Good and bad
The world can be a great place. A happy place. But last week it was a terrible place. An evil place. A place where you felt you must go grab your gun. Not good. Not good at all.
But now it’s time to mourn and to heal. To return to life and friends and family.
To walk again and enjoy life as it’s meant to be. In this darkness, be light. Pray and bring God in.
Things like this are not God’s fault. It’s people who do the bad things. We all have the right to make choices, but we never expect this as an outcome.
It’s just too evil to even understand or comprehend.
I do a lot of writing. Mostly just for me. But, I will share this with you and you can decide if you want to share it with others. These are sketches of my feelings of the tragic events in Seal Beach.
Michael G. Mandas
Los Alamitos
Salon co-worker’s praise
On behalf of my co-workers and the Salon Meritage family, I would like to thank the entire community for the incredible support after the tragedy of Oct. 12.
Your kind words, visits, thoughts and prayers along with your continuous memorial at the salon and generous donations mean so much to us. We want to thank everybody who offered and gave support in any way to the Salon Meritage family.
The community members deserve to feel as proud of themselves as we are of them. Our appreciation is endless and your wonderful efforts will always be remembered.
Jeffery P. Segall
Salon Meritage
No low income housing near Rossmoor shopping center
Increased traffic congrestion may represent a public nuisance to a traffic situation that is already impacted. We need to use every arrow in our quiver.
Years ago when I lived here, the city of Seal Beach voted 3-2 to build the Bridgecreek Condos next to the Rossmoor Public Library INSTEAD of a public park in the same location—(to increase revenue to the city rather than a park expense it was explained by the 3). Old Town Seal Beach has Marina Park (next to the deserted tanker farm which would be more suitable for low income housing), the long grassy public park along Electric Street (where the Mary Wilson Library is), park next to the Seal Beach Pier—how much did we spend to repair the pier after the storms?)—and some other parks I believe (Gum Grove park?) WHILE Seal Beach/Rossmoor has NO PARKS.
City Government claims the NEW Rossmoor shopping center is creating tax dollars much faster than the OLD Rossmoor center (I liked it better before).
If we are making so much money in the new stores (even while Albertson’s lot and the lot by the 76 Station are vacant), why not give a benefit to the Rossmoor homeowners and zone us a park instead of low income housing?
There are acres of open land between PCH and Westminster to zone low income housing or old tanker farm, etc, etc.
Rossmoor should not be a dumping ground for developments that Old Town does not want—share the good and the bad citywide.
Seems residents north of 405 are asked to sacrifice always. Compton was a nice community about 20 years ago—what happened?
Maybe part of their problem was too much bad city planning.
Let us not allow bad decisions to stand.
It is not rocket science to recognize a positive change to our area opposed to a downgrade.
Craig Sandberg
Rossmoor Park Board President
‘Forever In Our Hearts’
In early September, I met Michelle Fournier at Salon Meritage.
She introduced me as her new client and I remember her saying “we’re all family here.”
I was visiting the Bay area on Oct. 12 when I heard the horrific news about what had happened in Seal Beach.
Upon my return home to Seal, I spoke with my friend Tim Wyley, who is also a long-time resident of Seal Beach.
He told me he had been thinking of creating an inspirational tribute video to honor those who needlessly lost their lives.
I told him I had just written lyrics to a song in remembrance of the ones we lost.
Deep felt sorrow cannot be put into words, but hopefully this song and video will somehow be of comfort to the families and friends of the loved ones lost and to the citizens of Seal Beach.
Here is the link to “Forever In Our Hearts” tribute video and the lyrics to the song: http://youtu.be/-kuzj3NzRAI
Forever in our hearts,
Their memories will be
Forever in our hearts
In our city by the sea
If we lift our eyes to the skies
We’ll see
Their spirits are alive
Within you and me
We’ll never know why
As we shed the tears we cry
In the darkness candles burn
For the loved ones we yearn
Angels are singing
With open arms
Each souls is rising
Forever in our hearts
Their memories will be
Forever in our hearts
In our city by the sea
With sincere sympathy and heart-felt regards,
Vickie Hazlett
Seal Beach
Cut Leisure World staff pay
Leisure World residents pay almost 10 million a year in staff salaries that are truly more than we can afford.
In 2010, the salary for the governor of California was $212,000 but because of the recession, California reduced the governor’s salary to $173,387—an 18 percent cut.
In addition, California has cut the salaries of all public employees including teachers, police, and firemen by forcing them to take unpaid furlough days.
Why not imitate California and cut the higher Leisure World salaries.
The residents here pay Administrator Dan Schaeffer $240,000 (with benefits) which is a lot more than the governor of California receives and the governor has a lot more responsibilities.
Most Leisure World residents live on one tenth of that amount and many struggle to pay for food and medicine.
We can not afford these luxurious salaries. The residents of Leisure World would save a considerable amount of money if we reduced the salaries of our employees, just as the state of California has done.
If we could get expenses down, our monthly shareholder costs would not be increased and perhaps could be reduced so that our struggling residents might be able to buy both groceries and medicine.
Please let the board know that we want them to practice austerity, just as the state of California has done, and stop overspending our money on extravagant salaries.
Pass this letter on to your neighbors who do not have enough money to buy food and medicine and ask them to let the board know we want action.
Janice Laine
Leisure World
