Editor,
Toni Iseman recently demanded intensification of enforcement under new parking restrictions for construction workers, ostensibly to protect parking and road use rights of neighbors living near building or remodeling project sites.
Yet, a week later Iseman held a gala fundraiser in a residential neighborhood that left driveways blocked and roadways congested by luxury cars parked illegally for the convenience of her high-end donors. Neighbors complained and got stonewalled.
In the Laguna Beach that Toni wants, local builders can have their businesses shut down if workers don’t comply with administratively determined parking prohibitions, but politicians are not responsible for parking violations by their hired commercial valets and wealthy contributors.
Toni is the poster child for excessive regulation and local government mission creep leading to officious inter-meddling in our lives. It is not just the building trades. Go down and try to get a city permit for any business and you’ll find out City Hall is a quagmire of politicized bureaucracy. The city staff is demoralized and the political appointees are all wannabe mini-mayors, micromanaging our city employees and the private lives of our residents. This is the government culture Toni has promoted on the City Council for 16 years.
Toni claimed last week that she is “seasoned but has fresh ideas,” yet her policies reveal a stale mentality and obsolete agenda. Her record is one of political stunts that do not even sustainably redeem the values of her own supporters.
We wish her well personally, but elections are not about personal privilege or prerogative. Elections are about what is best for our town. We need wise mentors and the next generation of people who love our town to become its new stewards.
Christopher Kling, Laguna Beach
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