Long Beach letters

Who’re the honest candidates?

To the Editor:
When I was first approached to run for City Council, I was very reticent, as I have been a registered Democrat since 1973. The Long Beach Democratic Party, however, is not the Democratic Party that people have come to expect. By running with a coalition of Democrats and Republicans together, we had the chance to bring Long Beach back to the people, and that’s just what we did. We have put the people of Long Beach first, always. I have tried to stick to the issues throughout this campaign and focus on the positive direction which our city is now headed and all of the improvements throughout our great town. Unfortunately, this campaign has been marred by innuendos, half-truths, lies leveled at me and the coalition. Mike Fagen has accused me of taking campaign contributions for promotions. That’s a downright lie. My campaign fund is public record. There has not been a contribution to it since October 2007. The Long Beach Republican Party campaign fund is public record, with all contributions and expenditures reported to assure complete transparency. The Long Beach Democrats, as required by state law, have not posted one required contribution or expense report to date.
But I guess that’s their idea of “honesty and integrity.”

John McLaughlin
Long Beach


Profit equals life

To the Editor:
The Long Beach Republican coalition has betrayed the principles of their party and the ideals this country was founded on.
In a recently mailed advertisement from these candidates, they attacked developers who seek to build in Long Beach and look to profit. In essence, they are attacking the ideals of this country since profit is moral and just and leads to quality of life. Developers have just as much right as any other businessmen or employees to try and make as much profit as the market is willing to pay. Profit is that which each and every one of us makes when we go to work each day. To smear profit, is to smear life itself. Just as there is no such thing as too much life, there is no such thing as too much money. There’s just too much envy from those who wish they could increase their own wealth.
On Tuesday, I will not vote for the Republicans, for they are no different from social Democrats.
Joel Schottenfeld
Long Beach

City’s finances are questionable

To the Editor:
The City of Long Beach has a deficit looming over its head. According to my calculations, the city intends to continue the $10 million budget anticipation note by rolling it over. Eventually the city will pay off the BAN by issuing the same amount as a bond. This will obviously increase the general fund debt service by a significant amount.
The Long Beach Police Department contract retro pay has been estimated at a minimum of $1 million, plus additional dollars to meet their new salaries. I also learned that the health benefits for the new CSEA full-timers are not covered in the general fund, or any other budget line. Those dollars will have to be made available before the end of next quarter, Dec. 31.
Besides these financial obligations, the city is behind in collecting its share of sales tax from the county by perhaps as much as six months. There is also a relatively large shortfall in the mortgage tax, and a wetter summer than usual has reduced beach revenue. The Long Island Rail Road reported that the number of people who came to Long Beach this season from New York City was down by about 10 percent.
All in all, the city fathers will have to make up these shortfalls and/or go through some sort of layoff procedure. If one can remember, the Jim Hennessy administration in 2004 did exactly that, several people were laid off for “budgetary” reasons, so history may repeat itself.
However, where is the mighty reserve fund or surplus? Is it all gone? The current administration seems to have flitted it away by allowing ridiculous pay increases for administrative personnel as well as wasteful spending such as the Indiana Firehouse, and the amazing dune destruction.
Al Symons
Long Beach

Diversity is needed

To the Editor:
Diversity in thought, experience and vision is required for our beautiful city to keep thriving. As our city continues to attract international events to our beaches, as our restaurants continue to excel, as we continue to promote top-shelf development and host one or potentially two high-end hotels, our leaders in City Hall must be visionary, strategic and diverse. They must be able to create the support for such opportunities while leverging the same for the benefit of our citizens.
Our elected representatives, and the people they hire and appoint, should be comfortable beyond the boundaries of our city, should act quickly to bring back good ideas, should learn from the success of others and should have the affinity to translate those lessons and experience into strategic plans that are appropriate for our community.
As important as it is that we continue to talk about parking, taxes and infrastructure, because those are the touch points that most affect us when our city is growing and thriving, we cannot overlook the need to have leaders in place that can understand the complexity of the opportunities ahead and, more importantly, how to effect such opportunities for the benefit of our community. Recent administrations have not shown that diversity in thought or ideas. It is unfortunate that diversity does not seem to play a vital role and that a diverse leadership team is not the norm at City Hall. We must demand such diversity going forward. If it does not become a driving force for our leaders, we will not be able to overcome our current challenges nor find the new opportunities to move our great city forward.
Frank R. Alvarado
Long Beach

GOP represents working class

To the Editor:
Only in Long Beach can the Democratic Party be representative of the bourgeoisie elite, while the Republican Party is more representative of the working middle class. I applaud the efforts of the Long Beach coalition.
Rich DiMitri
Long Beach
Get out and vote!

To the Editor:
How often have you heard “I don’t like politics” or “I won’t get involved”? We've heard this refrain at home, among friends, neighbors and family. In order for us to improve our municipality and our daily quality of life we must get involved.
Too many of our elected officials have abandoned their responsibility and have violated their oath of office to be our guardians and advocates in governance. These officials are only interested in protecting their own jobs, salaries, perks, and other generous benefits we've allowed them to abuse. When will this stop? We have the opportunity now to start making the change. It is your responsibility as a citizen to get involved. Please cast an educated vote on Tuesday.
Barbara DuBow Bernardino
Long Beach

We should’ve colonized the moon

To the Editor:
Recently, Herald editor Scott Brinton mocked the first steps necessary now for a sustained habitat on the moon, a manned installation that would also serve as the launching point for further colonization of the solar system ("Colonize the moon? Are We Crazy?" Oct. 15-21).
But then, it's always been easy to criticize the space program and its expenditures. It was such naysayers who thwarted what once, 40 years ago, seemed to be NASA's, and the world's, implicit destiny.
We were to have had our space station by 1980, a city on the moon and a man on Marsby 1990, regularly scheduled space travel by ordinary citizens today. (In fact, the lifestyles shown in "2001: A Space Odyssey" — the classic movie from Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, in 1968 — weren't necessarily science fiction, but what was simply the normal projection of where our technology could have been allowed to take us.)
All of these goals might well have been achieved if President Richard M. Nixon hadn't essentially cancelled the space program, on a cold day in the autumn of 1969. He stopped what was supposed to have been the last three Apollo missions, and nixed everything but the space shuttle's development — which was particularly odd, since it now had no space station, or other base, to go to.
Many visionary space goals were then thwarted by those who didn't believe that there's a tangible benefit to a manned presence in space. They ignored the fact that the resulting advances in technology and medicine surpassed the cost of these efforts, many times over.
Today, NASA's Constellation/Ares Moon project is on the brink of recapturing the momentum lost shortly after Apollo 11. The naysayers, those who can't see beyond the latest tax appropriation, shouldn't be allowed to make America take a back seat in science and exploration. It can still be daunting to contemplate all of the benefits that might have ensued had we not, at least temporarily, turned our back on the future.
But since 9/11, I've been haunted by another thought: Would the fanatical Muslim fundamentalists, and those others who call the Unted States the Great Satan, have been able to feel the same way if we had already achieved our vast space stations and colonies on the moon? Could they really have believed that the devil had a home in theheavens?
James H. Burns
Valley Stream