Mailbag

Last week, I announced to members the retirement of Richard Luehrs as president and chief executive of the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce. Today, I am announcing that the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors has appointed Steve Rosansky as interim president and CEO. Rosansky assumed this volunteer position Wednesday and will continue in this role until the appointment of a permanent president and CEO that is expected within six...

I would like to take this opportunity to thank and praise the Costa Mesa Fire Department. Last Friday, our beloved home of 47 years caught on fire. Luckily, a passing motorist noticed fire coming from the roof. He alerted me to leave the house and related that he had already called the fire department. They arrived within minutes. There were at least 15 firefighters who knew exactly what to do and how to do it. They contained and extinguished the fire to the point that only one bedroom and just a section of the roof were damaged.

Re. "Commentary: It's time to arm school personnel,' Jan. 10: Twenty-seven people dead from gunshots. Twenty were children ages 6 to 7, all of whom had multiple shots to the head. One 6-year-old was hit 11 times, yet writer Chuck Cassity wants more guns in schools. He says the calls for regulation are "hysterical pleadings" that are "lamentable. " Those hysterical pleadings, sir, are the cries from the parents who had to identify their dead child through photos, rather than subject them to the horror of seeing their own beloved and innocent child in barely recognizable condition.

Newport Beach has made application to the California Coastal Commission to remove the fire rings from its ocean beaches. This seems inconsistent with the city's recent actions to collect additional fees for tidelands use. Newport Beach officials have been lecturing the public on the importance of the city collecting fair-market rent for use of city-controlled tidelands. In recent actions, the City Council has made huge increases in the fees charged for moorings, commercial harbor users and private-docks on tidelands, changing the rent for private docks from a flat fee to a charge per square foot.

The new Irvine City Council majority (Steven Choi, Christina Shea and Jeff Lalloway) plan to eliminate public members from the Great Park Corp. board and give sole control of decisions affecting the park to the council. Since they now control the council, that means they can do whatever they want - sell off land, increase private development, limit public access or shut down the project entirely. The Great Park is a regional treasure. The Great Park is not an Irvine city park. The board that guides the development of the park should come from all of Orange County.

As a longtime Newport Beach resident, I am furious, although not surprised, at the outcome of the city's new pride and joy, the Taj Mahal. Let's look back for a moment. The original reason for a new City Hall was that Newport Beach had hired more employees per capita than any other city in the county. Too many to house. We are the home of the $250,000 beach lifeguards, remember? They say they needed more room to hire even more people. Why? We cannot afford the employees we have now. This eyesore was sold as to us as a $50-million necessity.

As you can imagine, this was a very interesting year for the Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade: the slack economy, the uncertainty of home and parade entries and, of course, the organized boycott of the event. As it turns out, we had one of the best Ring of Lights and boat parades ever. The constant nagging on the economic forecast and the disappointment by many of the boycott threats brought the community together bigger, better and stronger than ever. We had hundreds of homes do elaborate and beautiful decorations around the bayfront, and we had almost 90 boats registered in the Christmas Boat Parade.

Re. " Commentary: Blame the Great Society for out-of-wedlock births Dec. 21: Dr. R. Claire Friend's article was very good, informative and eye-opening to the extent that whatever morals we once had regarding giving birth and being married have flown out the proverbial window. I knew that the illegitimacy rate has risen in recent years, but going from 5% in 1960 to the current rate of almost 35% is pushing the envelope a tad too much. Change is a big part of what keeps everything going, but why and how we seem to have a superfluous amount of unwed mothers not only appears to be a popular thing but also ubiquitous in nature.

We need a mental health bill for elected officials now! Mental health is not only an issue in our schools, but can also play a significant part in the shaping and maintenance of our community and culture. The people we put in office, even at the lowest levels, must have a clean bill of health from a mental health expert. It is without question that we have politicians running all areas of our city, state and country with low-level to severe mental-health issues. We are at the mercy of privacy acts that allow this be sealed, and this needs to change now!

Recently, outgoing Mayor Nancy Gardner, chairwoman of the longstanding city of Newport Beach Coastal/Bay Water Quality Citizens Advisory Committee, announced the committee no longer exists. A new committee will be formed and will be called the City of Newport Beach Water Quality/Coastal Tidelands Management Committee, after a new-member selection review. Some have held a seat since the committee was formed in 1985, some have passed, and some have moved on. This committee has been a huge plus about putting Newport Beach in the limelight as frontrunners for water quality without any publicity or public kudos.