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Annals of chutzpah, or annals of cluelessness? You be the judge.
Orange County Business Council (OCBC) head flack Lucy Dunn is well-known and well-remembered in my hometown of Huntington Beach. And I’ll get into why real soon. Her OCBC seems to mainly exist to figure out ways for large, well-connected businesses to profit off the public, whether off our tax money, our tolls, or our prized public property and open spaces. Like the Chambers of Commerce of Huntington Beach and Anaheim, it is “Not your dad’s Chamber of Commerce,” but a den of sneaky, thieving weasels. And Lucy is their front lady.
And when Joe Shaw told me last week that the Huntington Beach chamber had sent out a mailer to Surf City voters featuring Toll Lane Lucy banging the drum for HER favorite HB council candidates, I said, “WAIT. Let me guess who she picked. How many?” “Three.” “Okay. That would have to be Barbara Delgleize, Billy O’Connell, and … and Mike Posey?” “Bingo. Damn you’re good.” And I smiled.
Barbara is a really nice lady, but let’s just say her philosophy of government is farther from mine than any other HB candidate – she is definitely the developers’ girl, and Poseidon’s as well. Barbara and Billy both came to my Oct 18 concert, which was nice of them. Billy seems to … let’s say, say different things to different people. And both Barbara and Billy are the top choices of Keith Bohr, the developer and former councilman whom I referred to as “The Curt Pringle of Huntington Beach,” and who is one of the main driving forces behind our very unpopular High Density Development.
And Posey was a logical third choice – a work in progress who’s still figuring himself out. He and Barbara were the only two candidates who held up a “support” sign when asked about high density at a recent forum. (Billy did not; he must have noticed earlier in the day that high density was becoming an unpopular thing to associate yourself with publicly.)
The Chamber counts on Huntington Beach voters to have the memory of fleas, if they think an endorsement from Lucy Dunn is gonna be seen as a plus. When I mentioned her on a forum not long ago, Huntington Beachers from all corners of the spectrum reacted with visceral rage – “Lucy Dunn needs to stay out of Huntington Beach!” was the general consensus. Back when she ran the “greenwashing” (i.e. fake environmentalist) Bolsa Chica Conservancy, the LA Times called her “the public face of plans to build on the Bolsa Chica wetlands, a controversial proposal that once encompassed 1,200 acres, with a marina, hotels and up to 5,700 homes.” She shamelessly boasted at the time, “There will be a beautiful project there. Except for Huntington Beach, the entire state knows this is going to happen.”
Yet still, last week … well, you tell me – annals of chutzpah, or annals of cluelessness? [click for larger PDF]
When Connie Boardman – Connie, former HB Mayor, current councilwoman up for re-election, “Team HB” member, board member and two-time president of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, who has ACTUALLY been fighting to preserve the area for decades now – when Connie Boardman saw this flyer, she BLEW A GASKET, and blew that gasket twice on Facebook:
Have you seen the Chamber of Commerce mailer that hit today featuring Lucy Dunn endorsing their candidates? That’s right the same Lucy Dunn who as VP of the Koll Co. wanted to put 4,884 houses on Bolsa Chica. Lucy is quoted as saying she has worked for 25 years to restore the Bolsa Chica wetlands. Right. You remember what the Koll Co wanted to do in order to “restore” the wetlands? They wanted to build 900 houses on them. That’s right, the houses were going to be the economic engine to “drive the restoration.” According to Lucy at the time without that development there could be no restoration. Oops. I guess she was wrong about that!
She’s also wrong about the candidates. It was just a few short years ago that one of them [Delgleize – VN] while on the planning commission voted to change the land use on a 9,000 year old cultural site from open space/park to residential so Lucy’s buddy Ed Mountford with Hearthside homes could put 22 more houses at Bolsa Chica. This same candidate referred to those of us who opposed this idea as “environmental extremists.” Hey thanks Lucy, you just told everyone who cares about Bolsa Chica who NOT to vote for.
And then a little later…
The more I think about the Chamber using Lucy Dunn to support their candidates the more surreal it becomes. Do you remember the plan by her company to “relocate” sensitive habitat from the Bolsa Chica Mesa elsewhere? Courts just laughed at that, and it’s one of the reasons the BCLT won its lawsuit against the project.
How about the SLAPP suit Lucy’s company filed against the Amigos de Bolsa Chica when they testified at a public hearing about the impacts the development on the mesa would have on the wetlands? Oh yeah she’s a key figure in the battle to save and protect Bolsa Chica. Only problem is she was on the WRONG side!
Oh, and have I mentioned that Lucy Dunn has been the NUMBER ONE PROPAGANDIST for putting toll lanes on the 405? Do you think her favored candidates are going to oppose that as strongly as our incumbents have?
Huntington Beach, Keep Your Eye on the Ball!
- If your priority is protecting the Bolsa Chica mesa, wetlands, and open spaces, and keeping plastic bags and styrofoam off our beaches (to the degree local ordinance can help with that) your candidates are Joe, Connie and Mark. Especially Mark.
- If it’s important to you that the Poseidon boondoggle gets the red light if the company is ordered to use subsurface intakes and has to come back to Council… then your candidates are Joe, Connie, Mark and HEK. The others if you really want this disaster to happen.
- If you’re a mobile home owner or care about them, and want defenders in Council who’ll protect you from the greedy Park owners up to and including rent control, you’ll need Joe, Connie and Mark. YOU’LL NEED ALL THREE.
- If you’re against the high-density development that’s been going on, you can vote for any of these six, or maybe even Alex Polsky.
- If your biggest priority is having safe-and-sane fireworks (although you’ll get to vote on Measure T anyway), and getting back your plastic bags (although state law has now pre-empted that) you DON’T want to vote for Joe, Connie or Mark, any of the others will do. [And Team HB will probably be coming for your STYROFOAM next, dear Lord!)
- I trust any of the above six to be fiscally responsible. Joe and Connie do have a record now of improving our town’s credit and paying down unfunded liabilities.
- For fiscal transparency, back the odd couple of Erik and Connie, both of whom have tried to restore the disbanded Finance Committee. I’ll try to find out where the other candidates stand on that, but those two are on record.
- (I’ll add to this as I think of more.)
You should ONLY vote for Lucy Dunn’s favored candidates Delgleize, O’Connell and Posey if you want MORE HIGH-DENSITY DEVELOPMENT, want to see Poseidon go full-steam ahead, and want to see the Bolsa Chica Wetlands and Mesa covered in condos. Your choice guys and dolls…
There isn’t a boondoggle or taxpayer ripoff that this woman won’t cheerlead so long as big bucks flow from the public treasury into the pockets of PringleCorp.
See, it’s called “public/private partnerships” and it is tailor made for intermediary bag men, grifters and influence peddlers to insinuate themselves into. There is no reliance on facts or data in this shadowy world where the Brown Act means nothing, but rather deployment of feel-good rhetoric and brainless jargon that sounds like it actually means something. And now we can all understand the career trajectory of Kris Murray, whose rise was lubricated by Pringle/Dunn and whose very last priority is public welfare.
When the $200,000,000 ARTIC mess is seen as the complete waste it is, when credit morphs into blame, who stand up and take the heat? Surely no member of PringleCorp who foisted this rip-off on us.
Here here Mr Zenger
And speaking of the odious Dunn and HB, she was the one who in 2007 kept Gerald Chapman, a dedicated guy on the HB Planning Commission and a Bolsa Chica advocate, from being appointed by John Moorlach to the Orange County Planning Commission.
Ha ha! The odious Lucy Dunn!
Hey Lucy! Hitler wants a position on the planning commission! And Sadam Hussein wants to represent our fair city’s water board. Don;t forget Dunn loves her some Idi Amin in the morning with some fresh baby pot pie while overlooking her beachfront property. Just her property–nobody else can get to the beach, just Lucy and her friends: Putin, Assad, Rohrbacher, Trump. Kim Johng Ill, Issa, ISIS….
What, too soon?
It was a toss up between odious and otiose.
I had used “fatuous” on her too many times, I wanted to break things up…
When Barbara Delgleize spoke at your concert last week, she was all about protecting Bolsa Chica and slamming nasty over development. But she told us she had sold real estate in Huntington Beach for 39 years. I wondered,’Is she planning to retire?’ Because everything she was said runs contrary to her chosen career.
Good thing that SOME people we’re being asked to vote for have actual records you can look at. These people can SAY things like “protect Bolsa Chica” and mean what THEY mean by it, not what we THINK they might mean. And if she’s been hanging with Lucy Dunn, she’s been learning from the best.
“Protecting Bolsa Chica” could mean, in the mind of a politician saying it, “preserving the boundless pristine beauty of 20% of it for future generations, at the necessary cost of constructing hundreds of MAGNIFICENT condos on it. All the way from that to “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”