6:30, NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITY CENTER
Just a reminder that Councilwoman
Wendy Leece - the lone voice of reason on the dais since January - is hosting a Town Hall meeting on Monday, August 15th at the Neighborhood Community Center, 1845 Park Avenue (between Lions Park, Library and Fire Station. The meeting begins at 6:30 and is scheduled to run until 8:30.
PUBLIC SAFETY EMPHASIS
According to a flier I've seen, the emphasis will be on Keeping Costa Mesa Safe and will include the following topics:
* How to Keep Costa Mesa safe
* The importance of Neighborhood Watch
* What individual residents can do to enhance their own and community safety
* Crime prevention advice
* How to organize neighborhood groups
* How to connect with City resources
* How to be prepared for an emergency/disaster
* And Mo
re
DISCUSSION MAY EVOLVE

I suspect that the discussion will quickly turn to the staffing of the Police Department, and the short-sightedness of the majority on the City Council, who ignored the best professional advice available to them in the form of former Interim Police Chief Steve Staveley - a law enforcement legend - and their own hired guns, consultants Management Partners, to arbitrarily decide to cut the Police Department staffing by more than 20%.
NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH FOR CMTV TO COVER
I inquired several times last week of Interim Communication Director, Bill Lobdell, to see if CMTV would be covering this event for later broadcast - I know they cannot broadcast live from that venue. The latest word as of 1:40 today is that CMTV
WILL NOT be covering this event. Lobdell told me they have limited resources and, besides, this was just going to be about public safety, not a "Feet to the Fire" forum. And, he said, he didn't want to set a precedent in case other council members wanted to conduct their own Town Halls.
SHORT-SIGHTED POSITION
OK, I can understand the "limited resources" part of that, but the rest is totally

bogus. In a city where the public safety resources are stretched to almost the breaking point, and are without the force multiplier of the now-defunct A.B.L.E helicopter program, it's hard to imagine any single issue more important to the residents of this city than their safety. In my opinion, this is a very short-sighted position to take and certainly does not serve the residents, businesses and visitors to our city well.
STIFF-ARMED
When I inquired about what it would cost if I offered to pay for CMTV staff to cover this event and subsequently post it on the City web site and place it into the rotation on CMTV I received a stiff-arm. I guess "transparency" is just a word, not a course of action.
Labels: Bill Lobdell, Public Safety, Wendy Leece