It is beyond frustrating the fake news in the recent letters written by Village Laguna members Ginger Osborne and Armando Baez.
I am not a developer. I do not want high rises. I paid for an ad opposing the Charm House Tour because I want the truth exposed. VL has members in every City Council-appointed committee and almost every local organization, as well as Toni Iseman in her seat. Decisions are being made by these committees that I believe are detrimental to us in town. I feel they’ve held too much power for too long.
Some VL members have owned their homes for decades (or don’t even live in Laguna) and are paying pennies to our dollars in property taxes. Given how little some members contribute in property taxes to our city’s operating budget, I think they should have less power than they do. I don’t think Village Laguna’s agendas are in line with what’s best for the town. They are against Laguna residents participating in homesharing, even with strict regulations in protecting neighborhood tranquility. Yet, I believe some VL members use homesharing or short-term lodging for themselves. They try to control what residents can do with their property and demand that their opinion of “historical” be the law, no matter how it strangleholds residents’ ability to remodel and spend years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.
The Charm House money going to political purposes and not disclosed, is not proper, but they do many things they should not do. How is it that they can pass out their fliers and pitch for donations at the Laguna Canyon Conservancy meeting? LCC’s president is Gene Felder, Johanna Felder’s husband. This cronyism must stop.
My ad shed sunlight on their stranglehold in Laguna and will start the process of replacing their candidates with proper representation.
India Hynes, Laguna Beach
Thank you India for shedding some sunlight. Transparency is all that is asked for, same as an other non-profit organization. Same goes for our city government, need a lot of sunlight there as well
I find it just so sleazy for Village Laguna to deceive ticket buyers of the Charm House Tour – and not tell them that their ticket money is actually going to a PAC to get Bob Whalen and Toni Iseman re-elected.
If they were doing the exact same thing in order to support Donald Trump the whole town practically would be up in arms.
And does our local media hold them accountable for this? No. Laguna Beach is a microcosm for what is going on in America. Double standards abound under the safe protection of safe newsl