Letters to the Editor
Let the people vote
Our Eastbluff HOA members have followed the action the City Council has taken to delay the opportunity for residents to vote on the three initiatives which gathered adequate signatures to qualify for the November 2026 ballot.
Once again, the court ruled in the Newport Beach Stewardship Association’s (NBSA) favor. Our residents do not want to face another delay created by the city. The city appealed again. We reviewed the judge’s actual writ, and it is very specific.
We request that the City Council not spend any further city funds to attempt a further delay and instead comply with the judge’s order.
This is a transparency issue. Let the people vote!
Ron Rubino
Eastbluff Homeowners Community Association
Newport Beach
We need to get public safety issues done, not just talked about
In Tuesday’s (Sept. 1) Stu News, residents of Corona del Mar just read a campaign ad featuring current councilmembers touting their commitment to “public safety.” At the same time, Visit Newport Beach is promoting tourism campaigns while the city is promoting its “Not in Newport” campaign; a lot of energy and money is being spent on mixed messaging while the actual safety problems in our neighborhood go unaddressed. For those of us living near Buck Gully and Little Corona Beach, the disconnect between all that promotion and what’s actually happening on the ground is hard to ignore.
Last year, the council approved a project to mitigate fire risk in Buck Gully. To date, that work has not materialized due to a delay in having the state pay for it. Meanwhile, after-hours beach camping continues at the base of the gully, in an area that borders the Flower Streets, Shore Cliffs and Cameo Shores, all neighborhoods with limited evacuation routes in the event of a fast-moving fire.
The Pacific Palisades fire in January 2025 showed exactly what’s at stake and Corona del Mar shouldn’t need its own version of that disaster before Buck Gully gets the attention it was promised.
The same gap between promise and follow-through shows up at Little Corona Beach. The city posted a “No Stopping Any Time” sign at the emergency access point near the beach, but it is blocked constantly and the red zone is not enforced. The solution from the City Council and city staff has been to triple fines on holiday weekends, but if the restriction isn’t enforced, then what do the triple fines do? Public safety and emergencies are not just holiday weekend issues but 24/7, 365-day-a-year concerns.
This isn’t a hypothetical risk; a blocked emergency lane means paramedics or fire crews could be delayed reaching someone who needs help on one of the more hazardous stretches of coastline in the area. The council also said it would enforce after-hours closures to keep people off the beaches; that hasn’t happened at Little Corona this summer.
These ongoing issues compound as unmanaged beachgoers make it harder for residents to get in and out of their own streets; blocked emergency access puts visitors and residents at risk when minutes matter and the stalled fire mitigation work leaves homes on the Flower Streets, Shore Cliffs and Cameo Shores more exposed than they should be.
We’ve raised these issues repeatedly over the past few years, including directly with Mayor Kleiman and the city manager, without seeing the follow-through match the talk. We want to be clear: This isn’t about our first responders who do their jobs well under conditions the city has failed to fix. It’s about a council and city staff who haven’t matched residents’ efforts.
We’ve tried tirelessly through emails, meetings and public comment to work with the city on these issues, largely to no avail. Corona del Mar residents don’t need another polished social media campaign about public safety or stats on the arrests. We don’t want red slipper videos and arrest posts! We need the Buck Gully mitigation project actually finished, the emergency access at Little Corona kept clear, and after-hours enforcement to match what was promised to us.
Public safety should be measured by what gets done, not by what gets posted.
DeAnna Reposa
Corona del Mar
It appears that Robert Garcia is about to become the man!
Many residents of Newport Beach are probably not aware of the young man who will most likely become our new congressman, Robert Garcia.
Proposition 50 changed the boundaries of our congressional district and although it now straddles Los Angeles and Orange counties, taking in the predominantly Republican strongholds of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, the odds are still in favor of Robert becoming our new representative.
It is difficult to ignore Robert Garcia because he has become one of the most vocal critics of the current administration, rising quickly through the ranks to become the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. While others might remain silent, Robert comes into his role swinging, and very few days go by that he is not vocal about some positive changes in government that he would like to make.
He has an impressive and varied resume, having served as mayor of Long Beach, a member of the California Coastal Commission, president of the Associated Students at Cal State Long Beach and a college educator at USC. He has a master’s degree from the latter. His doctoral degree is from Cal State Long Beach.
If Garcia becomes chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the next Congress, he says that he would make “affordability” his central issue.
Lynn Lorenz
Newport Beach
