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Mailbag: R.V. ordinance is ineffective

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Thank you, 2005 Huntington Beach City Council, for the recreational vehicle parking compromise.

Isn’t it encouraging to know that if you simply want to add some square footage to your existing living space all you have to do is roll in a 40-foot home on wheels, pick your own imaginary property lot on the street and weigh anchor for five months out of the year, no questions asked.

Most homeowners are completely flummoxed as to how this ordinance was passed that year, since it exempts motor homes from the California code, which says a vehicle can stand without movement for a 72-hour period only.

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Could big rigs, buses and stretch limousines also park up to 16 days a month if the owners are residents? Before 2005, the city issued recreational vehicles (longer than 25 feet) parking permits for a few days at a time.

Motor homes on the streets are eyesores. They take up much-needed parking spaces, block views, lower property values, encourage overnight camping and simply enclose what open space we may have left.

Recreational-vehicle owners apply online and the computer automatically issues a parking permit. No windshield display is necessary, and its validity is questioned only if someone calls in a complaint. If the owner says he didn’t use an entire permit, or removed the vehicle for 24 hours, the person can start fresh with eight more days, maxing out at 16 days per month. At the beginning of each new month, the count begins again.

Let’s face it. A motor home is basically a building with tires.

This is a poorly derived parking ordinance open to multiple abuses and unfair to surrounding homeowners. When and how did it become such a battle to simply live in peace?

Enforcement officers are aware of this problem. Now, we need the Huntington Beach City Council to see the error in this ordinance.

Sandy Pope

Huntington Beach

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Keep pushing to protect our seniors

The recent approval of the Senior Resident Overlay District and ordinance by the Huntington Beach Planning Commission and the city’s Mobile Home Advisory Board to make it harder for owners to switch from a senior mobile home park underscores the seriousness of senior issues and the value that appointed officials place on senior residential property rights.

Regrettably, the votes were not unanimous. It is too bad that opponents continue to put profits over people in backing the so-called private property rights of mobile home park owners to the detriment of thousands of senior homeowners living in manufactured housing.

The Planning Commission decision will be appealed to the City Council, and a vote will come soon enough.

It is time for voters to pay attention to which officials and prospective candidates for elected office back our senior population and who would turn them out as homeless.

It is not enough to support increased services and facilities for our senior population without protecting their homes and quality of life.

Tim Geddes

Huntington Beach

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Support the Voting Rights amendment

Last month, U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced new legislation, The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, that would strengthen the original Voting Rights Act.

This bill isn’t perfect, but it is the best means we have for restoring the rights struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. No citizen can deny that voting is a right that should not be suppressed in any way.

You can show your belief in this precept by supporting this very important legislation, perhaps helping to extend it to all states that would selectively gut the right to vote.

Jim Hoover

Huntington Beach

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