Letters to The Editor

BACK-DOOR DECISION VIOLATES

PUBLIC TRUST

MELISSA MCCREADY, San Clemente; SUE NESPOR, San Clemente resident; LAURA FERGUSON, former San Clemente councilmember

Councilmembers Cabral, Knoblock, and Loeffler pulled the wool over the public’s eyes on June 6 by doing an about-face on hiring private security for North Beach at a cost of $350,000 without public notice. There was no mention in the agenda report on the fiscal year budget about discussing or authorizing the expenditure of funds for security.

The discussion was likely a Brown Act violation.

To reopen a prior vote required council to place the item on the next meeting agenda. The budget item was used as a subterfuge to rediscuss the prior vote.

The law provides that agenda items must give enough information to permit the public to make an informed decision about whether or not to participate. This action by council squashed further public criticism like we saw raised at previous meetings.

Public input played a role in the council voting against private security on May 16—instead voting to hire more deputies. This makes sense, since sworn deputies can cite and arrest while private security guards cannot. Even the chief of police services said that “the private security will be calling us (deputies) when things get out of hand, just like a citizen would call us.”

In its sneaky approach to add private security to appease the vocal minority, it cut out the will of the majority who will be funding this debacle. This has become a political issue, and throwing money at this does not solve anything.

When asked at the council meeting if the city manager had information on the costs and possibility of hiring more park rangers to take on a similar role, he said he “hadn’t completed any analysis on the subject” despite the subject being discussed for months.

Expending additional funds is not smart until the use of current city resources (park rangers, code enforcement officers, homeless outreach coordinators and deputies) are analyzed over time to measure code enforcement violations and crime statistics. Staff, who report to the city, will have a greater impact than private security officers.

Council’s trouncing of democracy demands that they revisit this and reverse course.

RESPONSE TO CRAIG KESHISHIAN JIM HOLLOWAY, San Clemente

In an SC Times Letter to the Editor, Craig Keshishian advocates for teaching history, especially about “the valor, service and civics” of the U.S. military. I could not agree more. Teaching history, including military history, is vitally important. With it recently being Juneteenth, it seems appropriate to offer bullet points about the convergence of U.S. Military history and civil rights.

• Juneteenth—On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army forces rode into Galveston, Texas to inform 250,000 enslaved African Americans that as of Jan. 31, 1865, the passage of the 13th Amendment made them Free People.

• WWI—In 1919, African American doughboys were returning from Europe. They had learned in Europe that living under Jim Crow laws in the South was not the way it had to be. This kick-started The Great Migration of six million African Americans from the South to other parts of the United States, fleeing the Jim Crow laws that existed at that time.

• WWII—African Americans served in many capacities during World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen, an all-Black unit flying P-51s, one of the most sophisticated WWII airplanes, proved once and for all, (and contrary to some theories at that time) that African Americans could serve with valor, courage, discipline and intelligence.

• Korea—In July 1948, President and Commander in Chief Harry Truman ordered that U.S. Military forces be integrated. As a result, Black and White servicemen and women fought side by side during the Korean War. The U.S. Military’s example of successful integration provided a model for the Civil Rights legislation of the mid-’60s.

• Colin Powell—Rising through the ranks, Colin Powell became the first Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over all U.S. Military operations. Powell then became America’s first African American Secretary of State. This was a harbinger of things to come.

• Barack Obama—America’s first Black president. Who can forget when President Obama announced that as Commander-in-Chief of U.S Military forces, he had ordered operations to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, and that Navy Seals had successfully carried out that mission. History teaches us many valuable lessons. It should be taught straight-up, fully and clear-eyed “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” Commander-in-Chief Abraham Lincoln said in 1865.

ANOTHER RESPONSE TO CRAIG KESHISHIAN MARY ELLEN BOBP, San Clemente

I concur with the sentiments expressed by the letter on June 15, “Pier Bowl Brawl.”

Our generation, though far from perfect, was respectful. Perhaps this was because we were taught how much our parents’ generation paid for “freedom.” My father was a POW for two long years—starving, freezing, and witnessing the horrors of war.

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San Clemente Times, Vol. 18, Issue 26. The SC Times (sanclementetimes.com ) is published weekly by Picket Fence Media, publishers of the Dana Point Times (danapointtimes.com) and The Capistrano Dispatch (thecapistranodispatch.com).

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