Post-Mortem Continues on Great Park Measure

Re “Analyzing El Toro Ballot Measure Results,” Letters, Nov. 17:

Huntington Beach resident Paul Arms says he supports the Great Park, he belongs to the Planning and Conservation League, which wrote the failed Proposition 51, and he laments that the law would have given money to Irvine, but not to other open space projects in Orange County, some of which he lists.

Not mentioned in the Arms letter was Measure W, which created the Great Park, and, by voter sanction, significantly weakened the open space protection he cherishes. In the fine print of Measure W, we see that private and public open space property, “due to market pressures to serve a growing county population, may ultimately be developed in other ways.”

The mischievous wording in Measure W should not be surprising, because it was prepared by Irvine, a city run by housing developers. The airport plan, the plan Measure W was intended to displace, has a great park too, and both the airport and Great Park allow for the existence of the Cal State Fullerton satellite campus.

Voters in South County who thought they were voting against the airport were actually voting for, perhaps unwittingly, unbridled urban sprawl. Fortunately, Orange County did not fall for Proposition 51.

Donald Nyre

Newport Beach

*

Re “El Toro Airport May Be Dead, but Debate Isn’t,” Nov. 10:

When comments such as those from reader Linda Hoover are incorrect to the core, they demand to be corrected.

Hoover wrote: “The majority of north Orange County citizens voted against Measure W.” But only one-third of those registered voters cast ballots March 5. This means that though No on W earned 60% of the vote in north Orange County, that total represented 20% of the registered voters in that area, while 13% supported W. This is nowhere near an overwhelming rejection of Measure W.

The brutal truth is that there are more than twice as many registered voters in north Orange County than in the south. If there were a groundswell of support for a new airport, then W would have been crushed. Instead, two-thirds of the voters in the north stayed home March 5.

Those who propose an airport at El Toro need to let go of the fantasy of North County support. On March 5, the voters there made it very clear they don’t care.

William Detoy

Irvine