Letter to the Editor -- KRISTY NEUBO

I am responding to Byron de Arakal’s Oct. 10 column (“Council won’t be

Home Ranch’s last battle ground”) regarding the Segerstrom & Son’s

proposed use of their “94 acres of furrowed farmland north of the San

Diego Freeway.”

Southern California is not a land of freedom and liberty. Southern

California is a mass of city government, overburdened court systems, city

councils and meddling committees of citizens with way too much power, and

so we end up with struggles as ridiculous as this struggle.

The Segerstroms have owned this piece of land since the beginning of

the last century -- or so I’ve read. The Segerstroms should be able to do

anything they darn well please on their 94 acres. The rest of us can moan

and groan, but real estate ownership should prevail. The rest of the

world should stay out of the Segerstroms’ business. If the “Costa Mesa

Citizens for Responsible Growth” don’t like what someone else is doing

with their land, then this committee should purchase that land and then

they will have control over what is done with the land. How do these

committee members get off thinking that they can repress another human

being’s activities on their own land? What is even more amazing is that

these people on this committee want to come up with some kind of a ballot

measure to “battle developers.” Without developers, there would be no

housing, redevelopment, growth, progress and so on.

Radical thinking and radical behavior has no place in a civilized

world. I want out of Southern California so bad, I can taste it for this

exact reason. This is the most heavily government-regulated, repressed,

“free” society I have ever seen. When is the government going to realize

that land ownership means something and allow people an affordable means

to develop their land and use it as they please? If someone doesn’t like

the way the Segerstroms want to use their land, then those people should

come up with the money to purchase the land, and until then, they

shouldn’t have a darn thing to say about it.

I am not addressing the issue of traffic compatibility and utility

drains that this proposed project will impose, and I am not addressing

things that you might do on your land that will disturb the peace of

others or pose a risk to others. I am simply addressing the repressive

land-use policies and their implementation by our city governments and

the repressive ludicrous policies of “usage” that our cities have imposed

on land ownership. You can’t breathe without someone wanting to oppose

what you’re doing on your land, and city governments wanting to overly

control your land ownership uses. When you own land, rights come with

that ownership. The right to privacy, use and freedom to do whatever you

want to do on your square box of God’s earth are “yours,” and no

neighbor, committee, government or otherwise should tell you what to do.

Our economy is weakening and, here in Southern California, we have

thieving power companies, overtaxation and repressive land-use policies.

We are going to be back in the times of the early ‘90s very soon if our

governments don’t wise up again. We were begging corporations to relocate

here to provide jobs for our people, and our county went bankrupt. The

governments realized the dilemma, loosened up and reacted to bring growth

and prosperity into our cities.

In the early 1990s, we saw real estate values drop like the stock

market, and it affected everyone. If we are not careful, this will happen

again. Our municipal governments need to focus their energies on our

public safety and not on what someone wants to do with their land. It

seems to me that our municipal governments and a lot of our citizens’

priorities are all in the wrong place. This project will employ skilled

laborers to construct it, and it will employ skilled laborers to run

parts of it. I feel strongly that keeping our citizens employed and safe

should be the highest priorities of our municipal governments, councils

and citizen committees. Those same agencies and citizens should not have

the right to dictate the use of a 94-acre field that has been in a family

close to a century or more. What harm could a 308,000-square-foot

building that will occupy less than 8% of the land bring? However, it

will create several hundred jobs and bring in several million dollars in

tax revenue annually.

KRISTY NEUBO

Newport Beach