Editor’s Note:
This week’s Sun Newspaper’s letter to the editor are in response to the poll question for the Sun’s web site: sunnews.org.
The question asked readers to choose which was more important to save—the pool or the tennis courts at McGaugh Elementary School in Seal Beach.
After the Sun staff received the first flurry of responses below, we modified the answers to include a choice to say that both were equally important to save. For more on the poll question go to the Sun Web site.
For more information on the poll, go to page 2.
Poll Letters
The vote the Sun has set up for the community to weigh in on is not a fair vote. There should be another choice, there should be a choice that allows us to say both the pool and the courts are important to our community. Further, Seal Beach needs more recreational areas not fewer.
We need the pool, the courts and we need to find ways to add recreational areas to the city like a longer boardwalk—one that extends the existing one all the way to First Street and have outdoor basketball courts, more volleyball courts around the First Street area—courts much like Laguna Beach has its beach.
I hope that you can change the voting options by including the choice to have both the pool and courts.
Pat Moretta
Seal Beach
This poll is misleading. If I say pool, it doesn’t mean the tennis courts are not important and vice versa, They are both equally important. We need both. It seems this poll could easily be used to pit one against the other which isn’t the case.
Steve Snyder
Seal Beach
I went to vote at the Web site and found myself completely frustrated by the way the options were worded. Sort of like the “are you still beating your wife?” question—yes or no. It appears to make us choose one or the other where I see this as a whole valuable recreation space for kids and adults.
I have lived across from the school for more than 40 years and our family have found both to be of importance to quality of life in Seal Beach (especially the Hill area) The courts have never been “pristine.” When I did play tennis there we often had to share their use with kids who were playing basketball and prop up the nets—but it is this general use that makes them so valuable. Now that we have grandkids it has been frustrating these past three years while the courts have been full of construction equipment and we have been patiently waiting for them to be reopened.
I know that there is discussion that the pool may be moved eventually and this huge leaking pool is not a simple issue. However, I wish to speak to finding a solution that does not take away our ONLY recreation space on the Hill.
I did fill out the comment section without voting but wasn’t sure your system would accept that so decided to write directly to you.
Thanks for lending an ear.
Ann McGlone
Seal Beach
I live on Island View and I’m not happy with the vote you are orchestrating that has people choosing if they prefer to keep the pool vs. the tennis court. I want them both. You are going to make people think there’s a choice and there isn’t. They are separate agenda items. Please clarify them in your next issue.
The report on the last town meeting was also not very good. We were hoping to communicate that we need more support to keep the tennis courts and I think the article fell flat. We weren’t against the pool, just unaware of the issue until it was brought up in the town meeting.
Charlotte Salisbury
Seal Beach
Editor’s reply:
The Sun Newspaper was in no way trying to say that at this time there was a choice between the two facilities or say that both could not be saved.
However, the reality is that due to the poor state of the economy, the poor state of the city of Seal Beach’s finances and the shoddy sate of education funding in California, residents in fact could someday have to decide to save one or the other.
We feel the question was thought provoking and we stand behind asking it.
On the other hand, we appreciate the letter writers’ comments and that is why we amended the answers on the Sun’s Web site to include an option that they should both be saved.
In a perfect world perhaps they both would be saved.
The reality is that we live in an imperfect world. Perhaps that is why man invented politics. To facilitate the dialogue, we try and let all sides be heard.
– Dennis Kaiser
