generic data about actual drug and alcohol use because it’s confidential. Emotional parents in the room yelled at my friend for asking the question. They shouted slogans, like “One is too many!” And then they all applauded themselves and Billinger joined in… Brilliant.

Maury Povich would be proud. Who needs facts when you can shout? Thankfully, there were no pitchforks.

There is no validated data to support the claim that there is a big drug and alcohol problem in our town. The California Healthy Kids Survey (which is validated by the same group that sells the tests to the schools) shows the same trends as real, multi-decade research by major universities, like Monitoring the Future—drug and alcohol use is in significant decline among teens.

Drug and alcohol education and prevention programs work. We should invest our resources in things that deliver results.

In a town that has one of the highest DUI arrest rates per capita, our police only caught one Laguna Beach high school student for drinking and driving all summer. Compared to when I went to high school in the ‘80s, that’s a miracle.

One kid may need help, but all of our kids don’t need to go on trial.

Nov. 13, the City Council will be hearing arguments for and against a social host ordinance that proposes an aggressive, confrontational approach to a non-problem. I hope they keep the discussion to facts, data and minimize emotional outbursts.

We don’t need solutions in search of problems in our little town.

As I write this column for my deadline, it’s unclear how the elections will shake out. Afterwards, we all still need to be able to live together in a small community and hopefully be better neighbors because we tolerate each others’ differing points of view.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

– from the Lewis Carroll poem “Jabberwocky.”

By David Vanderveen.

Local political races in small towns are not usually where you find the hot action during a presidential campaign year. But it’s gotten a bit crazy in Laguna Beach during the final week of the election.

What bothers me most are the mythical beasts being drummed up by incumbents and special interests to sell us protection.

Larry Bammer, the Laguna Beach Police Employees Association president, claims we have a “proliferation” of prescription drug use and overdoses by teens here in Laguna Beach. Although there is no evidence of this epidemic or an increase in abuse, our police association is proposing that we add a full-time cop on school campuses. The justification? “We’re the only city that doesn’t have one.”

How does a cop on all our school campuses change prescription drug use? How does a confrontational approach improve teen behavior?

Candidates Bob Whalen and Verna Rollinger couldn’t support the increased spending and police expansion fast enough to get the police endorsement.

The Laguna Beach Community Coalition, which has almost no actual Laguna Beach residents—it’s a list of paid local and state employees who are lobbying for their bosses on the school board and city council—are proposing a Social Host Ordinance or SHO. The reason for this? One question posed to ninth graders in the California Healthy Kids Survey: 74% said it’s easy or very easy to get alcohol.

I assume the answer would be 100%. Can’t any ninth grader get access to alcohol at their own home or someone else’s? Hint: It’s in the booze cabinet.

Why are these outsiders claiming to be us and why are they forcing their opinions on Laguna Beach residents?

In our home, we don’t have locks on our bedroom doors, wine cellar or booze cabinet. I don’t want a relationship with my kids based on locks and keys. I certainly don’t need the school board or city council threatening or confronting me about problems that don’t exist.

At this week’s school board meeting, board member Betsy Jenkins reported that Police Chief Paul Workman has been taking a beating from the community over SHO but that he is committed to see this through with his heart and soul. Jenkins also claims that despite vocal community opposition, she believed there is consensus to go “full steam ahead” and pass the SHO.

The self-righteous find consensus because they don’t need to hear anyone but themselves.

In the words of school board member Teresa O’Hare, “The center of everything good that goes on in this community happens right here.”

If you don’t believe her, just ask her.

Unfortunately, we have too much insider politics in Laguna for a town of our size.

Almost two years ago, a group of very concerned parents worked with school Superintendent Sherine Smith and the school board to develop a plan to fix our failing tennis courts. We created a plan, got bids, found money…and the school board and superintendent simply dropped the ball. No vision. No plan. No response to the city’s request to pay two-thirds of the bill to fix the shared use courts.

“Negligent” is maybe the nicest term I can think of to describe how this school board behaves towards the public.

No one attends school board meetings because the school board has no interest in public input or attendance. It’s insiders talking to insiders about what insiders want.

Mostly, the wild claims of problems unseen and indefensible give rise to more aggressive confrontation of parents and students while the actual education and prevention measures go unimplemented.

We have an activist school board that would rather slay mythical Jabberwockys and claim victory than deal with proactive solutions. Confrontation through power seems to be the focus of our school board rather than working with the community to engage and change behavior.

Laguna Beach desperately needs change. We need a city council and school board that are prepared to deliver a real vision for a very real future.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

It’s been a bit wild to watch the railroading of the local social host ordinance (SHO). No matter how much good-intention and perfume our school board and Laguna Coalition members spray on SHO, it still stinks.

Worse than the real and dangerous problems that SHO legislation has created in communities around the United States (primarily the documented decline in calls surrounding drug and alcohol emergencies), is the process that is being used to force it on Lagunans.

Laguna police Chief Paul Workman and Lt. Jason Kravetz presented their work on the SHO legislation. Workman was dismissive of significant, documented cases where SHO has proven to be dangerous.

No evidence of unusual drinking or drug abuse by teens was presented in the meeting. SHO targets a few Laguna families and is not anticipated to produce more than a handful of citations per year. Kravetz stated that the police don’t disclose the identity of minors cited for underage drinking, but that only 40% of the violations in Laguna Beach involve minors who live here.

Where’s the fire?

Then Kravetz let the audience know that Workman had discouraged pro-SHO supporters from attending the meeting that was billed as a public discussion of the issue. While the transparency was refreshing, some attendees excused themselves from the room at that point.

Howard Hills stated, “We were brought here on false pretext that this was a town hall meeting. Now we find out we are just talking to ourselves and the police department. We came hear to listen to supporters of the SHO and be heard by them, but this is a political ploy not a town hall meeting.”

It seems like the police have much better things to spend their time on than drafting SHO language and running PR efforts for it.

Only two local candidates, Steve Dicterow, who is running for City Council, and Tammy Keces, a school board candidate, have stated opposition to the SHO while proposing much stronger education and prevention programs.

Tammy pointed out that supporting SHO is like putting a band-aid on a tumor; it might look good but it does nothing. She believes that there needs to be more support for the Boys & Girls Club programs and implementation of school anti-drug curriculum.

But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Our school board has a problematic history with decision-making.

MTV’s “Real Laguna Beach” and Viacom substantially damaged the image of this town while both celebrating high school drinking and profiting from it. What’s most troubling is that two of the current Laguna Beach school board members, Betsy Jenkins and Jan Vickers, voted to bring MTV into Laguna Beach High School. Bob Whalen, a school board member at the time, negotiated the contracts and the access to our schools. He also voted to bring MTV into Laguna Beach High School. Even after the school board rescinded the invitation to MTV, Whalen continued to encourage kids to audition.

School boards should be focused on education. Entertainment deals and police jurisdiction are outside the boundaries of school governance.

The MTV show featured Laguna Beach High School students drinking from red party cups, getting drunk and hooking up. As I travel the world, that is the universal perception of Laguna Beach, a place for teens to party.

SHO is a political maneuver by local politicians to look good in the face of a problem they helped create while not having to address the real issues of substance abuse.

“Why are we proposing ineffective legislation before we’ve exhausted all the positive measures of after school programs, teen centers, skate parks and more positive activities for young people in this town? Why is the first answer from city authorities confrontational rather than engagement?” asked local mother, Tijana Hamilton.

There is a fast-growing group of discontented Lagunans who are tired of the lack of trust and transparency in our small town. They are circulating petitions and organizing opposition to SHO as well as support for effective and proactive solutions to teen drinking and drug abuse. Just say, “No” to the SHO.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.

Last week, I saw a Facebook post from Maurice Possley, or “Mo” as I call him, a good friend that moved to Laguna Beach in 2009. He was writing about the exoneration of a death row inmate in Louisiana and his work with him. As we have Proposition 34 on the ballot this fall to end the death penalty in California, I thought Mo deserved a little recognition.

This is what Mo had written as a status update last week:

“One of the birthday reminders that came up today on my FB page was for John Thompson. He was on Death Row in Louisiana for 14 years. If it weren’t for the discovery that prosecutors hid evidence of his innocence that led to his exoneration, I wonder if he would be alive to send a Happy Birthday wish. He’s no longer a dead man walking. He’s running a re-entry into society program for inmates released from prison. It’s called Resurrection After Exoneration. If you’re looking for a place to drop a buck or two, you can’t go wrong.”

Hard to imagine what spending 14 years on death row as an innocent man would do to somebody. It’s stunning to see a man decide that justice is best served by helping others in similar situations recalibrate for life outside prison.

Mo and his wife Cathleen Falsani are journalists and authors. In July 2009, after Mo won a Pulitzer for his investigative journalism at the Chicago Tribune, they moved to Laguna Beach with their newly adopted son, Vasco, from Malawi.

I’ve known Cath since college where we served on the school paper as editors together, and encouraged them to retrench as their world changed. Mo left the Tribune and took a job first with the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University. He is now with The National Registry of Exonerations, the largest database of exonerations for wrongfully convicted felons, some of whom were on death row.

The database is a joint project of the University of Michigan and Northwestern Law Schools. It contains more than 960 exonerations to date and should have over 1,000 by the end of this year, representing more than 10,000 years served by innocent people in state and federal penitentiaries. It serves to help correct problems in the criminal justice system.

Spending a little time at http://www.exonerationregistry.org is eye-opening.

One of the most significant cases is Anthony Porter’s who was almost wrongfully executed in Illinois—his family had already bought the suit to bury him in. In that case, Northwestern University Law students and one of their professors fought to set him free.

This is what then-Gov. George Ryan said when he later addressed Northwestern Law students:

“I never intended to be an activist on this issue. I watched in surprise as freed death row inmate Anthony Porter was released from jail. A free man, he ran into the arms of Northwestern Prof. Dave Protess who poured his heart and soul into proving Porter’s innocence with his journalism students.

He was 48 hours away from being wheeled into the execution chamber where the state would kill him.

It would all be so antiseptic and most of us would not have even paused, except that Anthony Porter was innocent of the double murder for which he had been condemned to die.

After Mr. Porter’s case there was the report by Chicago Tribune reporters Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong documenting the systemic failures of our capital punishment system. Half of the nearly 300 capital cases in Illinois had been reversed for a new trial or resentencing.

“Nearly half!”

Ryan went on to point out that Europe (including Russia), Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South American countries have stopped or called a moratorium on the death penalty.

In 2000, Ryan declared a moratorium on further executions. In 2011, the death penalty was abolished in Illinois.

In 2012, California has the largest population of death row inmates in the country—more than 700.

We are fortunate to have experts in exoneration here in Laguna. It’s time to end the death penalty in California.

David Vanderveen is a Laguna Beach resident, husband, father and energy drink entrepreneur. His email is david@incfarm.com.