Letter to the Editor: Should a City Tell Us What We Can Do in Our Own Backyard?

Byline: Lee Randolph Regarding your story “Embattled Shipwright Removes Boat from His Yard,” in the Nov. 9-22 issue, I still have no idea why the Newport Beach City Council, the city attorney and the city’s legal team got so worked up about — and spent so much time and money trying to fight — one older gentleman whose only “crime” was wanting to finish rebuilding an antique boat in his own backyard. The city had originally granted him permission to start working on the project in 2006. But after some political pressure by one or two well-connected neighbors who do not like to look at boats, even though they chose to live in a boating community, the city evidently decided to change its tune. Newport Beach passed an ordinance to turn one man’s boat project — one that had already been approved and permitted — into something illegal to complete within a residential area. Never mind that the guy doing the boat rebuilding was a master shipwright with quite a reputation for his work, having built the tall ship formerly known as Pilgrim, now called Spirit of Dana Point, in the backyard of his former home in Costa Mesa. And never mind that...