New Ambulances, Presentations, Grants and Signs

LABOR AND LEGAL ISSUES IN CLOSED SESSION
Another interesting week ahead, kicked off by the City Council meeting on Tuesday.  This one, which officially begins at 6:00 in council chambers, is preceded by a Study Session at 4:00 which includes three items - labor negotiation conference with CEO Tom Hatch regarding the Costa Mesa Police Officers Association and the Costa Mesa City Employee Association, then a conference with legal counsel regarding the lawsuit with the CMCEA.

NEW AMBULANCES ON DISPLAY
However, before the regular meeting begins we will have a chance to see a couple of our brand new ambulances.  Read about them HERE.  These $200.000 machines will be on display in the parking lot of City Hall from 5:00 - 6:00 and the public is encouraged to come see these wonderful pieces of equipment that will be the cornerstone of the new deployment model created by former Interim Fire Chief Tom Arnold and implemented by new Fire Chief Dan Stefano.  See you there.

PICKING AT THE SCAB...
The meeting itself, the agenda for which can be read HERE, should be very interesting - and very long.  In addition to the complex items on the agenda, the very beginning should be worth observing.  It seems that Mayor Jim Righeimer plans to make some kind of a presentation to a Rabbi to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day - which was actually last week.  Since we have NEVER done this before - and I'm NOT saying it is not worthy of acknowledgement - it's curious that he chooses to do this now, immediately after he flew off the handle at the last council meeting and called me out for something I wrote on a Facebook comment thread.  Yes, I compared him to a WWII German "strutting dictator"... Yes, we all know who I meant.  No, I'm still not going to apologize for it.  I guess I'm not really surprised that he will continue to politicize this situation - such is life when you're a hack politician worried about being re-elected.

PLUS THREE MORE PRESENTATIONS
There are three other presentations on the agenda, too, which should make the first hour of the meeting quite interesting.

CONSENT CALENDAR
The Consent Calendar is fairly short this time around, but that doesn't mean folks won't pull something for discussion.  If they do, it will be trailed to the end of the meeting.  This scheme presumes that some of the folks with interest in a specific item may not wait until late at night to address it.  This, and the trailing of any Public Comments until the end, is one of Righeimer's methods of stifling criticism.

A FEW INTERESTING NUMBERS
Item #3 on the Consent Calendar is Warrant 2514, HERE,which includes some payments of note:

• Scientia Consulting Group - 2 entries,  $15,748.25 and $3,776.25 - consulting services.
• Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth - $16,609.54 - legal services.
• Synoptek LLC - 2 entries, $15,180 and $17,940.00 - CAD?RMS Implementation.
• CSG Consultatnts, Inc. - 2 entries, $9.845.00 and $4,999.35 -  Plan Review & Bldg Inspection Svcs.
• FTOG, Inc. - $6,525.00 - Interim Buyer.
• Hinderliter De Llamas &Associates - $3,000.00 - Mass Appeal Litigation.
• IntelliBridge Partners, LLC - 2 entries,  $11,355.75 and $11,205.75 - RFP Assistance.
• Interwest Consulting Group, Inc. - $10,822.00 - Bldg Inspection Svcs.
• Keyser Marston Associates, Inc. - 2 entries, $5,800.00 and $5,448.00 - Housing Consultative Support.
• Rosemary Nielsen Consulting - 2 entries, $5,087.50 and $19,055.00 - Community Outreach Consultant.
• Jones & Mayer - $157,374.00 - legal services (45 separate line items, including "Acosta Appeal" and something titled "Hosing" that I just couldn't resist commenting on.
• NexLevel Information Technology, Inc. - $24,440.00 - Interim IT Director. (This charge should end since the City announced the appointment of Steve Ely - who has been in this role since November - as Information Technology Director on May 1st, HERE.  We will pay him just over $150,000 per year)
• Accountemps - $4,191.05 - Temp Svcs.
• Accounting Principals, Inc. - $14,125.76 - Temp Svcs.
• Apple One Employment Services - $5,473.60 - Temp Svcs.
• City of Mission Viejo - $6,175.00 - IT Tech. Staff.
• Government Staffing Services, Inc. - $6,710.00 - Temp Svcs - Proj. Mgr.
• Melad & Associates - $5,872.50 - Bldg Permit Tech Svcs.
• Scott Fazekas & Asociates, Inc. - $3,183.59 - Plan Check Svcs.
• Stryker Sales Corp. - $12,312.00 - Foot Rest, Stair Chair.

THANKS, STEVE...
So, once again I want to thank Mayor Pro Tem Steve Mensinger for his insistence on providing this information to us.  Without this "transparency" we wouldn't know just how much money we've been spending on legal services, temporary employees and consultants, among other things.

GENERAL PLAN
Item #4 on the Consent Calendar, HERE, it the 2013 review of the 2000 General Plan - 82 pages of fascinating reading.

GRANT FUNDING
The first two Public Hearings deal with Community Development Block Grand (CDBG) and Home Investment Partnership Act of Entitlement Funds (HOME).  The first, HERE, deals with the allocations.

WHO GETS WHAT, AND WHY?
#2 is where the rubber meets the road - the CDBG Public Service Grants for Fiscal Year 2014 - 2015, HERE.  Included in the staff report are three very interesting attachments.  The first, HERE, is the recommendations by the Housing and Public Services Ad-hoc Committee (formerly the Redevelopment and Residential Rehabilitation - 3R - Committee).  The second, HERE, reflects the Grant Application Summaries.  The third, HERE, is a fascinating spreadsheet that shows a 3-year Funding History.

MORE APARTMENTS?  REALLY?
The final Public Hearing, HERE, is the probable approval of the 240 unit apartment complex located in a commercial area at 125 Baker Street.  This has been brought forward at this time after having been "continued" from a previous meeting so the overworked staff could provide more detail.  This discussion should be interesting.

FUNDING THE CONFERENCE AND VISITORS BUREAU
New Business #1, HERE, is the annual assessment for the Business Improvement Area (BIA) - certain participating hotels and motels that collect a higher Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT), the difference of which is then provided to the Conference and Visitors Bureau to promote the City.  You'll find several attachments to that staff report that provide details of this authorization, the history of it and the budget proposed by the Conference and Visitors Bureau.  Some may recall that the CVB bailed out the city in the 60th Anniversary Celebration debacle.  Some folks in town consider it to be a de facto piggy bank for spendthrift politicians.

BIGGER, MORE INTRUSIVE SIGNS COMING?
New Business #2, HERE, is a request by Mensinger to consider a review/revision of the City's sign ordinance. The report includes a Summary Table, HERE, showing a comparison of neighboring city's sign heights and a five-month old memo, HERE, from Economic and Development Services Director/Deputy CEO Gary Armstrong to Hatch on this issue.

ETHICS POLICY
The last item on the agenda is the long, long, long awaited new Ethics Policy, HERE.  The staff report has two attachments - Administrative Regulation A.R. 2.36, Ethics Policy, HERE - and Council Policy Nubmer 000-15, also entitled Ethics Policy, HERE.  I'm amused that it takes two, count'em, two policies to define ONE policy.  As you read down through them I suspect you'll do as I did - smile knowingly, because most of us can immediately think of probable breaches of this policy.  Anyhow, it's here now and EVERY member of the council and commissions should have a refresher course on it post haste!

THAT'S ALL, FOLKS...
That's it for the agenda items.  Of course, it's VERY likely that there will still be "pulled" Consent Calendar items to be considered and folks who were on the Public Comments list but failed to make the "first 10" cut.  Some will stick around - others will simply be too exhausted and head home, allowing the mayor to accomplish his goal - the stifling of criticism.

ANOTHER LATE NIGHT...
I suspect this meeting may wrap up before midnight, but not much before.   It will depend on how many times Righeimer prattles on about issues.  We'll see...

Andy Rooney's Holocaust & Costa Mesa

WARNING! This blog entry is guaranteed to make every reader uncomfortable. Proceed at your own risk.
"AND NOW, A FEW MINUTES...."
I suspect most of you are familiar with Andy Rooney, a correspondent on the enduring CBS television program, "60 Minutes". Those of you who watch "60 Minutes" know Rooney as a curmudgeonly fellow who closes the show each week with a couple minutes of his alleged wit. Usually he says nothing, but says it cleverly and gets paid well to do it.

SLOGGING THROUGH ANDY'S "WAR"
For the past several weeks I've been crawling my way through "My War" - the best selling memoir of his experiences during World War II. It's taking me a long time because I frequently find myself angry at him, so I just stop until I cool off. Sometimes that takes several days.

THE REAL "ANDY"
Although he's written more than a dozen books, if you read this book you will discover the real Andy Rooney - a spoiled, obnoxious member of the liberal elite from an early age. At nearly 90 years of age, Rooney apparently feels he has somehow earned the right to smear war heroes like General George F. Patton and others, because he does so freely in the book.

THE END IS IN SIGHT
That being said, parts of it are quite interesting as a first-person account of that terrible war, so I'm committed to finish it - soon. But that's not really the point of this entry.

RECOUNTING THE HORROR
Near the end of the book - and the war - Rooney describes his visit to a couple of concentration camps, Buchenwald and Thekla. Now, I'm not a stranger to the existence of such places - I've seen many documentaries and read several accounts of the conditions in them. I must admit, though, that every time I see the images and read the descriptions by observers and those who survived the camps I cringe, appalled that human beings could do such things to other human beings.

PERCEPTIVE OBSERVATION
In this section of his book, while describing things he saw, Rooney makes the following statement: (The emphasis is mine)
"One of the devilish aspects of this crusade against the Jews was the necessity the Germans felt for making the extermination of Jews legal. I don't think Americans know about it. Whatever the Nazis wanted to do, they first arranged to have a law passed that made the action legal. They did not, as it might seem, simply haul Jews off the streets and out of their homes without being able to justify it in their own minds and according to laws that had been enacted. There were laws that covered every despicable act."

"THE LAW"
He went on to describe sections of a document written and produced by the Reichstag in 1935 entitled, "The Nuremberg Laws on Race and Citizenship, 1935", which defined the position - or lack thereof - of Jews in German society shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He quotes liberally (no pun intended) from the chapter entitled, "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor", which includes specific descriptions of what constitutes being a Jew.

A FAMILIAR CHORD
When I reached this section of his book and read the paragraph above I just paused because it struck a chord with me. I read and re-read it and realized that the concept described in it had a very familiar ring.

OUR TOWN
Our town, Costa Mesa, is a city in southern California of around 110,000 souls - depending on how many alleged illegal aliens remain after the current purge. Most of the folks who live in our city are fine people - hardworking and dedicated to making a good life for their families. We call ourselves "The City of the Arts" because we are home to an exceptional Performing Arts complex and seem to have more than our fair share of creative types. Heck, our current mayor is an artist of sorts who, until he decided to run for public office, wore his hair in a long pigtail - a sure sign of an artistic self-perception.

DIVERSITY
We are a diverse community, with a third of our population being of Hispanic heritage - some of whom are almost certainly not in this country legally. Those folks came here for a better life and work hard to achieve it.

OPPOSING VIEWS
Unfortunately, there are among us a few people who object to their presence and, for the past few years, have methodically gone about making life difficult for them by passing laws to oppress them, dissolving government support entities such as the Job Center and the Human Relations Committee, pressuring and defunding charitable support groups, etc.

PAINFUL REALIZATION
When I read that paragraph in italics above I realized that the theme applies to our city - and it made me ashamed.

METHODICAL PLAN
No, I'm not accusing every person in this city who has spoken out against illegal immigrants of being Nazis, although there is a powerful presence in this city that denies the existence of the holocaust. What I am saying is that much of the legal foundation for ousting folks of Hispanic heritage from our city is in place or is being planned. Our former mayor - currently the mayor pro tem - hatched a scheme a couple years ago to train every Costa Mesa police officer as an immigration screener. That was headed off, but the melody lingered in the form of an federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent being assigned to our jail to personally screen every person arrested and taken to our facility.

PLAN CORRUPTED
Originally, the former mayor assured his constituents that he only wanted to get dangerous alien felons off the streets, and that there would be no sweeps. Few in the Hispanic community believed him, rightly so, as it turns out. The enforcement and screening effort has, indeed, taken some dangerous felons off our streets, but it's also snatched up individuals for minor infractions which resulted in their deportation. In some cases, this resulted in their families being left behind, including their American citizen children.

DEPORTABLE OFFENSE?
Some supporters of the plan proclaim that those people were law-breakers because they came to our country illegally. No argument there, but that "crime" hardly fits the former mayor's assurance to the city.

EXPANSION OF THE PLAN
The city has had a non-solicitation ordinance in place for almost two decades with which our police can managed loitering day-laborers, but currently there is a movement afoot to pass a more stringent ordinance to create more law-breakers, who can then be scooped up and sent packing.

USING EMINENT DOMAIN AS A TOOL OF OPPRESSION
There are those who espouse the use of eminent domain to yank property from their current owners, to be bulldozed and replaced with artist lofts and high-end homes. Most of those places to be demolished provide housing and/or jobs for members of the laboring class in our city, many of whom are of Hispanic heritage and some are certainly here illegally.

ATTACKING THE KIDS
Those same strident voices decry the impact of children of immigrants on our school system. Most of those children are American citizens. Despite much progress being made in the integration of those children into the system, there seems to be a cadre of folks in our town that are determined to force them out.

UNDENIABLE PARALLEL
In my view, the parallels between what's currently happening in my city and the events in pre-war Germany are clear and undeniable.

SAD COMMENTARY
It's a sad commentary on the societal attitudes of a few people in our city.