HERE'S ONE SENIOR CITIZEN THE CITY COUNCIL SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO (He doesn't live here and he's wrong)
Newport Beach resident and uber-liberal Joe Bell has one of his predictable columns in the Katrina Foley Almost Daily Daily Pilot today in which Bell shuffles to the defense of the corporation that is currently running the Costa Mesa Senior Center for the City of Costa Mesa. Yawn.
You've seen Bell's opinions before. They're the typical liberal laundry list of likes and dislikes. You know what this guy thinks before he even taps out a word on the page.
Bell doesn't know much about the Costa Mesa Senior Center and apparently hasn't researched the subject, but that doesn't keep him from opining.
What he does is cobble together some things he's seen in the Katrina Foley Almost Daily Daily Pilot along with some things said by his fellow libs, as he argues, essentially, that the seniors at the center who are complaining about conditions there don't have legitimate gripes and that the City Council shouldn't listen to them and should butt out. Bad seniors, bad, bad, bad.
Before writing his column, Bell should have contacted Mayor Pro Tem Leece to learn more about the complaints she's received from senior citizens and he should have done some research on the subject. Sometimes, when you write a column, even an opinion column, it helps to learn all the facts.
Instead of seeing the Senior Center as a business with customers and with complaints about customer service, Bell swerves off into flag-wrapped cliches about how the majority should prevail and about freedoms--both of which are no more relevant to this issue than they would be to a customer at Moe's Bar complaining about poor service. We were half expecting to read about Bell walking through 30 miles of snow in his bare feet to get to school.
According to Bell, the City Council should listen to failed City Council candidate Mike Scheafer and the rest of the board of directors (which looks a little like a meeting of Return to Reason and has more than a few members who are the political adversaries of Mayor Pro Tem Leece and the majority on the City Council).
And, speaking of Scheafer, here's part of what he apparently told Bell:
“I thought that we were doing a pretty good job of managing our own affairs and dealing always with valid complaints. If the city doesn’t think so — especially on the basis of these complaints — then we would have no other option than to dissolve our center and turn it over to the city.”
If the present corporation did stop running the center, the City could either run the place itself (as do most cities) or form another corporation to do it for the city.
Think about it this way...
As with any vendor that contracts with the City, it behooves the Costa Mesa Senior Corporation to provide good customer service and to listen to the wishes of the City Council.
And, let's be clear. Costa Mesa, as is the case with most cities, has decided as a matter of policy that it is desirable to have a senior center. However, Costa Mesa, unlike most other cities, decided to see if it would be better to have an outside corporation run the Senior Center for the City. That's right, the corporation is doing a job for the City. Hold that thought because we're coming back to that "job" concept in a few paragraphs.
To make it work, the City entered into a sweetheart deal with this outside corporation that gives the corporation a City owned building for a buck a year, free maintenance, free janitorial service, free transportation services and more than $ 240,000 in cash each year.
Because the City is so invested in the Senior Center, and because the present corporation is running the center for the City, the City Council has a right and a responsibility to make sure there is good customer service and that citizen money is being spent wisely. This means the City Council should listen to complaints from senior citizens to see if they're legitimate and should work to make sure our seniors are happy with the service and make sure that all is going well at the center. That's what responsible City Councils do.
Try this analogy...
Suppose you contract with a gardener to mow your lawn. Further suppose that you let him use your lawnmower for free, because he doesn't have a lawnmower. Suppose also that your wife isn't happy with the job the gardener is doing. Then, suppose when she complains to him he doesn't take her complaint seriously and ignores her. So, she next complains to you. Being a reasonable person, you'll probably try to speak to the gardener about it and ask him a few questions to learn why he's doing things a certain way and to see if he can change some things so your wife will like the job.
What would you do if the gardener told you that you shouldn't listen to your wife because she's a malcontent and she's just one person. "Hey, have your kids complained? No? See, your wife just doesn't like me. Don't listen to her. The majority should rule. This is about freedom."
And, what if he acted as though he's doing you a favor and told you that if you don't like the job he's doing, too bad?
How long would that gardener have your business or the business of anyone else? Gardeners are a dime a dozen.
The Senior Center needs to be thought of as a business, and as such it needs to remember two rules of most successful businesses: 1. The customer is always right. 2. If you think the customer is wrong, go back and read rule 1.
Our guess is that those who keep writing and saying things that the City Council might interpret as attacks on the authority of the Council aren't doing the present corporation any favors.
All that most people want is a cost effective, open and transparent Senior Center operation and happy senior citizens along with cooperation between the Senior Center and the City Council.
After the committee formed by the City Council completes its work, we may find that the Senior Center is doing a great job and that some or all of the complaints are unfounded. But, as with any business, the complaints should be investigated. Customer service is important.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
