Editor,
Not many people attended the last City Council meeting, so few could bear witness to what I heard.
One of the issues before the council was the ongoing dilemma of whether or not Skyline Drive should be banned from skateboarders. We skateboard supporters had been given 60 days to try and influence the less mature kids to follow the rules and regulations currently in place here in Laguna Beach.
It didn’t go as well as we had hoped. The kids improved somewhat, but not enough. They are, after all, young, and part of being immature is the inability to understand key concepts and their importance. We were making steady progress, but not quite to our goal of full compliance.
I heard four of five council members say literally the same thing, “Banning the hills is not working.” or ”I continue to see the kids on the hills we have previously banned, so clearly banning doesn’t work,” and my personal favorite was, “We need to do something else, something that will work!” Then they all four proceeded to say, “I am however in favor of banning Skyline Drive.”
Is it just me? Or is that just plain nuts? They had an opportunity to take their own advice and they turned around and did more of the same. Rather than look for new solutions, other ideas, something that might be effective, they repeated the same mistake. This was all done in the name of “keeping safe the skateboarders”. Really all they did was to cover their own butts in case of a lawsuit. That’s who they kept safe, not the kids. My humble opinion is it was a cop out.
I would like to add that there was one council member, Verna Rollinger, who said, “Banning isn’t working. We need other solutions and therefore I am not in support of a ban on Skyline Drive!”
You get my vote in the upcoming election Ms. Rollinger! Thank you for trying.
Kimberly O’Brien-Young, Laguna Beach
