Charter Committee Makes Progress, Slowly

MAKING SAUSAGE
Wednesday night the Costa Mesa Charter Committee met again to tackle the task of creating a new "constitution" for the city.  Progress was made, but came slowly.  It was more than a little like watching sausage being made.

EFFECTIVE FACILITATION
The meeting began promptly with facilitators Kirk Bauermeister and Mike Decker moving swiftly to guide the group through the agenda.  All agreed to look at their progress at 8:45 and decide whether to wrap it up then or extend the meeting.

ORGANIZED LABOR SPEAKS OUT
Public Comments saw five of the dozen or so people attending the meeting address the committee.  The first was Jim Adams, representing the Los Angeles/Orange County Building and Construction Trades, who spoke about the value of a highly skilled workforce, emphasizing Skill, Safety and Efficiency.  His organization represents 150,000 members in Southern California.  He left a DVD for each of the members.

A REMINDER THAT THEY DON'T HAVE TO "DO" ANYTHING

Resident Sheila Pacquin reminded the committee that, as they assess the different elements of a Charter, they don't really have to do anything if they feel that is the appropriate course of action.

CRITICAL OF STAFF WORK
Mike Harmanos attempted to correct an error in the staff report and implied that the staff was letting them down by providing inaccurate information.

"NEEDS ASSESSMENT" DISMISSED
Robin Leffler briefly asked what happened to the item that had been placed on the "Parking Lot" to be considered later.  That issue was the "community needs assessment", which seemed to be a logical place to begin the deliberations.  Although nobody answered her question, one might assume that since the decision has already been made for this group to create a charter for the city, a "needs assessment" is now unnecessary.

NOT A HAPPY FELLA
Finally one grumpy old fella, who left a few minutes later, reminded the group that the council had charged them with creating a charter, so they should stop wasting time and get with it.

 
TO PRAY OR NOT TO PRAY?
The committee then wasted fifteen minutes again discussing "Tea Party Tom" Pollitt's request for an invocation at the beginning of the meetings.  Part of the staff report included correspondence from the CEO's office that opined that if the committee wanted to have  prayer it would require a formal change in council policy.  After too much conversation the end result was that Pollitt was told to pursue it personally with CEO Tom Hatch, and not as a member purporting to represent the views of the committee.  Since he kept muttering about not being able to exercise his First Amendment rights, I imagine he will do just that.  We'll see.

PUBLIC CONTRACTING DEFINED
Following a brief discussion about the process to be followed - a couple members just wanted to dredge up Jim Righeimer's Charter and glue corrections to it to make it acceptable to the voters - lawyer Yolanda Summerhill led an hour-long discussion of the different types of Public Contracting environments that exist in California.  At the previous meeting the committee agreed on their priorities and Public Contracting was at the top of the list.

A STREAMLINED VERSION OF THE LAW
Costa Mesa, a General Law city,  follows what is known as the Uniform Construction Cost Accounting Act (UCCAA), which streamlines the public contracting process.  The objective was to provide information to the committee about how the city currently manages public contracts.  Unfortunately, Director of Public Services Ernesto Munoz was not available for this meeting.  He will be asked to be at the next one so he can provide some critical answers to important questions that will affect the committee's decision on this cornerstone issue.

FOLLOWING THEIR OWN RULES

The discussion was cordial and most members were patient with the opinions of others.  Since they didn't have enough information regarding the current process the discussion tackled the Transparency portion of their concerns.  Based on what I heard, there was a rough consensus that the current methodology of managing public contracts using the UCCAA model seemed to be satisfactory.  That view may change after they get more details on the current process at the next meeting.

TRYING TO ASSURE TRANSPARENCY
They did not finish the Transparency element Wednesday night, but hope to do so and move on to "Openness" at the next meeting.  It's clear to me that, despite the fact that some members want the process to move more quickly and are willing to take shortcuts to accomplish that, this is going to be a long and sometimes painful process.  Those preferring to find shortcuts represent the element on the committee that can be accurately described as supporters of Jim Righeimer's Failed Charter.  It's going to be very interesting to watch this play out.    As I said earlier, so far the participants seem willing, but not necessarily happy, to consider all views and to follow the guidance of the facilitators.

HOMEWORK
Bauermeister gave them a homework assignment - to assess the various charters provided to them earlier for ideas for "transparency" and "openness" segments of a potential charter for the next meeting is August 14, 2013 at the Emergency Operations Center.

Life in the World of Editors

DAILY PILOT PUBLISHES MY COMMENTARY
This morning the Daily Pilot, our local newspaper of record, published a commentary I submitted to them several days ago in response to one published in that fine newspaper by M. H. Millard, local activist, gadfly and publisher of his own blog, CM Press. You can read that commentary HERE. You may read M. H. Millard's commentary to which I was responding HERE and the commentary by former mayor Allan Mansoor that Millard was addressing HERE.

ALMOST...
As occasionally happens, the editors of the Daily Pilot found it necessary to slice and dice my submission, eventually printing just about half of it. For those of you that might be interested, I've provided the entire submission as it was sent to the Daily Pilot. The text the Pilot used is in green. The unpublished remainder is in purple.

THE FULL TEXT OF MY SUBMISSION FOLLOWS:
Costa Mesa resident, prolific writer and gadfly M.H. Millard provided us with a view into his mind with his recent Mailbag contribution. ("Fix holes in city structure, not holes in the road," Feb. 20).

Millard begins by cautiously praising the current council majority, Eric Bever, Allan Mansoor and Wendy Leece, for their efforts, then proceeds to criticize them for not doing enough to implement "structural change" in the city. He then provides them with a blueprint for that change, including reduction of industrial zoning, primarily on the Westside, removal of what he calls "barracks-style apartments", also predominantly on the Westside. He also suggests a change in the owner vs. renter ratio in Costa Mesa, which currently has 60% renter occupied housing and bemoans his perception that Costa Mesa looks more like Santa Ana than Newport Beach - literally.

Millard's message, as usual, is directed specifically at the one-third of our residents of Latino ancestry - and I don't mean only those here illegally. For nearly a decade he has been leading the charge to dislocate and cause discomfort to the Latinos among us. In addition to those subjects in his current column, the closure of the Job Center, his attacks on the charities on the Westside and his attempt to have the Orange Coast College Swap Meet shut down are among the many attempts he's tried to orchestrate to expunge the Latinos from our midst. His ideas of "change" in our city are anchored in changing the "complexion" of our residents - fewer brown faces, more white ones.

He has been trying to institutionalize intolerance in our city since the late 1990s, providing the song book for "improver" elected leaders and chiding them from the speaker's podium when they don't toe his line. It's clear that most are listening to him because they echo his comments from the dais frequently.

There may be no better example of the pervasiveness of this institutionalized intolerance than the comments uttered by former mayor, and current mayor pro tem, Allan Mansoor at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, February 19th.
Following the brief presentation by a representative of the Orange County Human Relations Commission - a group that tracks hate crimes and provides tolerance training throughout the county - which reported to the council recent activities in our city, Mansoor used part of his "council member comments" time to state categorically that he wasn't interested in hearing any further reports from the Commission. Apparently inflamed by unsubstantiated critical comments directed at the Commission by one Costa Mesa resident, he seemed angry that "some council member" invited them to speak. He wasn't any happier when told by the City Manager that, as a matter of practice, the Commission speaks before all city councils each year to report on instances of hate crimes in each city. Mansoor said that he won't support further reports to the city by the Commission, which tells me he is either ambivalent about hate crimes in our city or, even worse, supports them.

As distasteful as Mansoor's statement was, this is no surprise, since he led the move to unceremoniously disband the Costa Mesa Human Relations Committee not too long ago, ending nearly two decades of work done to mediate conflicts between factions in our city.

For nearly a decade M. H. Millard has been the source of racially intolerant views in this city. He is an articulate, persuasive speaker who rants before the city council and other official government bodies frequently. His local web log is widely read by many elected and appointed officials.

Millard has become an influential person in our city, a fact recognized by the Daily Pilot which has named him one of its 103 most influential persons two years running. He has been an insidious activist, wheedling his way onto important committees - like the 3R Committee, where he used his influence to attempt to de-fund charities on the Westside. In 2006, when his activities on that committee became widely known, he resigned under a cloud - apparently not wanting to hamper Mansoor's re-election campaign. Millard's prolific writings on far-right wing web sites have been embraced by such notorious racists as David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan, who publishes and praises Millard's work on his own web site. The New Nation News web site archives hundreds of his repugnant essays written over the past decade. Millard has been tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a purveyor of hate for a decade - ever since one of his essays bemoaning the dilution of the American populace through racial interbreeding, creating what Millard referred to as "Tan Everyman", was widely denounced. I've read many of his essays - they make you want to puke.

I wonder how many of the residents of this city are comfortable knowing their elected leaders not only follow the drumbeat of intolerance as practiced by M. H. Millard, but seem eager to actually institutionalize the practice in our city. It's as though they've become willing pawns in Millard's plan to recreate our city into someplace found in the deep south during the middle of the last century, when intolerance was a way of life. What a sad commentary this is about our city - that we would elect leaders so easily led by the intolerant among us. One can only hope that most voters will see through the veil of Millard's rhetoric, understand the underlying motives and repudiate them. One way to demonstrate this repudiation is at the ballot box next November.

YOU BE THE JUDGE
I have no reason to think my submission was so severely edited other than for space reasons. Regular readers of this blog know that no one will ever accuse me of using too few words. I'll let you be the judge.

Your Neighbor's Songbook of Intolerance

YOUR NEIGHBOR?
Costa Mesa resident, prolific writer and gadfly M.H. Millard - a man who very much resembles my theoretical character, Your Neighbor - provided us with a view into his mind with his recent Mailbag contribution. ("Fix holes in city structure, not holes in the road," Feb. 20). You can read his comments HERE

GUARDED PRAISE, THEN MARCHING ORDERS
Millard begins by cautiously praising the current council majority, Eric Bever, Allan Mansoor and Wendy Leece, for their efforts, then proceeds to criticize them for not doing enough to implement "structural change" in the city. He then provides them with a blueprint for that change, including reduction of industrial zoning, primarily on the Westside, removal of what he calls "barracks-style apartments", also predominantly on the Westside. He also suggests a change in the owner vs. renter ratio in Costa Mesa, which currently has 60% renter occupied housing and bemoans his perception that Costa Mesa looks more like Santa Ana than Newport Beach - literally.

CHANGING "COMPLEXION"
Millard's message, as usual, is directed specifically at the one-third of our residents of Latino ancestry - and I don't mean only those here illegally. For nearly a decade he has been leading the charge to dislocate and cause discomfort to the Latinos among us. In addition to those subjects in his current column, the closure of the Job Center, his attacks on the charities on the Westside and his attempt to have the Orange Coast College Swap Meet shut down are among the many attempts he's tried to orchestrate to expunge the Latinos from our midst. His ideas of "change" in our city are anchored in changing the "complexion" of our residents - fewer brown faces, more white ones.

INSTITUTIONALIZING INTOLERANCE
He has been trying to institutionalize intolerance in our city since the late 1990s, providing the song book for "improver" elected leaders and chiding them from the speaker's podium when they don't toe his line. It's clear that most are listening to him because they echo his comments from the dais frequently.

MANSOOR'S EXAMPLE
There may be no better example of the pervasiveness of this institutionalized intolerance than the comments uttered by former mayor, and current mayor pro tem, Allan Mansoor at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, February 19th.

HEAD IN THE SAND - OR WORSE!
Following the brief presentation by a representative of the Orange County Human Relations Commission - a group that tracks hate crimes and provides tolerance training throughout the county - which reported to the council recent activities in our city, Mansoor used part of his "council member comments" time to state categorically that he wasn't interested in hearing any further reports from the Commission. Apparently inflamed by unsubstantiated critical comments directed at the Commission by one Costa Mesa resident, he seemed angry that "some council member" invited them to speak. He wasn't any happier when told by the City Manager that, as a matter of practice, the Commission speaks before all city councils each year to report on instances of hate crimes in each city. Mansoor said that he won't support further reports to the city by the Commission, which tells me he is either ambivalent about hate crimes in our city or, even worse, supports them.

NO SURPRISE
As distasteful as Mansoor's statement was, this is no surprise, since he led the move to unceremoniously disband the Costa Mesa Human Relations Committee not too long ago, ending nearly two decades of work done to mediate conflicts between factions in our city.


HISTORY OF INTOLERANCE
For nearly a decade M. H. Millard has been the source of racially intolerant views in this city. He is an articulate, persuasive speaker who rants before the city council and other official government bodies frequently. His local web log is widely read by many elected and appointed officials.

INSIDIOUS INFLUENCE
Millard has become an influential person in our city, a fact recognized by the Daily Pilot which has named him one of its 103 most influential persons two years running. He has been an insidious activist, wheedling his way onto important committees - like the 3R Committee, where he used his influence to attempt to de-fund charities on the Westside. In 2006, when his activities on that committee became widely known, he resigned under a cloud - apparently not wanting to hamper Mansoor's re-election campaign.

HIS REPUTATION
Millard's prolific writings on far-right wing web sites have been embraced by such notorious racists as David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan, who publishes and praises Millard's work on his own web site. The New Nation News web site archives hundreds of his repugnant essays written over the past decade. Millard has been tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a purveyor of hate for a decade - ever since one of his essays bemoaning the dilution of the American populace through racial interbreeding, creating what Millard referred to as "Tan Everyman", was widely denounced. I've read many of his essays - they make you want to puke.

WILLING PAWNS
I wonder how many of the residents of this city are comfortable knowing their elected leaders not only follow the drumbeat of intolerance as practiced by M. H. Millard, but seem eager to actually institutionalize the practice in our city. It's as though they've become willing pawns in Millard's plan to recreate our city into someplace found in the deep south during the middle of the last century, when intolerance was a way of life. What a sad commentary this is about our city - that we would elect leaders so easily led by the intolerant among us.

HANGING OUT WITH THE "WRONG PEOPLE"
Remember when your parents used to caution you about hanging around with "the wrong people"? They were concerned that those "wrong people" would lead you astray and get you into trouble. Someone should be warning our elected leaders similarly.

HOPE FOR ENLIGHTENMENT AND REPUDIATION
One can only hope that most voters will see through the veil of Millard's rhetoric, understand the underlying motives and repudiate them. One way to demonstrate this repudiation is at the ballot box next November.