Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, a Blight for Orange County Taxpayers

No veterans cemetery for my fellow Marines, no people's park, and if sports facilities do get built Irvine residents/groups will get first dibs. This is at minumum false advertising, a failed and lapsed warranty under basic consumer laws. - Salem-News.com's Roger Butow, comment in LA Times article on El Toro.

Photos by Tim King Salem-News.com

(IRVINE) - An Editorial in The LA Times called Irvine's Pretty Decent Park outlines the dilemma now facing the Irvine City Council with the now closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

A housing developer, FivePoint Communities, has offered to construct a park that varies greatly from what was presented to Orange County voters. The offer is to construct 688 acres of the park, in exchange for nearly doubling the number of houses the firm can build on the park's perimeter. FivePoint Communities has approval to build 4,900 homes at El Toro, but wants 4,600 more.

Commenting on the LA Times article, Salem-News.com's Odd Man Out, Roger Butow, who served at El Toro, wrote:

Isn't it odd that in spite of all of the internecine warfare, the innumerable malfeasance/misrepresesentation and mismanagement allegations made among Irvine CC members & former Great Park Board members that not one criminal investigation has taken place--or apparently ever will? Where is all of that governmental responsibility & accountibility oversight propaganda that Todd Spitzer screams about, or our DA, or our Grand Jury?

There cannot be this much smoke the past 10 years without a fire in there somewhere. I revealed a lot of background information in the online Salem-News.com several years ago that Emile Haddad & his corporate cronies at LENNAR were social pals with now Great Park CEO Mike Ellzey up in the SF Bay area back when Ellzey came aboard. Haddad followed him into South OC.

Where's investigative journalism too, where's the follow-up datamining? Review Ellzeys military record as I researched it, you tell me if it's hinkey or has some weird, never explained holes. And with all of the scandal, why is he still CEO, why hasn't the termination slip arrived at his apparently incompetent desk yet, why is he still at the switch?

No veterans cemetery for my fellow Marines, no people's park, and if sports facilities do get built Irvine residents/groups will get first dibs. This is at minumum false advertising, a failed and lapsed warranty under basic consumer laws.

Please read the article and associated comments here

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-great-park-20131120,0,5359101.story#axzz2lFAucgDG

You can write to Tim at this address: tim@salem-news.com.

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With almost 25 years of experience on the west coast and worldwide as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor, Tim King is Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. His background includes covering the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, and reporting from the Iraq war in 2008. Tim is a former U.S. Marine who follows stories of Marines and Marine Veterans; he's covered British Royal Marines and in Iraq, Tim embedded with the same unit he served with in the 1980's.

Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing from traditional mainstream news agencies like The Associated Press and Electronic Media Association; he also holds awards from the National Coalition of Motorcyclists, the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs; and was presented with a 'Good Neighbor Award' for his reporting, by the The Red Cross.

Tim King reporting from the war in Iraq

Tim's years as a Human Rights reporter have taken on many dimensions; he has rallied for a long list of cultures and populations and continues to every day, with a strong and direct concentration on the 2009 Genocide of Tamil Hindus and Christians in Sri Lanka. As a result of his long list of reports exposing war crimes against Tamil people, Tim was invited to be the keynote speaker at the FeTNA (Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America) Conference in Baltimore, in July 2012. This is the largest annual gathering of North American Tamils; Tim addressed more than 3000 people and was presented with a traditional Sri Lanka ‘blessed garland’ and a shawl as per the tradition and custom of Tamil Nadu

In a personal capacity, Tim has written 2,026 articles as of March 2012 for Salem-News.com since the new format designed by Matt Lintz was launched in December, 2005.

Serving readers with news from all over the globe, Tim's life is literally encircled by the endless news flow published by Salem-News.com, where more than 115 writers contribute stories from 23+ countries and regions.

Tim specializes in writing about political and military developments worldwide; and maintains that the label 'terrorist' is ill placed in many cases; specifically with the LTTE Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, where it was used as an excuse to slaughter people by the tens of thousands; and in Gaza, where a trapped population lives at the mercy of Israel's destructive military war crime grinder. At the center of all of this, Tim pays extremely close attention to the safety and welfare of journalists worldwide.