Important Transportation Grants

OOPS - MY BAD
Lost in the shuffle from the last council meeting was the fact that the City of Costa Mesa, through the hard work and grant-writing skill of our folks in the Transportation Services side of City Hall, has received a couple grants totaling more than $1.6 million.

SUCCESSFUL BIDDING BY STAFF
According to Transportation Services Manager Raja Sethuraman, the State of California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) issued a Call for Projects for the SRTS program in the Spring of 2011 which would provide approximately $66 million in federal funding statewide for transportation projects. The City of Costa Mesa competed for a total of three projects under this "Call for Projects" and was successful in securing funding for two projects, described below.

KIDS WILL BE SAFER
School Zone Traffic Calming City-wide ($796,200) - The project will result in school zone traffic calming, with the installation of 21 radar speed feedback signs, 204 pedestrian countdown timers, 10 school zone warning beacons, and minor signing and striping improvements citywide.

EASY DOES IT
East 19th Street Traffic Calming ($855,850) - This project provides for implementation of “traffic calming” on East 19^th Street between Newport Boulevard and Irvine Avenue. The project includes construction of chokers at intersections and chokers/medians at selected mid-block locations. Landscaping will be incorporated into the traffic calming devices to provide vertical features and provide the visual effect of a narrower street. Entry monument signs are also proposed at Fullerton Avenue and Irvine Avenue to enhance the identification of the “Eastside Costa Mesa” neighborhood.

KUDOS
Kudos to the folks in Transportation Services for, once again, diving into the money pot and coming up with two hands-full of cash with which our streets will become safer. I find myself wondering just who will be doing this kind of great work when everyone at City Hall is outsourced.


WATCH FOR THE KIDS TONIGHT!
On that note, please be careful driving around this evening. There will be lots of little hobgoblins, witches, ghosts and little folks made up like other scary folks wandering the streets, searching for treasure troves of candy. They won't be looking for you, so take it easy, drive with a little more caution and watch out for the kids. Happy Halloween to you all.

Scarier Than Hobgoblins!

HALLOWEEN'S BEHIND US!
Hope you all had a fun Halloween. Seems like we've had fewer and fewer trick-or-treaters the past couple years. I'm down from my high of 11 bags of candy five years ago to around three this year, and that's including giving each little hobgoblin a fistful of individually-wrapped, concentrated sugar and chocolate.

LOTS OF FUN CHARACTERS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD
I was quite disappointed - not one single "Octomom" showed up on my doorstep begging for sweets! Bummer. We had plenty of other creative little critters wandering around, though, escorted by flashlight-toting parents - always a good thing.

SCARIER THAN HALLOWEEN CHARACTERS
The real scary part of Saturday for me was the absolutely horrendous post that appeared on one local blog - the one authored by Costa Mesa's racist laureate, our old pal, The Mouth From Mesa North. I've thought long and hard about whether to provide the text of part of that post and finally decided that it would so contaminate this page that I might never get the stench out. Instead, I'll leave you with a link to it, HERE, and let you deal with the foul content as you choose, in it's original form.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?
There might be some who will say, "Hey, Potstirrer, what's the big deal? He's just trying to make a point!" OK, but is it REALLY necessary for him to use those seven incendiary words? I don't think so. I think he just needed to vent and, in the process, gave us a little peek into his perverted, alleged Mensa mind.

PERVERTED INFLUENCE
This is how the mind of The Mouth works - that mind that has been influencing local politics for almost a decade and that is responsible for the emergence of local elected officials who share his views on social order and demographic priorities. This is the mind that, from time to time, has used the swastika as an adornment on some of his any essays published on far, far right web sites.


WATCH HIM IN ACTION AND CRINGE
I hope, as you read the text of his blog posting, you'll consider the source and understand that members of the majority on the City Council and some of the commissions have followed his lead for years and still use his "guidance" when making very important decisions that affect each of us. Scary, indeed.

OH, PUH-LEASE!
Incidentally, in his most current post Sunday The Mouth is now puffing about his "performance" in the 1974 movie, "The Second Coming Of Suzanne" - probably the worst movie I've ever seen, and I see a lot of movies! He tells us that "Richard Dreyfuss and I acted together in...". Yeah, well, I've seen all 19 seconds of his performance and not one of them was on-screen with Dreyfuss or any other actor of any significance. This is such a "great" movie that you can snatch up a used VCR of it on Amazon.com for under a buck. That's right - five minutes ago they had four copies for sale as low as $.96. Such a bargain! I feel ripped-off - I spent $1.24 several months ago for my collector's copy... This guy is just pathetic!