Mailbag: Thankful for efforts to help homeless

When we read of the program proposed by the city last year to deal with the issues concerning our homeless population, we were more than a little skeptical. We thought too little was being done.

Recently, we walked the length of both Main Beach and Heisler Park, and we saw that the program seems to be working very well. The homeless may still be present, but since the city has provided a place for them to store their belongings and to clean up they have become indistinguishable from the rest of us.

Thanks are due to the day-to-day managers of the program who have refined it and helped ensure its success.

While we know that much remains to be done, we think it timely to thank the council for the progress we've made to date.

Barbara and Robert Klein

Laguna Beach

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Skateboarders need more visibility

A definitive and fair-to-all-sides decision regarding skateboarding on Laguna's roadways is probably no closer than a national decision on gun control.

Accordingly, in the interim I would strongly suggest that the city ask or require skateboarders to wear an orange, or other brightly-colored helmet, while skateboarding on Laguna's roadways.

A skateboarder's typical outfit of black T-shirt and black pants renders them almost invisible to motorists and makes them subject to unintended interactions with motor vehicles.

Whether skateboarders are in the right or in the wrong, no motorist wants to hit one. The problem is we can't always see them as they swoop down the road on their skateboards.

Simply making them more visible to motorists is a reasonable request by the city while the different sides duke it out over long-term rules and laws.

Norm Marshall

Laguna Beach

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Fearful of hitting a speedboarder

My husband and I spend the winters in Laguna Beach in our home on Morningside Drive, which is steep down to where it merges into another steep hill, Rancho Laguna. I live in terror, even as I drive carefully up the hill, that I will encounter a skateboarder or a speedboarder who might veer into my oncoming vehicle. Such an accident would be potentially fatal to the child, and ruin his parents' and siblings' lives, as well as that of mine or any other driver.

If the parents of these children want them to pursue this dangerous wheeled sport, the fair thing would be for those parents to purchase land and build a track. Today, a crew of speedboarders flew through a stop sign without so much as looking left or right. If cyclists have to stop, why shouldn't skate/speedboarders?

Deborah Engle