YOU WANT REAL RELIEF FROM THE 55? HA, HA, HA! PEOPLE IN HELL WILL GET ICE WATER BEFORE THAT HAPPENS.
It was a churlish standing room only crowd of about 160 Costa Mesans who showed up to listen to a PR talk about how OCTA "really wants citizen input" on what to do about the abominable 55 freeway that is screwing up Costa Mesa's downtown. LINK.
At the meeting, audience members had the opportunity to put green (I like) or red (I don't like) dots on various proposals that were on poster boards on easels around the room. These proposals ranged from do nothing to build a fly-over or dig a cut and cover tunnel down to Industrial Way. The proposal for the cut and cover tunnel received the most green dots and this is also the proposal that the CM PRESS favors and has for years. It's also the most expensive way to go. "Do nothing" received the most red dots.
The fly-over sounds good on paper until you realize that it would create a shadowy troll world along Newport Blvd. that would extend for more than a mile through our downtown.
Nope, the only proposal that really makes sense for the long term--and the 55 is going to be there for the long term--is to build a cut and cover tunnel to get that ever increasing inland traffic heading to the beach out of our hair and on to the sand.
At the meeting, OCTA reps were asked why the 55 doesn't extend all the way down to Newport Beach to drop all that Newport Beach traffic in the city where it's headed.
The answer given was that Newport [was smart enough to] put a provision in its charter that any freeway that is to go through that city must be approved by the voters of Newport. Of course, Costa Mesa doesn't have such a provision for our city. Good grief!
The CM PRESS then asked why Costa Mesa always seems to get the short end of the stick in everything, and is it because we have a weak City Council? We also asked how many votes Costa Mesa has on the OCTA Board of Directors.
Mayor Pro Tem Mansoor, who is on OCTA's Board of Directors, took our questions. He ignored the one about the weak City Council but said, in answer to our second one (With a look of triumph on his face?), that Costa Mesa has three votes on the board which is more than any other city. We then asked him how many directors there are in total. He replied "seventeen" (Actually, there are eighteen. But, maybe he meant seventeen in addition to him, or maybe one is non-voting. We're not sure. And, did his look of triumph just evaporate?).
Here's the rub, folks. No matter what input the citizens of Costa Mesa give on fixing the 55 mess, ultimately, the board of directors of OCTA will vote on how to proceed. And, that means that directors from other cities will probably tell Costa Mesa to go pound sand because these directors want to use the money to fix problems in their cities.
The reality is that a cut and cover tunnel would strip money from other projects in other cities, and the directors, who have the majority of votes and who represent those other cities, don't care about Costa Mesa.
Unless we get some people with backbones and brains on our City Council, Costa Mesa is going to continue to get the shaft on everything. We're being out thunk, out negotiated, out foxed.
What are we talking about? Count on much of the following to happen unless things change.
--The Westside will continue to rot.
--John Wayne Airport will expand in Costa Mesa, maybe over to the 55.
--Sixty acres of industrial buildings will remain on our Westside Bluffs.
--No slums will be removed. Why? Because the dimwits on the City Council didn't require developers near South Coast Plaza to put in modern low income housing in their projects which would allow us to remove older, functionally obsolete low income housing in our middle class neighborhoods.
--Banning Ranch will go to Newport, but its traffic will come through Costa Mesa.
--The area over by the Santa Ana Country Club and the club itself will eventually become part of Newport.
So, the citizens of Costa Mesa pay each of our five City Council members more than a thousand bucks a month (and then some), and what does this mumbling gang of five do? They grin like morons and scratch their asses and tell us they're fixing potholes and then they give raises to everyone in sight.
Look, folks, do you really think we need five Councilmembers to worry about fixing potholes?
Don't get us wrong on this. We think the improver majority on the Council is a hell of a lot better than what we could have had on the dais, but we think they've gotten soft and have forgotten why they were elected.
They weren't elected to become part of the good old boys do-nothing network that hides in the tall grass. They were elected to rock the boat and make the necessary changes in Costa Mesa to put us back on track to being more like our coastal neighboring cities.
We don't need five Katrina Foley clones on the Council. And, speaking of Foley, what has she ever done for Costa Mesa? Instead of working for real improvement in our city, she pulls PR stunts such as collecting food for South County fire victims. Screw South County! Collecting cans of food for them is even more meaningless than just fixing potholes. At least the potholes are in Costa Mesa.
What have South County citizens done for Costa Mesa? They blocked the El Toro Airport which means that John Wayne is going to grow and impact us much more than the fires impacted South County.
We're paying Foley's salary and she should be working to make our lives better right here in Costa Mesa. When South County chips in to pay Foley's salary, she can give us the PTA mom compassion routine.
We need Councilmembers who have some enlightened self-interest and who will take bold and decisive action to fix Costa Mesa.
And, while we're discussing local government, we think it's absurd that Costa Mesa has so many high paid upper echelon City employees who refuse to live in Costa Mesa.
The City of Boston requires that all City employees live in Boston. If the City discovers any employees who aren't living in Boston, they fire them.
California has a law that says that cities can't require employees to live in the cities that employ them, but you'd think that Costa Mesa would at least encourage high ranking employees--such as department heads--to move here. When high ranking employees actually live in the same conditions as the people who pay them, these high ranking employees have an added incentive to improve things.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
