Council keeps quiet
I could hardly believe what I was seeing while watching the City Council’s hearing on the so-called Toll Road in northern San Diego County.
With straight faces, Orange County politicians told “our” City Council that the new six-lane freeway would have no impact on San Onofre Park or Trestles beach in San Diego County, and that San Diegans should keep quiet on the controversy.
Councilmember Kevin Faulconer and the other pro-development council members went along with this peculiar reasoning, so I suppose we can assume that he and the council will no longer take a stand on anything outside of the San Diego City limits.
Cynthia Birnbaum, La Jolla

Little thought to the bigger picture
The following is an open letter to Councilman Scott Peters.
The issue of Miramar replacing Lindbergh is coming up in the forthcoming election, and we haven’t heard much from you. Are you protecting the way of life in La Jolla, Del Mar and University City or going with the developers? The real issue is not the airport. It is the thousands of flights that would yearly thunder over our communities if Miramar is selected. Aircraft must take off into the wind, and that wind is the same wind that made flights from Lindbergh depart over Point Loma for the past decades.
A Miramar selection would transfer those flights over your constituents’ areas 24/7. That would affect thousands of homes, apartments and condos, large shopping centers, four of the city’s major hospitals, high-rise office buildings, hotels, businesses in Sorrento Valley and on Torrey Pines Ridges (most of them scientifically related), churches, synagogues plus two major freeways. In addition, UCSD, with a projected population of thousands of students, the Salk Institute and the Jewish Community Center, and the La Jolla Country Day School would be impacted.
Very powerful financial and political interests are pushing Miramar because they have purchased land in the area with little thought to the bigger picture. Real estate values would plummet with a corresponding loss to city property taxes. La Jolla would be especially hard hit since it would be directly under the flight path of departing aircraft day and night. Far more people would be subject to the noise pollution that is presently impacting Point Loma. A Miramar base would probably put a larger multi-engine commercial jet over La Jolla every 15 or 20 minutes, something that would destroy our way of life there and in surrounding communities.
There is a more viable solution that is closer to downtown. It is the vacant 330-acre old Navy sea-plane base below the Coronado Bridge, which the Airport Authority refuses to seriously consider. It is served by three freeways, would be one of the safest airports in the nation and has almost unlimited growth potential for runways and facilities, which would have to be built mostly on fill. Both Harbor and Shelter islands were built on fill. No need for high-speed rail or other transportation since it would be as close to downtown as Lindbergh.
Your lack of positive action on the Miramar situation makes one wonder if you are doing all you can to protect the way of life in your communities.
T.R. O’Neil, La Jolla

What do they do with their lives?
The following is an open letter to Jerry Sanders, mayor of San Diego.
I love to visit and vacation in La Jolla. I came to love the place when my parents lived about where the modern art museum is now. La Jolla has blue ocean, beautiful sunsets, wave-washed cliffs, bird populations “” which are at many other beaches, but La Jolla also has two unique things not found at other beaches: a pirate-shaped cave to the sea and a rookery of harbor seals right in town where they could be viewed up close and personal all year round, which is a real drawing card.
We have brought our school classes to La Jolla because of them. And I am personally drawn back to La Jolla because of them. And I always find may other people doing the same thing.
But on a recent visit, I was appalled to find four men camped out around a pink umbrella on the beach I know as the Children’s Pool. There were many people who had come to see the seals as I had. We only saw one exhausted baby seal who tried to land repeatedly, but was too afraid of the men on the beach. When I inquired, I found the city had ruled that the beach is to be open to both people and seals except during pupping season. Of course, when you open it to people, you are actually excluding the seals, as they will not use it when people are present “” like the exhausted baby seal, who could not haul out on the beach because of the four silly men around the pink umbrella. Are they not in violation of municipal code 63.0102 (b) (10)?
My first thought was, “Have these men nothing better to do with their lives than keep seals off of a beach?” It appears the same men do this day after day.
As for those of us who had come to visit your town; we were let down and disappointed. If we do come back, it will be during pupping season.
I’ve often tried to figure out what the dear lady who originated the Children’s Pool (now Casa Beach) would think about the controversy over this beach. I’m certain of one thing. She would not be down there on the beach with four men and a pink umbrella making a spectacle of themselves. The fact that only the four foolish men are down on the beach, and everyone else is looking for the seals, should tell you something.
Let’s keep La Jolla’s unique and special attraction of the Children’s Pool adopted by children of the harbor seal. I ask you to reverse the council decision. The people have spoken by choosing not to join the four foolish men under the pink umbrella.
Kathy Reid, Temple City, CA