El Toro Funds Could Have Bought Health Care

Re “Navy Assures Cooperation Over El Toro,” March 16:

Supervisor Chuck Smith is quoted as saying, “I have too many little kids in Santa Ana that need medical care to waste taxpayer dollars when we could be doing things like free clinics.” It’s a shame that he already wasted $50 million on his El Toro airport boondoggle. Imagine how much health care those kids could have gotten with that money.

Mike Curtin

Foothill Ranch

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Supervisor Chuck Smith says he has “too many little kids in Santa Ana that need medical care to waste taxpayer dollars when we could be doing things like free clinics.” Isn’t that special!

Is this the same Chuck Smith who joined Supervisors Cynthia Coad and Jim Silva in trying to have Measure H, which required the county to spend tobacco settlement funds on health care, set aside?

I wonder. Had Measure W not passed, would Smith still have made that comment about the free clinics? Why didn’t he say that when the county was spending $60million promoting an unwanted airport at El Toro?

Sorry Chuck, we ain’t buyin’ it!

Christine Prince

Laguna Hills

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NIMBY shortsightedness in the passage of Measure W has taken over in Orange County and could lead to major problems. The airport at El Toro battle should have remained a basic economic debate centered on business and taxpayer concerns. Instead, the El Toro issue turned political.

Republican Rep. Christopher Cox, Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Tom Wilson, Assemblyman John Campbell and other South County legislators and city leaders opted to follow the herd instinct rather than really lead. The Irvine Co., following it personal and parochial financial instincts, remained publicly silent but probably fueled anti-airport sentiment for its own gain.

Measure W’s passage could cost Orange County billions of dollars in lost economic growth, people incomes and tax revenues. So what’s to be done? The courts have got to overturn Measure W and save Orange County from gross economic folly.

Victor H. Jashinski

Corona del Mar