Laguna Beach Council Chambers: Tonight In Jungleland

"If You've Got The Money, We Got Your Disease"

The title is from "Welcome To The Jungle" by Guns N' Roses, and yes, let's be plastic fantastic, totally bogus like Huntington Beach or Dana Point , "Jump The Shark," gobs of artificial ploys, fun and games to be had at The Promenade tonight!

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When "Happy Days" viewership went down in 1977, they had Henry Winkler (The Fonz) waterski off Malibu Pier in shorts and his iconic leather jacket, jump over a caged shark. Isn't that what our HOLLOW PEOPLE leadership is doing? Gimmicksville? Disneyland-By-The-Sea?

This Council (if you're a wealthy outsider visiting) will find whatever YOU need. The album title, "Appetite For Destruction" is apropos, our Council certainly has mimed it recently. Self-destruction. Municipal suicide.

Welcome wealthy day trippers, and now that you're trapped in our jungle, in gridlocked smoggy traffic and found nowhere to park, "Salida si Puedes" (Get out if you can).

The more upscale, privileged demographic tourists, who as Bruce The Boss put it "will face off against each other down in Jungleland." More visitors (especially overnight) sounds great if you own a bar or restaurant--or both under one roof.

When did we vote for that, more posh "trophy assets," more shark jumping, more drunks, buzzed drivers, injurious and fatal accidents on PCH or in the Canyon, pedestrian or bicycle related, please, may we have another?

More customers where little or no parking exists. Circulation nightmares. So of course, that'll justify building a humungous parking structure, towering over our entrance obliterating a natural hillside, which will sit mostly empty years round, a paean to stupidity and fiscal imbecility?

Rest of the year? A hotspot for both violent and property crimes. According to the FBI, lots are the 3rd most common site for murders and assaults. Vehicular thefts galore.

The CM said that we had twice as many former personnel receiving CalPers as currently on active payroll. Won't we need more, not less, PD, FD, Marine Safety, ER and maintenance personnel, won't we hear more sirens far into the night 24/7/365, i.e., noise pollution? A bigger budget, more debt service?

Why oh why are we, as residents, forced to pay more than a token $10 admin fee for a parking permit? Between extremely high rents/leases (≈ 40% of us) and property taxes, sales tax, etc, this bright idea is an unnecessary, unjust gouge. And it doesn't come with ANY guarantees, now does it?

Hundreds of $$$ for a family of 4 to procure 4 permits to park in their own City, and those waterheads at City Hall want more stanchion thievery, more meters everywhere, City -wide? THAT promotes more commerce? Seriously? Based on what?

Our Council thought that a Laguna equivalent to shark jumping was tearing out our iconic lower Forest Ave. and build a chic, faux-Euro, superfluous gathering place for increasing imaginary hordes of tourists? All the changes the Council and their appendages desire are alien habitat to indigenous species.

Every morning up until about 10am that I went down to The Promenade when it was "temporary," it was empty. Meanwhile, our local merchants, our 9-6 downtown brick & mortar heritage businesses have lost their parking spaces and the City offered them no compensation for lost revenue, customer access these past few years.

Look for them to leave and be replaced by corporate franchises, sales clucks that are "shiny happy people."

Probably a Promenade tie-in "happening" to justify its existence. Bring in yet more outsiders. Organized and controlled by the Council's featured "Sell Our Soul To The Devil" Mayor, Mark (The Real Estate Shark) Orgill and his puppet masters @ Visit Laguna Beach & the CoC.

This city seems incapable of using the basic principles of far-sighted"forward planning," or bookkeeping, which take into account what is likely to happen, or be needed due to various potential scenarios that include, not exclude residents.

Every time they open their mouths it's about public safety being a #1 priority. Well, shouldn't that alternative have had exhaustive public discussion instead of the heavy-handed, rubber-stamped, no EIR bull s--t they pulled?

The rhetoric temperature wouldn't have been this high, would it? No, it's like those Fab Five and ONLY those 5 know what's best for us, when in reality, they're the "dumb as monkeys club," not us. Then again, does electing them to begin with qualify?

The City obviously misunderstood and under-estimated because as I pointed out previously, it did little advanced recon, only minor/flaccid assessment homework regarding the site's physical or fiscal vulnerabilities, inhibitions. Just "damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead."

Hasn't the cost more than doubled, excluding the tree replacement and various conundra in regards to irrigation, maintenance, drainage, flushing of the root zone to reduce pollutant intake by the trees?

Heard them tell us where we are re closing costs? This CIP in fact should have had an EIR or be Phase I in the City's Programmatic EIR for the DSP Phase II, but our CoC/VLB-controlled Council vetoed that, giving resident no say.

Also, glaring, humungous Brown Act violations, to wit:

"The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them... The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created."

We have had no control over a now (and climbing) $7.5 million CIP @ The Promenade. Unilateral sovereignty has been seized by this Fab 5.

Whose genitals are being squeezed (or more likely caressed) by the CoC and VLB. Sadly, I guess the Council might be right: They certainly made monkeys out of our electorate.

This whole "Turn 115 Acres Of Downtown Into An Upscale, Boojie Urban Jungle" schtick smells. When government hoards info, suppresses, represses YOUR 1st amendment rights, glaring ignores and violates YOUR Brown Act rights, something is seriously wrong, amiss.

Now I'm reading "thoughtful development, structures with beneficial public intent" propaganda, it's some of the buzz bullshit associated with the DSP Phase II cabal: Multi-purposed, a "win-win for our community." There's the poker tell, this kind of happy-face phrasing PR.

A slower, more methodical approach in LB was intuited but ignored. Controlled, carefully managed growth.

Here's The Boss, maybe he can lead you out of the morass we're in, our own Jungleland.....