Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Demise Of Another Charter City

A PROVOCATIVE PIECE
Tuesday, July 30th, a commentary appeared in the Wall Street Journal - the best thing I read every day - by a gentleman named Bill Nojay, identified as a member of the New York State Assembly, representing the 133 District in upstate New York.  The commentary was titled, "Lessons From a Front-Row Seat for Detroit's Dysfunction" and, if you're a subscriber to the WSJ, you can read it HERE.  Assuming some of you are NOT subscribers, I'll give you my take on this very interesting and timely piece.

A VIEW FROM THE INSIDE OF A ROTTING CARCASS
Mr. Nojay, then a contractor, served for eight months as the Chief Operating Officer of the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT).  He launches his message with the following paragraph:
"Since Detroit declared bankruptcy on July 18, the city's crippling problems with corruption, unfunded benefits and pension liabilities have gotten the bulk of airtime. But equally at fault for its fiscal demise are the city's management structure and union and civil-service rules that hamstring efforts to make municipal services more efficient. I would know: I had a front-row seat for this dysfunction."

SYSTEMIC CORRUPTION
He goes on and on, describing the frustration of being confronted with a new problem each day, finding a solution, but being prohibited from implementing the solution due to the complete dysfunction of the government in that city.

SERVICES HALT WHILE REPAIRS ARE STALLED
Nojay discusses the inability to get critical repairs done because vendors often refused to do the work because they had not been paid for previous efforts.  Because of the widespread corruption in the city, the Detroit City Council approved payment of virtually all the bills - a fact that he describes as "obstructionism".  He tells us, for example, " While I was at the DDOT, roughly 10% of bus-fare collection boxes were broken. In another city, getting a contract to buy spare parts to repair these boxes would be routine. The City Council publicly expressed outrage that we didn't fix the fare boxes, since the city was losing an estimated $5 million a year in uncollected fares."  He explained that the contract to fix those fare boxes sat, untouched, for nine months in the City Council offices!

MICRO-MANAGING
He expressed frustration at sitting for five hours waiting to discuss a minor traffic matter while the City Council members debated whether to authorize the demolition of individual vacant and vandalized house, one by one.  He tells us there are over 40,000 vacant houses in Detroit.

CHARTER BLOCKED PROGRESS
He described the frustration of being stifled when attempting to hire outside lawyers to fight injury claims filed against his department incidents that allegedly occurred on his buses.  The claims, whether fraudulent or not, were routinely paid without investigation.  He says, "But we were blocked by city charter provisions prohibiting any city department from hiring outside counsel without the approval of the Detroit City Council."

SOLUTION - START OVER
After regaling us with more stories of the dysfunction and administrative gridlock that faced him and other department managers in Detroit he closes with this statement: "The last thing Detroit needs is a bailout. What it needs is to sweep away a city charter that protects only bureaucrats, civil-service rules that straightjacket municipal departments, and obsolete union contracts. A bailout would just keep the dysfunction in place. Time to start over."

A CHARTER WON'T NECESSARILY SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS

I write this today as a reminder that a charter form of municipal government isn't necessarily the solution to all perceived or actual problems a city might have.  While a carefully-crafted, locally-specific charter CAN be a tool of good governance, it can also be a conduit for governmental mischief.

NO, WE'RE NOT "BELL", BUT...
We have only to recall the recent calamity in the City of Bell, where an unscrupulous City Manager, Robert Rizzo,  took advantage of an unsophisticated, uneducated, easily-swayed city council and an inattentive electorate to run roughshod over the city.  Only 450 voters cast ballots in the municipal election that created the City of Bell Charter.

TROUBLED CITIES ARE CHARTER CITIES
But, as you look around our state, you'll see other cities in deep financial difficulties who are seeking protection from bankruptcy courts to solve their problems.  Vallejo tried that and, several years out, not much has changed in that city.  Stockton and San Bernardino are also on the cusp of "bankruptcy salvation", but few informed observers think that's going to fix their problems.  One common thread among those cities, and many others teetering on the brink, is that they are charter cities, where the protections provided to Costa Mesa as a General Law City were no longer available to them.

IGNORING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE
The lesson to be learned here is that, before we rush headlong into yet another charter fiasco, the residents of this city should carefully consider what's at stake, now and further downstream.  The electorate resoundingly rejected Jim Righeimer's Charter less than a year ago and yet he ignored the will of the people and almost immediately brought that concept back.

WHY HURRY?
He forced the creation of a charter committee, which is theoretically going to create a charter without the baggage his had.  He promised from the dais that he would have NO involvement with the process of creating a new charter, yet appointed a majority to the committee that echoes his views on a charter to the extent that several have recently expressed concern about the slow pace of the process and suggested that the committee simply take his proposal from a year ago - the one that was thrashed at the polls - and do some subtle tinkering to it.  What's the rush?

STILL NO REASON WHY...
The City Council could have chosen to have a Charter Commission - 15 members of the community elected by the voters to put together a proper charter - one that would NOT be subject to City Council approval. To date, no member of the committee has yet defined the problems that the city faces that a charter form of government would fix.  That's what makes this process so laughable.

NO GUARANTEES THEY'LL EVEN READ IT!
Even more frustrating is the fact that, regardless what kind of charter this committee eventually cobbles together and submits to the City Council for approval and placement on the ballot for the voters of this city to consider, the council is NOT BOUND by any rule anywhere to actually accept what the committee proposes.  They are free to toss out their work product and present to the voters whatever THEY want - including a clone of Jim Righeimer's Charter from a year ago.

RIGHEIMER COULD SHOW GOOD FAITH...
There is a push by some, including some impatient members of the Charter Committee, to move the process along more quickly - I presume to try to get a charter on the June Primary Ballot, when many fewer voters take the time to cast ballots.  There is a law pending in Sacramento, however, that would forbid any charter actions to appear before the voters except on the General Election ballots.  Righeimer and his pals want to force this new charter onto the primary ballot if at all possible.  In my opinion, NO charter effort should appear anywhere except on the General Election ballots, period!  Righeimer could show good faith if he came out publicly and said he'd prefer it if a charter effort were to appear on the November ballot next year.  That would permit his spokespersons on the committee to throttle back their "hurry-up" effort and do a proper job with a charter.

SHOW UP AND SPEAK UP
So, those of you with even the slightest interest in this process should try to attend the Charter Committee meetings to see for yourselves just how this process is moving along.  You'll have a chance to address the committee in Public Comments at the start of each meeting, so you can tell your neighbors who are part of that group just how you feel, and why.  There's not much at stake here - only the future of our city, for goodness sake!



"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
                                                                                -Edmund Burke

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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Costa Mesa Finance/Information Technology Director Bails

BOBBY YOUNG LEAVES COSTA MESA FOR PRIVATE SECTOR
The City of Costa Mesa, in an entry on their web page, HERE, announced to day that Bobby Young, Director of Finance and Information Technology, will leave the city on August 23rd for a job in the private sector.

GOOD FOR HIM!
This is NOT good news for the City, but is probably GREAT news for Bobby Young.  He's among the hardest working staffers in the city and, from my perspective, has done an admirable job of trying to keep up with the ever-shifting and sometimes unreasonable demands placed on him and his staff by the current council majority and respond to the inquiries of members of the public.

THANKS, AND GOOD LUCK
We here at A Bubbling Cauldron wish Bobby the very best and thank him for his dedication and professionalism over his 13 year tenure with the city.  He's a good man.

THE LAST OF MANY
Sadly for those of us in the city, Bobby's departure is just the most recent of senior staffers who have chosen to move on.  Starting wherever you like - with City Manager Allan Roeder retiring shortly after this council majority was seated, to Kim Brandt and Terri Cassidy leaving to Newport Beach, Peter Naghavi recently retiring to the south of France and now Young.  There are many more that could be listed - we may do that at a future date.  All that institutional knowledge and skill will be deeply missed.

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Mayor Announces "Special" Neighborhood Meeting Thursday

MAYOR ON A ROLL?
Mayor Jim Righeimer, fresh off an apparently successful Eastside "Meet the Mayor" event last Thursday, has called for another one on Thursday, August 1, 2013.

CONCERNS ABOUT REHAB HOMES
According to the information on the City web site, HERE, this event will be held at another Eastside location to "listen to concerns about rehabilitaiton homes in Costa Mesa and to discuss the city's strategy in dealing with these properties.  Representatives from the Costa Mesa Police Department, Code Enforcement and other city departments will also be in attendance."

COZY VENUE
This meeting will be held at 198 Buoy Street, on the corner of Orange Avenue, near the intersection with Bay Street.  See map below.

NEIGHBORS CORRECTLY CONCERNED
Apparently the neighbors in this particular neighborhood are very concerned about the proliferation of rehabilitation homes nearby and want to vent about it, and want to know what the City is going to do about it.


NEWPORT BEACH RUNOFF
This doesn't surprise me at all.  Ever since Newport Beach cracked down on their rehab home problem, operators of such facilities just moved up the road and purchased dozens of relatively inexpensive Eastside homes and turned them into residential rehab facilities - sometimes many in the same neighborhood.  And no wonder, since these kind of facilities are just like printing money.  I'm told by those "in the know" that some facilites charge "residents" - or their insurance companies - in the area of $30,000 per month per resident!  Yikes!

TOO MANY!
In case you're interested, a quick Google search turned up some interesting information.  According to one site, HERE, there are at least 33 such facilities doing business in our city.  Several seem to be headquartered in the 2900 block of Bristol Street, with satellite locations throughout the City.  For a quick look at just a few of them click HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

BEING "HYDRAULICKED"
Let me be clear... I don't for one second deny the need for such facilities.  What bothers me - and many other folks in our community - is that they seem to be clustered within neighborhoods in our city and have a very dramatic negative affect on their neighbors.  It's like the way some mining operations used to do business back in the middle 1800's.  A single miner would find a few flecks of gold in a stream and, before you knew it, large organizations would come in and use hydraulic pressure (water) to destroy the hillsides to gather a few more flecks of gold.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
I don't think this is what our mayor had in mind when he frequently said he wanted Costa Mesa to be more like Newport Beach... but, then again...

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Remembering My Friend, Again

THE BEST FRIEND...
Today would have been the 72nd birthday of my dear friend, Larry Moore.  Long-time readers know that I've honored the memory of my friend every year since his untimely death the end of 2003.  Rather than subject you to those rememberances here, just type his name in the search box at the upper left corner of this page and you'll be shown most of what I've written about him over these many years.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BUDDY...
Suffice it to say that he was my BEST friend since we were five years old and his memory deserves to be honored.

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A Day In The Life Of The CMPD

NEW CRIME STATS
As most readers here know, recently the Costa Mesa Police Department introduced new crime statistics, available to the public at a link on its web site, HERE.  This is fascinating information, which can be seen in a couple permutations and sliced several ways depending on what you choose to see, including maps with color-coded crime locations throughout the city.

FOR SOME PERSPECTIVE
Yesterday afternoon I decided to provide a little different experience for you.  I cut and pasted one day's worth of "Calls For Service" below, so you can quickly scroll down through the list and get a feel for what a typical 24-hour period is like for the men and women of the CMPD.  I think you'll be able to read the entries - I didn't include the addresses and some other information, but you can go to the web site and find most of that info for yourselves.

DRAMATICALLY REDUCED RESOURCES
I think it's important to understand that the CMPD is attempting to keep us safe with vastly diminished resources when compared to a couple years ago.  For example, it was just over two years ago that the Jim Righeimer-led council decided to abandon the A.B.L.E. helicopter program - THE model program for all municipal helicopter programs throughout the country.  In addition, the authorized sworn officer strength today is down from 164 at its peak to 131 today - still well below the staffing levels recommended by the city-hired consultants AND Interim Police Chief Steve Staveley.  And, it's my understanding that we have nowhere near that 131 level actually on the job.  We may be at least 10% below that number today.


RECRUITMENT TOUGHER TODAY
This is compounded by the fact that it is increasingly more difficult for The City to recruit officers.  Hundreds are screened to find one person qualified to hire in a process that takes months.  And, that fact is exacerbated by the fact that it is anticipated that dozens of highly skilled officers may opt to retire within the next several months.

ARROGANT DISREGARD
There seems to be a willingness by the current council majority to place the safety of every resident, business and visitor to our city in jeopardy, ignoring the fact that crime is up in our city and brushing aside any suggestion that more boots on the ground will make the city safer.  This arrogant disregard for our safety is likely due to a long-harbored animosity for law enforcement by one or two members of the council.

EXACERBATING THE ISSUE
Recently a new blog has popped up in town.  It's published by an old fella who regurgitates the party line in the most boring of ways and is heartily-endorsed by the current power elite in the city.  No, I don't mean the grumpy old guy - The Mouth From Mesa North.  This is another old guy with too much time on his hands and, apparently, no capacity for original thought.  He recently posted an entry dismissing the need for additional police resources like swatting a fly perched on his baloney sandwich.  That's a shame...

SCROLL AND LEARN
So, take your time and just scroll down through a day in the life of the CMPD, below.  It might help give you a little perspective on what it's like to be a cop in our city.

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