CM PRESS # 833

SHHHH, DON'T TELL NEWPORT THAT COSTA MESA IS HOLDING THAT CITY BACK OR NEWPORTERS MAY ASK FOR A DIVORCE

On this LINK to the OC Register, you'll see a map showing the percentages of students in local schools who receive free or reduced rate food at school.

Blue is the best color, i.e. cities where the most students pay for their own food. Orange is the worst, i.e. cities where taxpayers have to pay for the most food for the students. Green is second to worst.
Light brown is the second to best.

In our area, the city with the most students receiving the freebies is Santa Ana. But, if you've got a head for statistics you could have figured that out from other statistics that the CM PRESS has been publishing for years. Santa Ana is in the dumps. Virtually all its statistics are worse than any surrounding city.

Unfortunately,take a look at the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

What do you want to bet that if Newport Beach had its own school district separate from Costa Mesa, it'd be in blue, meaning that few students need freebies.

And, if Costa Mesa were its own school district without Newport Beach, we would be almost as bad as Santa Ana. We might squeeze through as second to worst in the ratings and be colored green, but we'd be close to being Santa Ana's orange.

So, the point is this. Once again, Costa Mesa is helped by being associated with Newport Beach, but Newport Beach is harmed by being associated with Costa Mesa.

Frankly, and we've written this before, the CM PRESS believes that the citizens of Costa Mesa would be far better off if our whole city were made part of Newport Beach.

Most of the present duplication (two city halls, etc.) would be eliminated and both cities would save money, and our belief is that the citizens of Newport Beach would never put up with the conditions we find in Costa Mesa and they'd work overtime to pull Costa Mesa out of the Santa Ana category.

Again, don't tell Newporters that we're dragging them down. They might decide to start their own school district. Then, Costa Mesa would really look Third World.
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AND THE MOON SAYS, SPLISH SPLASH (MAYBE)
NASA plans to bomb a crater on the moon this Friday to see if any signs of water fly up from the explosion where it can be seen by instruments and quantified.

The point is that if there are enough water molecules on the moon in the form of ice, then a permanent base can be established there that will be able to extract the water from the soil (and ice) and eventually serve as a launching pad for the human exploration and possible habitation of Mars and beyond. LINK
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ICE STATS FOR SEPTEMBER NOT PUBLISHED YET BY THE CMPD
We'll post them as soon as we get them. Here's the LINK, if you also want to check.
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AHMADINEJAD HAS NO JEWISH ROOTS
Article refutes earlier news reports. LINK
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CITY COUNCIL MEETING TONIGHT
LINK to Agenda.

The hot item is the previously reported screening request for a proposal to build 44 units at 573-591 Victoria Street (between Miner and Maple). As we wrote before, this proposed project is taking advantage of the Westside density bonus, and if built as proposed will have 17 more units than are ordinarily allowed. The bonus allowance was put into effect to spur new home building and ownership on the Westside to help with the revitalization of the area.

Without the density bonus for this project, the normal density would be 12 units per acre for a total of 27 units on these two lots, but with the density bonus, which allows 20 units per acre, this project ends up with the aforementioned 44 units.

So far so good. However, the CM PRESS sees a problem with this particular development, in that the parking--speaking from real world experience--is inadequate within the confines of the development and there is no on street parking on Victoria.

This is one of those devils in the details things. Hopefully, the Council will send a message to the developer tonight that the development is welcome and that the Council is happy to see the developer step up, but something needs to be done to stop a potential parking nightmare.

Perhaps the Council will be able to offer some other creative financial incentives to the developer if the developer agrees to remove a few of the 44 units to put in some central parking in the project.

When a developer pencils out a project, he has an idea of the type of profit that he stands to make for the risk involved in building a project. So, in this case, the developer is figuring on the profit from 44 units, and he apparently figures that in this lousy real estate market that he's willing to take the gamble to get that level of profit. However, if he has to cut out a number of units to put in parking, his potential profit goes down. Will the City Council come up with some creative ideas to replace that profit? We hope so. LINK to the agenda item on this project.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.