Mailbag: Pay attention to the water district races
Please don’t ignore the water district races this election cycle: Mesa Water District, Municipal Water District of Orange County and the Orange County Water District. Even though water has been a hot topic all year, it’s not likely that you know the candidates and incumbents running for these boards. A little googling of names can turn up information that may inform your decisions.
Do the candidates or incumbents have a checkered financial history? If they can’t take care of their own finances, how carefully will they spend public monies? Have there been audits of board members regarding stipends and expenses? Does the agency they lead spend excessive monies on public relations and celebrations? Do they conduct their meetings and business openly and transparently? Are board decisions resulting in unnecessary litigation?
All is not healthy in the water world. Brown Act violations, conflicts of interest, public record retention failures, cozy contractor relationships, misuse of public funds and too much arrogance is far too common. You can change that, but only with an informed vote.
Debbie Cook
Huntington Beach.
The writer is the former mayor of Huntington Beach.
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I’m backing Curry for Assembly
As a retired Assembly member and senator in the California Legislature, I know firsthand what it takes to be a successful legislator and the type of person who will be an effective leader in coastal Orange County. I know both candidates for the 74th Assembly District, and I urge you to support Keith Curry for the state Assembly.
From years of personal observation in Sacramento, I know that rigid ideologues, those who vote “no” before even listening to the facts, and those who are more concerned with their own careers than with their service to the community, do not make good representatives. Unfortunately, Curry’s opponent fits that description.
Curry is running for office for the right reasons, to give back to his community and to use his 40 years of public policy and business experience to craft solutions that work.
Throughout his career in Washington, D.C., working with President Reagan, building a resume as a successful businessman and job creator and serving as mayor and council member, chairman of the Orange County Parks Commission and director of the Center for Public Policy and professor at Concordia University in Irvine, Curry has demonstrated the ability to build consensus, to dissect difficult financial decisions and to bring people together around solutions that work.
Curry’s record of success goes back decades. He worked with Reagan to reform transportation funding in Washington. He advised state and local governments, coast to coast, on complex infrastructure projects, and as mayor of Newport Beach, he authored the city’s Fiscal Sustainability Plan, the 2010 blueprint that guided the city through the recession with growing reserves, increased property values and a stronger local tax base.
Frankly, we have too many legislators who lack the real-world experience of building a business. Curry built a company of more than 450 people.
Our district, our homeowners and our children will be short-changed if we do not elect a serious person with the skills, intelligence, life experience and determination to represent all of us in the Assembly and make a difference. Someone focused on the big issues facing our state, not side-show issues. There is no question that Keith Curry is that person.
Tom Harman
Huntington Beach
The writer is a retired member of the state Senate and Assembly.
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Rohrabacher denies the science
Our own Republican representative, Dana Rohrabacher, regarding climate change’s health impacts, recently displayed his demagoguery, if not his ignorance, in trying to back into a corner White House science advisor, physicist John Holdren and EPA Administrator, Janet McCabe, according to online reports.
“At what level does carbon dioxide concentration become harmful to human health,” he asked.
He was referring to the EPA’s regulation of green house gases due to health reasons.
How many of us know about his climate change denial as vice chairman of the House Science Committee and his — in effect — mockery of all science that rebukes his corporate and Tea Party supporters? An open mind, he does not have, on many issues you might prize.
Is this how you want him to represent your interests? I don’t.
Jim Hoover
Huntington Beach
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Parents who don’t vaccinate put kids at risk
During my recent annual physical examination, my physician cautioned me about the whooping cough epidemic in Newport Beach. Given this unbelievably bad news, I had a Tdap booster vaccination against pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus.
Why is there a whooping cough epidemic in Newport Beach and Marin County, Boulder, Col., The Hamptons, New York, and many other wealthy areas? Why are mothers and fathers under age 40 practicing dangerous, all-natural child-rearing?
An article in Mother Jones explained the real reason why parents are exposing their children to deadly diseases. “The Real Reason Kids Aren’t Getting Vaccines” walks through today’s mothers practicing an unreal improbable belief. While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has proven autism is not caused by childhood vaccinations, parents continue to expose their own kids to horrible diseases that can lead to their children’s deaths. Furthermore, the highly contagious whooping cough disease also infects other children and older people.
Some subjects are better described through personal experiences, and my recent whooping cough booster is certainly mine. Somehow medically uneducated actor Jim Carrey of “Dumb and Dumber” fame became the pied-piper of rich parents. Carrey, according to CBS, believes vaccinations are morally wrong.
What will the all-natural moms do next to hurt their children? I suggest these uninformed “natural” mothers and fathers spend time in Africa and other underdeveloped nations so they can experience firsthand what it means when they spout, “I don’t want anything for my child that does not come from nature.”
Travel to Africa, and see how malaria kills. Look at the innocent dying children. Think about your own lopsided dangerous pattern of environmental religion.
Carole Wade
Newport Beach