DAY LABORER PROBLEM IN COSTA MESA
(stock generic photo)
The problem we have with day laborers in Costa Mesa is directly linked to the fact that we have failed to improve our city in meaningful ways.
We have become Santa Ana light instead of being our traditional Newport Beach light.
How to start solving some of Costa Mesa's problems with day laborers, crime, etc:
1. Immediately enact a day laborer ordinance based on the one used in Orange.
2. Immediately start improving our city as citizens demanded during the WROC and CRAC meetings.
3. Re-think government spending priorities so that the city can buy up slum buildings one here and one there on the open market at fair market prices and tear them down to put in more open space. This will thin out the slums, make the neighborhoods less crowded and will result in lower crime in those areas.
4. Call a meeting with the NMUSD and request that the district stop allowing the over concentration of charities at Rea School.
Right now, the NMUSD gives a buck a year rent to several charities in that school. The purpose of a school is education, not being the home of charities. With all the charity services at Rea School, the neighborhood around the school, including the area up to Victoria and Placentia, can't get out from under slum conditions.
Article in the Return to Reason Daily Pilot today
In an article in the Return to Reason Daily Pilot [LINK] today by Return to Reason family member Alan Blank we read the following:
The notion that day laborers are creating a huge, uncontrolled problem in our city is contrived, according to [Costa Mesa Police Chief] Shawkey. He shared a complaint he received last month in which a person submitted a picture to prove that rowdy laborers congregated outside of a local Circle K market. Shawkey realized it was fake because a sign in the photo listed the price of gas as $2.18 per gallon. “People are out there trying to generate issues that aren’t even there,” Shawkey said.
It sounds to us as though someone may have mistakenly sent an old photo to the chief instead of a current one that would show pretty much the same thing.
[Note to CM PRESS readers, if you have the time, please check out the locations shown below and take some current photos with your cell phones or cameras, and email those to the chief at: PDADJUTANT@ci.costa-mesa.ca.us and to the City Council at:EBEVER@ci.costa-mesa.ca.us --If these email addresses aren't live, just go to the City's Website and send your photos from there: http://www.ci.costa-mesa.ca.us/contact/email.htm
or http://www.ci.costa-mesa.ca.us/]
And, if you receive the CM PRESS via email, please send us copies at our email address that you already have.
Here's the list of where most of the day workers seem to congregate from about 7 am to 10 am (plus or minus) every weekday:
1. The corner of Victoria and Placentia
2. The corner of Hamilton and Placentia
3. West 17th Street near the former job center--both sides of Placentia
4. The Dunn-Edwards Paint store at 19th and Harbor
5. The Dunn-Edwards Paint store at Baker and Bristol
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
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