Confusing the El Toro Airport Issue

* Watching pro-airport leaders indignantly ascribing the use of false information and fear tactics to El Toro airport opponents is like witnessing the kettle calling the pot black.

Consider some of the whoppers propounded by airport promoters:

The choice is between an airport and a jail; noise will not be a problem; no schools will be affected; almost all departures will leave northerly over Loma Ridge on runway 7, as certified safe by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Now we have the specter of a potential attempt by the supervisors to defeat a vote on the Safe and Healthy Communities ballot initiative by a competing initiative.

To confuse the issue by such a tactic would be the ultimate fraud.

TRISTAN KROGIUS

Monarch Beach

* How can those South County people have the audacity to use the words “manipulative trickery” to describe a counter-initiative by the pro-airport group.

What could be more viciously tricky than the Safe and Healthy Communities initiative?

Knowing that they have lost twice on a straightforward vote, pro-airport both times, they ask who would like a maximum security jail, a toxic dump, or (just incidentally) an airport in his vicinity.

KEATS HAYDEN

Newport Beach

* Now the El Toro airport backers are considering their own initiative to keep plans for the international airport on track.

I guarantee they won’t need 5,000 volunteers to spend six months collecting almost 200,000 signatures. They will only need to collect three signatures, those of Supervisors Charles Smith, Jim Silva and Cynthia Coad, to get their initiative on the March ballot.

Isn’t it interesting that wealthy Newport Beach developer George Argyros met with Smith to discuss El Toro airport issues?

I tried to talk to Smith by phone and was told that I was not in his district so would not be given the privilege.

The last time I looked, Smith did not represent Newport Beach, yet Argyros was able to have a private meeting with Smith. Big surprise.

I’m sure Argyros’ planned spending for the upcoming March campaign includes more works of fiction like the lies sent during the last two votes.

Remember the one with Charles Manson behind bars, titled, “Meet Your New Neighbor,” telling us that if El Toro did not become an airport it would become a prison?

I would rather have Manson as a neighbor than a noisy, filthy airport like Los Angeles International.

GAIL BRUNNELL

Laguna Niguel

* Twice the citizens of Orange County have voted in favor of a new international airport through the democratic process of simple majority.

But now a minority of citizens wants to change the democratic process that will allow a minority of only 33.4% of the citizens to control the will of the people.

I am sorry, but this is not what I call democracy. I wonder if the advocates of the Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative would be willing to require a two-thirds majority in order for it to pass?

There are not many people in Southern California who don’t live in the flight path of some airport. Air travel is expected to increase dramatically over the next several decades.

It is obvious that Los Angeles International is already overcrowded. I believe it is time to stop complaining about the problem and start focusing on solutions.

PETER S. BRUNNER

Huntington Beach