I naturally expect Elizabeth Pearson to oppose the Laguna Residents First ballot initiative, as she is a renowned advocate of tourism, business and development. During her tenure at City Hall, Laguna turned from a charming, resident-oriented village into a bar and restaurant tourist mecca.
In 2013, she vigorously supported building a $60 million parking structure at the Village Entrance, which was defeated by public opposition.
While she claims overdevelopment safeguards are already in place, it’s a whole different world since her term. Wealthy developers have funded $250,000 to get their pro-growth City Council candidates elected, thereby creating a three-to-two controlling voting bloc that consistently ignores residents and their fellow city councilmembers while promoting downtown business and development interests.
Developers have hired a high-end political consulting firm to dupe the unengaged into opposing the ballot initiative. (Calling themselves the “protectors” of Laguna is the height of irony.)
The City Council bloc has appointed a pro-growth city manager and stacked City departments, boards and committees with like-minded members—all to change building ordinances and grant variances to businesses and developers.
Take the City Council’s recent Brown Act violation—illegal voting in secret to allow Mo Honarkar’s Hotel Laguna renovation to continue with no plans, no permits and few inspections. What next—the community-killing destruction of the library so we can clog downtown with a parking structure that businesses want residents to pay for? All while permitting new, high-capacity restaurants and bars without demanding them to provide more parking.
Pearson calls the Montage a shining example of the system working. It only got approved because alarmed residents went outside of town to buck the system and prevent it from becoming an architecturally incompatible, private compound. Oddly, she mildly praises those activist residents who fought its overdevelopment but now she admonishes residents to shut up and let developers steamroll over them.
She claims our existing codes protect our town. They don’t. Liberate Laguna’s Sam Goldstein has been lobbying the press and city hall to dramatically increase building heights. One look at the heavily business-oriented Downtown Specific Plan clearly shows it’ll destroy much of Laguna’s charm in favor of more tourists, taller buildings and more restaurants and bars.
If anyone thinks the city is protected, remember that’s what Dana Point thought. And it’s passed a similar initiative, as have Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.
Voting yes on the Laguna Residents First ballot initiative is the only safeguard that ensures residents will have a say in the large, commercial development of Laguna – not just developers, businesses and the politicians they fund. Vote yes on the ballot initiative.
Jerome Pudwill, Laguna Beach
Right on!
This is as much a propaganda fracas as a fact-based one……..EP was always part of the problem, not the solution.
Fear, that’s what Billy Fried, MR, EP et al project: I grew up in a barrio (Wilmington CA), I learned to sense, actually smell fear—-being a blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer, I admit, every day getting to and from school was a dangerous gauntlet because I was the definitive minority.
So some of that odor of abject fear was mine. One-on-one, I felt ok, but gangs come at you in packs—in this case PACs.
As the election comes closer, look for these people to get more desperate…..the LRF opponents that is, who being elitists are in fear of the will of the people.
Like they say, the conflict heat is gonna get worse, not better.
Wasn’t the City Hall/Chamber/Visitor’s Bureau campaign, “OPEN FOR BUSINESS,” her brainchild?
What it really should have had added on was a modifier “Open For Plundering Businesses.”
Pillage Laguna.
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”
— Philip K. Dick
Elizabeth Pearson is the very same woman who while on the City Council, I approached with the problem of providing Parking Permits to anyone with a City address. I pointed out that permits were being issued to individuals who were willingly breaking the California law by not registering their vehicles here in CA when residing in the state for more than 30 days, and depriving the state and Laguna Beach, of much-needed funds from these auto registrations. We all know that many of those individuals claiming residency spend less than 4 weeks a year in Laguna Beach, or simply choose to save on registration fees by registering their vehicles out of state. Either way, they are breaking the law and our City is supporting that lawlessness.
It was very little surprise that all she gave me was a deer-in-headlights response, a response I hear she is famous for, and then cited that as long as they had a bill with a City address on it, they met the criteria.
Shopper parking permits are not a right, they are a luxury, a public benefit. So the obvious question was why are we as a City awarding a public benefit to lawbreakers?
The answer is clear for the same reasons Ms. Pearson keeps supporting issues that are against the public interest.
It’s always about the money.
And it’s the money that is slowly killing Laguna Beach.