Mailbag:

Now the employees have a chance to support a civic goal. Let them use a bus. Or they can walk or pedal a bicycle and get healthy. There’s another good virtue — fighting obesity among our population! The more you think of the benefits of Ken’s edict, the better it gets.

If there should be any criticism leveled, it should be that Frank has not gone far enough. All employees who drive and park in metered spaces should be ticketed.

I would go as far as suggesting that in addition to the parking fine, employers should be fined as well. I bet that would clean up downtown parking for customer use. Maybe then potential shoppers would not flee to nearby shopping centers that have ample parking and also force their employees to park in distant parking lots and ride buses to work. After all, isn’t that what we all want — a prosperous time for our merchants?

The Chamber of Commerce should award Frank a special plaque for his contributions to encouraging shopping downtown.

City should turn lights off during daylight

Editor’s note: The following letter was addressed to the Laguna Beach City Council.

If there is one city in Orange County that has more environmental pretenders living in it than my home town of Irvine, it would have to be Laguna Beach.

I have repeatedly contacted city officials in Irvine as well as shopping center owners to tell them to turn their lights out during daylight hours, and not one has done so. So naturally last Sunday, after 7 a.m., I noted with interest the lights on at the Laguna Beach animal shelter with amusement. Nearby the Verizon equipment yard also had its lights burning. How many other businesses and government divisions waste money and increase the demand for new power generation stations that the environmental pretenders won’t let us build? And how do these environmental pretenders excuse themselves for doing nothing, not even making a phone call to the agency or business to “turn the lights off!” Our mothers told us to do this even before we were old enough to go to school.

Al Gore’s army of hypocrites has forgotten this lesson.

JOHN JAEGER