Letters to the editor

Monterey County Herald
Posted on May 17, 2007

Learn from Lighthouse

Anyone who thinks LandWatch and Measure A are good ideas ought to reflect on what happened with the "Save Lighthouse Field" debacle in Santa Cruz. LandWatch and allies, mostly minds-full-of-socialist-mush UCSC students and left-wing political activists, managed to defeat creation of a convention center that would have been the crown jewel of the Santa Cruz economy.
Lighthouse Field got saved, all right. It's now a storage facility for weeds and dog poop. But the real damage, as with Measure A, came with the attached land-use restrictions.

Santa Cruz building permit requirements are an expensive, impossibly twisted bureaucratic mess, and traffic is a nightmare 24/7. As in Santa Cruz County, Measure A not only stifles logical growth, but it tramples on private property rights, a concept that socialists despise anyway. Make no mistake about who these LandWatch people are. LandWatch fooled Santa Cruz County, shame on them. If they fool Monterey County, shame on us.

Tom Schneider
Corral de Tierra