EXCAVATOR AT EL CAMINO CENTER THIS MORNING
(stock photo)
An excavator similar to the one in the photo was seen getting ready to demolish the buildings at the El Camino Center at about 8 a.m. this morning.
UPDATE--Hmmm. Let's see, first you start tearing down the building and then you disconnect the utilities. Or, is it the other way around? LINK
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IS THE CITY COUNCIL INCAPABLE OF SEEING THE BIG PICTURE?
The CM PRESS tried again at last night's City Council meeting to get the City Council to understand that a relatively small city such as Costa Mesa can be screwed up in many ways if the Council doesn't see the big picture and act accordingly.
What we see happening is that the Council seems to consider each item that comes before the Council as though that item is in a vacuum and that it can be voted up or down on its merits as though it exists someplace isolated out in space.
In fact, however, our city is more like a chess board. If you move a piece over here, it affects everything else on the board and creates a trajectory and probabilities.
To illustrate this interconnectedness, we used the horrible rankings of Costa Mesa High School and Estancia High School which ranked respectively 58 and 51 out of 63 high schools in Orange County, with 63 being the worst and 1 being the best. See CM PRESS # 381 for more details).
We told the Council, again, that these schools are not bad because of the school buildings, the school district or the teachers. They are bad because the City Council is letting Costa Mesa be turned into a new Santa Ana (the worst high school in the county--# 63--is Century H/S in Santa Ana).
We also, and also once again, pointed out that the Council has approved plans submitted by the rich developers in South Coast Metro to put in hundreds of high-end housing units in the South Coast Metro area without having to do their fair share to supply affordable housing.
Why is this important and how does this relate to the chess board?
The State of California mandates that every city have a certain percentage of its housing stock be affordable housing. Cities don't have a choice. They have to do this.
So, if the South Coast Metro developers build more housing, Costa Mesa's requirement for affordable housing goes up.
And, if the South Coast Metro developers are given a pass on supplying any of that affordable housing either in their development or elsewhere in the city, the city will have to find ways to supply that affordable housing on the backs of its ordinary citizens.
In addition, the city won't be able to remove any of our existing slums because those slums are part of our affordable housing requirements.
And, if we continue to have slums, we're going to continue to be an illegal alien sanctuary city.
Illegal aliens will put their non-English speaking children in our schools. Then, our schools will start being ranked very low.
Next, upwardly mobile parents will take their kids out of our schools and put them elsewhere.
Then, the school rankings will drop even more.
With the low school rankings, Costa Mesa won't be able to attract or keep upwardly mobile citizens, and our home values will drop, crime will increase, we'll have more gangs, more graffiti, more abandoned shopping carts.
It's all connected, folks. This is the stuff of a downward spiral. Reversing that spiral requires much more than just planting flowers in the middle of W. 19th Street.
We live in a cause and effect universe. Gangs, crime, low school rankings and all the rest of the problems we see in Costa Mesa are effects. Can you see the causes?
If any City Council members want a further explanation, you know where to find me: last row, end seat.
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IF YOU SEE THESE INVISIBLE SUSPECTS CALL THE CMPD
We've noticed that the last two CMPD press releases on crimes in the city give almost no information. We wonder why the CMPD even bothers to send such things out to the public.
Here's one about an attempted kidnapping from 5/31. LINK
Here's another about a sexual assault from 6/1. LINK
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UPDATE ON ALLEGED PEEPER FROM CM PRESS # 378
Here's the entry from the Daily Pilot's crime logs on the above incident: LINK
Baker Street, 1100 block:Arrest, May 30. Hilario Hernandez-Lopez, 28, of Costa Mesa, was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct involving loitering in or about a toilet and use of false citizenship/documents.
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