Same Song, Second Verse

Regarding your article on Morgan's ("Morgan's Tea Party," 6/28), it sure looks like city-sanctioned, selective enforcement to me. It also looks like abuse of power, personal retaliation, a waste of time and money, and extremely petty if not embarrassing actions on the part of the city government.

It also strikes a similar chord with problems I have had with the city while representing my neighborhood. First of all, it seems there is a repeat player here. Les Turnbeaugh has been complicit with bogus requests for city (Neighborhood Improvement Program) construction projects regarding my neighborhood. I finally hired an attorney to resolve the lack of due process within the city regarding this. The retaliation came the following year when I was denied my seat on the NIP committee even though I was duly re-elected by my neighbors. My crime was questioning authority and hiring a lawyer. As far as the Morgan's jokes going around within the city, city employees tell me Les Turnbeaugh now slanderously refers to me in his office as a communist!

Of note: I find it laughable that the city manager speaks of Morgan as being "rule-challenged." That's a bit of hypocrisy, when the city of Monterey just allowed a use permit for a commercial business to operate on residentially zoned property on a residential street, when 100 percent of our neighbors opposed it. In this case, the city violated two of its own zoning codes, the General Plan, and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

At any rate, three cheers to Morgan for having the ability to discern bullies from civil servants and also having the integrity to fight the good fight (for the rest of us).

--GORDON SMITH,
VILLA DEL MONTE NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

Takes Two to Tango

Several weeks ago I wrote a letter ("That Authoritarian Shtick," 6/14) about the social contract theory by Jacques Russeau. It was my intention in the letter to remind both landlords and tenants that, prior to the doctrine of free market, laissez-faire, capitalist society, we submitted to a social contract idea which was the ground upon which we would be able to build a free market economy. When the rights of the parties to this contract are abrogated or disrespected, the platform for engaging in supply-demand marketeering collapses and the society in which such interactions take place falls into disarray, violence, revolution, anarchy.

It is the landlord's duty to himself and to his society to temper his avarice with compassion and prudence; there is, likewise, a duty of the tenant to himself, his progeny and his society to arise from complacency and use the power of unity with other tenants in order to maintain the identity and legitimacy of the second party to the social contract. If either party is negligent of duty, he is putting the larger society at risk of collapse. This is the condition of property-use events in Monterey County, particularly in the city of Monterey.

I encourage you, editor, to give us a little history of philosophy lesson as background to the events on which you publish reports. Otherwise, your reporting is meaningless.

--MARK POEHNER, MONTEREY

Correction

In last week's story about the Pop Art exhibit at the Steinbeck Center ("Snacks and Cake," p. 25), some words escaped us. The second-to-last paragraph should read: "Highly personal expression, as in William T. Wiley and Roy DeForest, so dependent on idiosyncratic drawing and subjects, further blurs the curatorial focus, but that's being picky. At 'An Afternoon with William Wiley' on Sept. 8, the artist himself can explain his relationship to popular culture, if not Pop Art." We regret any synaptic misfires our lapse may have caused.

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