SOUNDING OFF: Village Entrance delay ill-serves community

***FOR THE RECORD: A note published with Verna Rollinger’s Sounding Off (“Village Entrance delay ill-serves community”) in the Coastline Pilot on April 25 should have said she was City Clerk for 28 years and 9 months.***

I’m shocked by the City Council’s action, or lack thereof, on the Village Entrance Project. Once again, the residents get the short end of the stick. And it wasn’t for lack of warning about the costs of the project. Many of us didn’t want the corporation yard moved into the Greenbelt. Experts told the city that a parking structure wouldn’t pay for itself except during two months in the summer.

We were sold a bill of goods.

The way the story went was that if we wanted parking, a park, some creek restoration and a more aesthetic entrance to our village, we needed to move the corporation yard to the Act V Lot on Laguna Canyon Road. That, they said, would make way for added parking for the arts venues and downtown businesses, and a beautiful park that would connect the downtown area to the arts district.

The city moved the corporation yard to Act V at a cost of more than $10 million. They resurfaced and restriped the parking lot for a few added parking spaces, which was not inexpensive either. After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Village Entrance, our City Council shelved the project for a year. Raise your hand if you think they will build it next year.

Am I the only one who wonders why the city could find the money to expand city operations to Act V but wasn’t even willing to consider options for providing the enhanced entry to our city and the park we were promised? Does anyone remember that the citizens asked that the Act V Project and the Village Entrance Project be considered together as one project to avoid getting only the stick and not the carrot?

Where is the leadership?

VERNA ROLLINGER served as Laguna Beach City Clerk for 17 years.