Monday, November 12, 2007

Letter to the Editor, About the Editorial

This letter to the editor appeared in the Monday November 12 edition of The Daily Breeze, following the editorial I posted in an earlier post.
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RPV endorsement wrong

The Daily Breeze editorial ("Election results yield Ponte Vista concerns," Editorial page, Friday) is but another attempt for the Breeze to cover up its lack of journalistic integrity when it endorsed RPV incumbents Tom Long, Doug Stern and Steve Wolowicz, as well as opposing Measure D. In looking at www.pontevista.blogspot.com, it seems remarks are being made by an "M. Richards" with few other comments. Hardly a voice of the community.

Who knows what basis the Breeze used for making its endorsement of Long, Stern and Wolowicz, as it was not facts as the Breeze did not contact Don Reeves prior to its initial endorsement (Megan Bagdonas' biased article was after the fact.)

RPV residents in Eastview are obviously concerned about Ponte Vista and the impact it will have on Western Avenue traffic. However, those knowledgeable seem to recognize that the idea of maintaining an R-1 development is not going to happen. Too much money has been invested as well as the fact that the city of Los Angeles will be making the decision, not RPV. That the three now re-elected RPV councilmen endorsed the Ponte Vista R-1 concept merely solidifies the reality that some will say whatever others might want to hear.

I guess that is politics.

- KEN DELONG
Rancho Palos Verdes
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Thank you Ken Delong for caring enough about the editorial to write your letter to the editor.

It should be noted, that Mr. Delong may not read this blog on a regular basis. That is perfectly alright with me, because I never thought this blog would have ever been identified in an editorial, in the first place.

Of course, had Mr. Delong been a regular reader of this blog, he would know exactly who I really am, and that I did not concede the reality that R1 must remain at Ponte Vista, until last May 29, 2007, less than six months ago.

Mr. Delong may know that I was a member of Councilwoman Janice Hahn's Community Advisory Committee for the Ponte Vista at San Pedro project from its beginning until I accepted a position as a Traffic Safety Commissioner for the City of Rancho Palos Verdes, which is very important to me.

Perhaps Mr. Delong also did not know that this blog has not had "few other comments" as he wrote, but I think if one looks back to September 2006, one would see many, many, many comments form many, many, many individuals, although mostly anonymous.

Could it be that Mr. Delong has not read in this blog all the compromise proposals that I and others have floated in a discussion-type mode?

I have always stated that I am a nobody. I don't really know Mr. Delong and I have no idea of how much of a somebody he feels he is. But it is us "nobodies" who have come together to form groups of caring folks who oppose Bob Bisno's weapons of mass development, as John Stinson coined the saying. It is us nobodies, along with help from Bob Bisno and his supporters who challenged L.A.U.S.D. and make it look very great that no senior high school will be built within the Ponte Vista site.

It is us nobodies who have challenged the bureaucrats and elected officials within the City of Los Angeles to take another look at how traffic is engineered at developments and throughout the City. It is the nobodies who have worked hard to be able to view no building of any new condos on the Ponte Vista site this year, which is not something that Bob Bisno planned on happening.

Ken Delong, I am very proud to be a nobody. There are thousands of us in OUR community fighting and trying to keep the environment we all live in, the best possible.

And about what others may not want to hear, I still wish for some type of Senior Housing at Ponte Vista. I find that defending a developer who speculated on the price of land, getting burned because he gambled, is the wrong feeling for anyone. We should not honor the gambler, who risks our future because of want of profit, we should admonish everyone defending Bob Bisno to understand that Bob is gambling with this land, his finances, and our future.

My opinion is my own. I supported the re-election of the three incumbents in the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council election, but I also voted "YES" on Measure D, to repeal the Storm Drain User Fee. I am an odd duck in many ways and I don't expect anyone to necessarily agree with me on anything.

I am glad, though, that at least one letter to the editor appeared. Perhaps there will be more in the very near future.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

ken delong is but another on the long list who tells everyone to just accept it( the development) well, just because. forget it, ken.
hundreds, if not thousands of comments have been written on this blog. i have spent my life trying to gain a quality of live i am not easily going to give up to bob-o.there just is not really anything to comment on lately, except what a pig-stye the property has become since being bought by mr. money bags. don't be mislead by what you consider lack of current comments to think that opposition has sofetened. we are ready and willing to fight bob and his 2,000 unit project which, is in all likelihood, going to become apartments. some of us actually live in san pedro. imagine that.

Anonymous said...

heard anything new regarding the "survey"? i would like to know how the fact that money has been invested has anything with this project getting approved. he must be talking about the money spent on lawyers trying to badger heighborhod councils and his lobbying efforts. those knowledgeable know that bob has shot himself in the foot more than once by disregarding anything he does not like to hear and he will never get what he wants. tell me, if he builds a park, will i have to sign something saying i love his project in order to go there?

M Richards said...

Thanks anonymouses,

I haven't heard any more about the recent telephone survey.

Folks could put money down that if the numbers look good to Bob, the results will be published, advertised, and places just about everywhere.

Of course, if the real results show that Bob is losing support for his weapon of mass development, I think we will have to do some kind of informational surgery to get the results out.

Expect only "good" news from Bob and his bunch. Honesty has not been one of their primary attributes as spelled out in the last survey.

Another Anonymous, commenting on another post asks why Bob has not been forced to put green matting on the fences around Ponte Vista to block his blight. That is a GREAT question.

We here in R.P.V. get little more than lip service, sometimes, concerning cleaning up Bob's blight.

I wish now that I had gone to the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council's meeting tonight to ask them to look into it. Those are some very good folks who are working hard for the residents of northwest San Pedro, and they have helped us out in R.P.V., quite a bit, with their support.

http://nwsanpedro.org/ is the address of their Web site. If some of you who read this and actually live in their area would kindly help all of us out by dropping them a note on their contact page about the possibility of having Janice Hahn and other bureaucrats force Bob to place those green screens, at least that could be a start.

Of course it can really do nothing for the folks heading south on Western, just south of Peninsula Verde Drive, they can't build a fence high enough to block that ugly view coming down the hill.
MW

Anonymous said...

Ken Delong sounds like another paid loudmouth piece for Bisno.

While your blog may not be flooded with comments from it's readers, I do beleive you speak for a majority of the community as far as Ponte Vista remaining R-1 is concerned. How many untainted, unpaid signatures have been collected by R-1 voluteers ? Somewhere close to 15,000 ?

Since when does the amount of money that some fool has "invested" have anything to do with a project getting approved ? Guess what Ken, it doesn't

Anonymous said...

The letter to the editor contradicts itself. He suggests that the R1 movement is not the voice of the community, then in the next paragraph says that the politicians are for R1 because that's what the community wants to hear! Give me a break.

Anonymous said...

those knowledgeable SEEM to understand that bob will get his way.o.k. whatever you say. i guess the rest of us are unknowledegable.
poor bob. why cant he get anyone to come out and support his project with a demonstration of supporters without bribing them? uh, maybe because they are really so few, and the majority of them have vested intrests. does anybody yet know how many bedrooms he wants to build? why won't he tell us? sorry, i guess that 3 years isn't enough time. bob it's time you started to get real and come back down to earth. and PLEASE PLEASE MAKE SOME ARGUMENT, ANY ARGUMENT, FOR YOUR PROJECT, OTHER THAN YOUR GREED.YOU AND YOUR SURVEYS, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR BY PEOPLE FROM YOU ADVISORY BOARD, WHO, LET US NOT FORGET, ARE OUTSIDE OF THE PROCESS. YOUR EMBARASSING YOURSELF AND YOUR SO CALLED SUPPORTERS. WHAT HAPPENED TO
"TOM FIELDS"? STOPPED PAYING HIM?