CITY COUNCIL MEETING TONIGHTAgenda HERE.
Will newly elected Sandra Genis start trying to derail improvement or will she work to bring in the physical improvements that are so needed in Costa Mesa? Tonight may be too soon to tell, but we may get some inkling of her mindset as the night progresses.
Here's the nub of the matter for many Improvers. We like keeping as much open space in the City as possible, so we don't want to see over development. We think Genis is on board with this.
However, many Improvers want to go further and want to see the slum buildings thinned out and be replaced either with more parks or even additional parking or with more upscale and modern housing. Wendy Leece is not on board with this and fights this. Will Genis go along with Wendy in some sort of Sisterhood is Powerful false thinking, or will she realize that we must rid the City of slums which are the habitats of a criminal element and which are helping keep the City downscale?
One thing we wonder about is whether Genis, who has spent most of her life here in Costa Mesa, can see that the same buildings that were here when she was a little girl, and which weren't then overcrowded slums, are now overcrowded slums and that they can never be restored to what they were when she was a child. This is similar to not being able to see that the grass is growing unless you first go away for a while and then come back.
As Genis drives around Shalimar or Mission/Mendoza or Fillmore/Coolidge or the similar neighborhood off of Wilson Street, will she see them as being just as they were when she was a child and thus not a problem, or will she be able to see them as many Improvers see them: as functionally obsolete slums that can no longer attract upwardly mobile citizens?
What was, 40 years ago, is no longer as it was. The slums need to be removed, and this will lower our crime rate and our social dysfunction rate and improve the quality of our schools.
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