Council balance not a fleeting matter

Geoff West

A little more than two years ago, I wrote my first letter to the

Daily Pilot, responding to a piece written by then-columnist, now

parks and recreation commissioner, Byron de Arakal, dealing with

leadership in Costa Mesa, or lack thereof.

Since that time, I and several others have repeatedly taken our

elected leaders to task for their failure to lead.

There have been times during the past few years when it appeared

that they, as a group, were performing straight from a script of an

old Three Stooges movie.

We’ve watched them debate, vacillate and hesitate on issue after

issue before finally making a decision. We’ve seen them give vague,

or in many cases, conflicting direction to the city staff time after

time and then ignore the recommendations provided to them.

Even though there are a couple of new faces on the council now,

not much else has changed. This was evident during the helter-skelter

deliberations on the 1901 Newport Plaza debacle or project. That ball

was dropped so many times that it appeared the council was playing

hot potato.

Its lack of good judgment on that one resulted in a lawsuit, which

when settled recently, virtually gave away the farm to the

heavy-handed developer to the tune of $1.5 million. How that project

moved through the process is curious, to say the least.

And then there was the whole Jerry Scheer affair. It’s difficult

to imagine any personnel matter being mishandled so completely as

that one, which will cost the tax payers of this city $750,000 at

last report. More recently, they inexplicably decided -- in this time

of municipal fiscal distress -- to waive traffic impact fees for the

developers of the new Concert Hall so the city could be listed along

with the other big contributors for our “donation” of over $600,000.

When you add up all those numbers it becomes clear that, with the

exercise of better judgment on the council’s part in these matters,

it is likely that the city would not have to play the old “fund

balance” game to balance the budget again this year. It seems to me

that no matter how proficient the city staffers have been at fiscal

management, this council has found ways to seriously undermine their

efforts.

The council member’s poor judgment was exhibited again Tuesday

evening as they deliberated four options for “revenue enhancements.”

They voted to move forward on only one of the four -- the

fire-medical subscription fee scheme. With Councilman Scheafer

absent, they were deadlocked on the sanitary franchise fee, business

license fee increase and transient-occupancy tax increase. It looked

to me as though Councilmen Allan Mansoor and Chris Steel still had

their noses out of joint because their peers had previously declined

to cut some of their pet peeves -- the Job Center and charities --

from the budget. Now the business license fee and

transient-occupancy tax will have to wait until 2005 to be considered

for placement on the ballot -- the waste of yet another year.

The course of this city for at least the next decade will hinge on

those people elected to our City Council in November -- and those

commissioners they appoint. This election may well determine whether

Costa Mesa will continue to move forward as a thriving, cosmopolitan

“City of the Arts” or be dragged back, feet first, to an era when

fear mongering and intolerance were accepted in many parts of this

country.

Change will happen in this city. How it happens -- and who directs

it -- will be crucial to the future of our city and to the lives of

all Costa Mesans.

* GEOFF WEST is a Costa Mesa resident and frequent contributor to

Forum.