Gun advertisement
Dear Mr. Kydd,
I was shocked and appalled to find an advertising insert for a weapons seller, Quantico, in the Sept. 13 issue of The Coast News. Having read your newspaper since 2001, I do not recall ever seeing such an advertisement before. Since your newspaper is so easily accessible throughout coastal North County through news boxes or stacks of papers at countless establishments, the specter of children seeing these flyers seems extremely likely. Why risk exposing our children to this kind of advertising, particularly in light of the all-too-many incidents of youths committing mass slaughter with weapons (Newtown, Columbine, etc.)?
This instance is even more perplexing to me because the advertiser is based on the East Coast and has no ties to the North County community.
It seems reasonable to ask you to explain to your readers the paper’s guidelines for accepting or declining advertising submissions, at least as it relates to accepting high profile advertising inserts from businesses selling weapons.
Thank you.
Peter Grabell,
Encinitas
Fletcher Cove controversy
The recent blizzard of letters from our local NIMBYS pointing out the (gasp!) horrors of more than one wedding or celebration every other weekend at the Fletcher Cove Community Center all contain cherry-picked items of information that are pretty misleading at first glance. Their claim that it is “a small number of residents” who favor the increased usage is belied by the fact that about 25 percent of registered voters signed the initiative petition. Their assertion that signatures were gathered by “paid signature gatherers” ignore the facts that there were perhaps five such gatherers compared to about 65 volunteers who were the ones gathering 70 percent of those signatures. And the NIMBYs’ claim that those who did sign were hoodwinked is simply absurd on its face.
It seems to me that we already have pretty adequate protection against these inferred assaults on the peace and tranquility of the FCCC neighborhood in the form of the Sheriff’s Office, the State ABC regulations, and the City noise regulations (and I know the noise regulations work; I’ve used them with success to quell a night-barking dog).
The group I feel sorry for in this situation is not the NIMBYs — you will always have people who move next to a facility or airport and then try to shut it down because it may inconvenience them at times — but rather the Solana Beach City Council, a group of dedicated people who are caught between the two sides, trying to please both.
Richard Moore
Solana Beach
Why the secrecy?
Per the Sept. 3 Del Mar City Council closed session agenda, the city is negotiating the price and terms with owners of office properties in the North Commercial, Professional Commercial and Central Commercial Zones.
Did you know the city was even considering purchase or lease of commercial office properties? When did the Council discuss that? It hasn’t been on any open agenda.
I asked the city manager if he could tell me the addresses and names of the property owners being negotiated with, and he said no, they were following the advice of the city attorney. So why the secrecy? Discussing price and terms is certainly confidential, but according to State Law, discussing desire to purchase/lease of downtown commercial properties and identifying the properties and names of the owners is required to be disclosed in the agenda!
So, why isn’t the City Council letting us know what they are doing? And why isn’t the city attorney telling them that they are supposed to discuss “the people’s business” in the open, per the Brown Act?
The Del Mar Council should be able to depend on the advice of the city attorney, but if it has a smell, they should not hesitate to question the advice. Maybe it’s time to replace the city attorney (and the Council)?
Ralph Peck,
Del Mar
