Wednesday, February 16, 2011

CM PRESS # 411

GOV. CHRISTIE--A RISING STAR IN THE GOP, AND FOR GOOD REASON
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The GOP needs many more like this guy.
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GOOD COLUMN BY TOM HARMAN ON PENSIONS
Link to Daily Pilot
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BLACK DALLAS COUNTY COMMISSIONER YELLS AT WHITE CITIZENS: "ALL OF YOU ARE WHITE. GO TO HELL!"
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Welcome to Third World America.
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MOSTLY OUT OF TOWN COPS STILL TRYING TO INFLUENCE THE CITY COUNCIL?

At last night's City Council meeting, CMPD officer Jason Chamness announced that he's the new president of the Costa Mesa Police Association.  He succeeds Officer Allen Rieckhoff in that position.

Chamness then had four relatively new hire police officers stand up in the audience. Chamness told the Council a little about each officer and then said that if the Council cancels the helicopter program (which they later did), these officers would be the ones to be laid off.

You will recall that Chamness and Rieckhoff  were  active in the attempt to defeat Jim Righeimer in the last election. 

The photo above is the lighted A-Frame anti-Righeimer sign that we saw parked in front of one of the candidate forums in the last election. Chamness was with the sign.

Many citizens we've spoken to believe that the CMPD would better serve the citizens of Costa Mesa if some members of the department (who don't live in Costa Mesa and who can't vote here) were less involved in our local politics and if candidates for the City Council would stop seeking endorsements and money from the police union and the firefighters union.

Maybe the reorganization that is apparently going to be done in the CMPD will  help accomplish this.
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THE COSTA MESA CITY COUNCIL IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK BUT WE THINK THEY CAN DO EVEN BETTER WITH OUR SPORTS FIELD RENTALS

Although the City Council last night moved to take in more money from the rental of our fields to sports teams, we think the Council should be more aggressive with the so-called non-profit teams.

Remember, "non-profit" just means that the organization, as an organization, doesn't make a profit.

Those who work for and lead those organizations essentially take most of the money the organization receives from the players as salaries.

If they receive more money than their present salaries call for, they simply have to give themselves higher salaries so the organization doesn't show a profit.

Meanwhile, these so-called non-profits are getting free or nearly free rent on fields in Costa Mesa while we taxpayers must pay the rent to the NMUSD.

Here's what we suggest:

The Council should consider all the costs of the City's Recreation Division. This means look at the salaries, benefits, etc.  And, it also means looking at the space and utilities the Division uses in City Hall as though the Division were a renter. 

Add those costs to the costs of the fields and then come up with a formula that will make the Recreation Division a profit center generating income to be used to buy or improve fields.

As it is now, the Recreation Division is losing money and is being propped up by taxpayers.  The new things the Council did last night will reduce the losses, but they're still not the best practices in this down economy.

THINK LIKE SUPERMARKET EXECUTIVES

Supermarket executives often think in terms of renting shelf space to products.  Everything must pay its own way.

The products that sell, earn their keep and are kept in the market.  Those products that don't sell are soon eliminated because they're not paying the rent on the shelves where they sit.

That's right, every can of peas and every jar of mustard and everything else that is in a supermarket is thought of as renting space on the shelves.  They pay for their space by being bought by customers.

We believe the Costa Mesa City Council might want to think a little along those lines as they look at right sizing government.
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PETER BRIMELOW ON THE SPLC
Link
Meeting was cancelled not by SPLC but by snow (which was all white and thus obviously racist and not diverse).
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WHITES NOT WANTED AT TWO OHIO UNIVERSITIES
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COUNCIL TO HIRE CONSULTANTS FOR $ 200,000 TO HELP CITY SAVE MONEY

On a 4-1 vote, with Wendy Leece voting against the item, the City Council last night gave the new City Manager  CEO, Tom Hatch, the authority to spend up to $ 200,000 on consultants to help the city save money.

It was clear from many comments from the public that most folks who spoke didn't understand what was going on.

Let us explain: Base Realignment and Closure Commission (aka BRAC). 

When Congress wanted to close some military bases, the politicians knew that if they left it up to themselves that they'd have a difficult time closing bases that needed to be closed. No politicians would vote to close bases in their own states and they'd work  back room deals with other politicians to stop most bases from closing.

So, Congress formed  BRAC that would make the decisions and whose decisions couldn't be overruled by the politicians.  Then, when the bases were closed in various states the politicians from those states could show great outrage for the folks back home but be able to say it was the stupid BRAC that did the dirty deed.

CEO Hatch gave some vague explanations of where the $ 200,000 would go. Some would go to a look at reorganizing the CMPD, some to doing the same thing in City Hall.  The largest single amount of $ 50,000 was earmarked for updating the City's website.

Again, many people in the audience didn't seem to get it even when hints were dropped from some of the Councilmembers about having a website that was interactive so that people could do most of their business with City Hall right from their own computers instead of going to City Hall.

Clearly, such a website would allow for the elimination of jobs at City Hall. 

Thinking citizens of Costa Mesa know the Council is going in the right direction to right size our government, and they know that these decisions have to be depersonalized and treated as cold business decisions.

Most of us who have ever owned or run businesses will tell you that the hardest part of the job is laying off or firing people. 

I can tell you from my personal experience that I'm still haunted by the faces of people I had to lay off 35 years ago.  But, business is business and if you don't have the money to pay the employees, there have to be layoffs.  That's where Costa Mesa is right now.

Just be glad that you're not on the City Council and that you won't be haunted by the faces of those who you must lay off  and who may also be your friends.

When money was rolling in, previous Councils just let things get out of hand and grew government too large.

Now it's up to this new Council to set things right. And, we think the four serious Councilmembers are up to the task.   Wendy Leece, on the other hand, well...enough said.

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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for bringing up the low tech doings at city hall. It's over at the school board, too, where parents have to manually fill out registration paperwork that asks for the same information over and over on different sheets. They say that creating an online system will cost $$$ but the real reason is that there are probably some union jobs at stake and they just don't want to deal with it.

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  2. The only "fair" way to handle layoffs, in any city department, is to axe those employees who live in towns other than Costa Mesa (regardless of their rank, or standing).

    Why should Costa Mesa taxpayers be supporting the residents, and economies, of other towns?

    ReplyDelete

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