Dear Editor:The article "New Traffic Signal Complete But Over Budget" (2/16/12) reports that the completion of a traffic signal at the Lakewood Boulevard/Clark (oops, Columbia Way) crossing was $12,7000 over budget when someone in the city was not satisfied with the pace of the project and in their haste took it upon themselves to independently purchase four telephone poles which turned out to be incompatible with the instruments that it was to be combined with. First of all, I wonder why there was such an urgency to complete the project. As far as I know, there has not been a rush to rectify their past mistake when they erred in making it impossible to easily turn left onto Columbia from Lakewood, transverse clumsily through a residential section and furthermore is there that much interest in visiting the Space Center? What this article fails to mention is who is responsible for this decision to take it upon themselves and what expertise do they possess which is required to take the responsibility out of the hands of the contractor, who has the expertise? The public works director did try to explain the blunder but he failed to point the blame. I'm sure that it would look good on someone's resume. So let this be a lesson to stick to what you know and let the experts do what you pay them to do. Don't think outside the box, as the city has shown, they're not good at it. --Ed Romero, Downey

********** Published: March 01, 2012 - Volume 10 - Issue 46