Development Interest Never Abates

Editor:

When it comes to politics, I am always a skeptic. So, I was thinking about the twin exercise conducted this past month in Laguna. One was to solicit public comments on changes to the Downtown Specific Plan. The other was meetings of the Laguna Canyon Road Task Force on the “road widening” initiative.

These were the last acts of Mayor Pearson and her council majority and conveniently scheduled after the council election. One way to look at these may be to consider them benign exercises in citizen involvement. However, when I think about the mayor’s support in the last election of candidates that were pro big business and complained about the delays caused by citizen involvement in politics, I start to wonder if these two initiatives could tie into the mayor’s long held desire to build more parking structures in the downtown.

So, let me play a mental exercise. First, if we eliminate on street parking downtown to build more sidewalk cafes and increase the height and size of downtown buildings to bring in more and larger stores, we would be increasing the downtown density. Second, if we widen Laguna Canyon to four lanes, we would be funneling more automobile traffic into a smaller area at a more rapid pace.

Maybe we would then hear a loud cry to reduce the increased traffic downtown by building more parking garages.

In politics, someone said, “follow the money” to find out the real truth. I may be too cynical, but with the “Pave Paradise” crew at work, we need to be ever vigilant. Fortunately, this year, Laguna voters understood what was at stake and made the right choice! Let’s keep a close watch because the “Pave Paradise” crew are bound to be back in two years.

Armando Baez, Laguna Beach