OUR LAGUNA:Whatever happened to ... ?

About 30 people attended the meeting hosted by Save Laguna Views, which had publicized the meeting in letters mailed to 5,700 registered voters. The organizers proposed a survey as a first step in forcing the city to revise the ordinance if enough support was shown.

"I would think that the mailer was a survey," then-Mayor Elizabeth Schneider. "And the number of people who showed up for the meeting is an indication of how difficult it would be to get a majority vote for changes in the ordinance."

Dave Connell, an avid supporter of a stronger view ordinance, said about 40 view preservationists spent hundreds of hours studying the ordinance, found it lacking and presented their own version. "We generated a perfect ordinance," Connell said. "It was presented, but it wasn't ever read."

Frank Visca, who has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Connell in the uphill battle to gain public and official support for a stronger ordinance, said opponents of the group's goals are unreasonable.

"I am not going give up this fight until I die," Visca said.

However, most of the fight has gone out of the fight.

"There was insufficient interest by the electorate in general to move forward," said South Laguna resident Christopher Toy, who chaired the 2005 meeting. "A handful of people offered to help, but it needed more than a handful.

"I still have the PAC (political action committee) and I file a statement with the city clerk every six months. Our expenditures consist of paying for our post office box and for the one mailer."

For more information, write Save Laguna Views, P.O. Box 9425, Laguna Beach, 92652.