Wednesday, February 9, 2011

CM PRESS # 404

A3P HAS LARGEST ATTENDANCE TO DATE
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This is the political party that we've written about before that is trying to represent European-Americans and their interests.
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REPORT FROM YESTERDAY'S CITY COUNCIL STUDY SESSION

SHORT VERSION:

The City is going to be run on a more businesslike basis and cuts are going to be made to get our financial house in order. Some government functions may be outsourced, the helicopter may be grounded and there may be some layoffs.

VERBOSE VERSION:

Study sessions are usually held in Conference Room 1A, but because so many people came to yesterday's meeting--mostly police officers and other city employees--it was moved to the regular City Council Chambers.

The tone of this meeting was different from most other study sessions we've attended in that it was very businesslike.  This felt more like a meeting of a board of directors of a private company that is trying to turn a failing company into a success.  This is a good thing, and we were happy to get that feeling.

Assistant City Manager (soon to be City Manager) Tom Hatch told the Council that Costa Mesa still has a $1.4 million budget hole that needs to be filled.

One surprise from Hatch, but which goes along with the businesslike feeling we got from the meeting, was his vague introduction of Terry Matz who used to be the City Manager of Stanton and the Assistant City Manager of Brea.  Hatch said Matz would be working with Hatch for about 15 to 20 hours a week.

Now, we don't know what Matz was brought on board to do, but if Costa Mesa really were a private business, our guess would be that he was hired to be a hatchet man.  Time will tell if this is the case.

Bobby Young, from the finance department, told the Council that the City's unfunded pension liability is not $110 million as he had previously thought, and which was  the figure published recently in the Daily Pilot, but is actually $130.8 million dollars.

Young then went on to explain in layman's terms what this means by saying that the unfunded pension liability is a little like a mortgage you take out to buy a house.  If you owe $500,000 on your home mortgage, that's your unfunded liability and you use part of your income each month to pay it off.

Young  cautioned repeatedly that the analogy is not exact because the City's unfunded pension liability doesn't remain fixed but changes as the number of employees is increased or decreased and due to other factors.

Councilmember Bever asked the helicopter cops for a report on what the helicopter program has actually done that benefits Costa Mesa residents. That is, what crimes have been stopped or solved, etc. Councilmember Leece also asked for this.

Leece, who was supported by the police in the last election as they attempted to defeat Righeimer and  keep Leece on the Council and elect another puppet who would do their bidding, then tried to justify the expense of the helicopter program (estimated to be $ 852,090 for FY 10-11) by saying that she flew in the helicopter last July 4th, and she sure could see where illegal fireworks were being used.

Mayor Pro Tem Righeimer emphasized throughout the meeting that the City has serious financial problems that have to be fixed. 

As usual, Righeimer cut through all the bureaucratic double talk and got right to the heart of matters with just a few words. For example, when the helicopter program was being discussed, Righeimer wanted to know if others using the facility for Costa Mesa's helicopters were paying rent.  The answer he got was a little fuzzy, and sounded to us as though we really aren't being paid rent in cash but that there's some sort of trade off.  We suspect Righeimer also knew the answer was fuzzy, but he politely moved on.

At another point when Bobby Young was discussing the amount of money in the Total Fund Balance ($40.1 million) which includes $15 million reserved, Righeimer pointed out that $10.1 million of this $15 million isn't cash money but is just a note on a loan that the Redevelopment Agency owes the City. Why is this important? Righeimer didn't say this, but we're sure he was thinking it: Sacramento is essentially raiding Redevelopment Agencies and our RDA may not be able to pay back the $10.1 million.

Righeimer also pointed out that when you outsource jobs instead of hiring city employees, you don't end up with the pension liabilities that we now have.

Wendy Leece told the Council that they should slow down on making cuts, outsourcing functions and changing things because employees were worried about their jobs and have low morale.

After she said that, Steve Mensinger said that many of the employees are his friends, and that the problem is not that the Council is moving too quickly, but that it's moving too slowly.

Mensinger has a reputation as a can-do guy, and like Righeimer he comes to the Council with a wealth of real world corporate experience that should serve the city well.

In our opinion, Mensinger's personality is a bit more like a steel hand in a velvet glove than Righeimer's, but he seems to be as businesslike as Righeimer and we've seen that both he and Righeimer stand up well to public pressure and they both seem to depersonalize problems faced by the Council and look at issues as matters that require straight forward, logical business decisions that must be made almost with mathematical precision.

Wendy Leece, by contrast, seems to bow too much to public pressure.  Send a few people before the Council with violins and sob stories and she'll give away the store (but citizens will have to pay for it). Now, we like Wendy and we single out Wendy, not as an insult to her, but just to point out that she's the main (maybe the only) example of this personality type on the Council.  In the past, we had many people like this on the Council and that's probably one of the reasons why we are now in a deep financial hole.

It really is time to start running things more like a business instead of like a charity.

Local activist Judi Berry told the Council that she had made a public records request for documents relating to our legal fees and that the documents she obtained show that we have budgeted $600,000 for legal fees for the entire year but that our legal fees are actually running about $ 100,000 per month. The Council will apparently look into this and get back to Ms. Berry.
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Those are our opinions.  Thanks for reading them.

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