CM PRESS # 186

KATRINA FOLEY HAS SOME MEANINGLESS BUSY WORK FOR LIBS

According to a small notice in today's Orange County Register, Costa Mesa Citycouncilbumponthelog Katrina Foley is looking for about 200 volunteers "to help paint, build fences and play areas, plant landscaping and haul away debris at the Mesa del Mar Neighborhood Clean-up from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on August 5. For more information, contact Foley at (714) 754-5177."

So, what's wrong with Foley's call for volunteers?

Just this:

1. This is not truly a Mesa del Mar Neighborhood Clean-up. Mesa del Mar is already nice and clean except for the barracks style, illegal alien and crime infested Mission-Mendoza slum that is a cancer on the whole neighborhood. So, what is being billed as a neighborhood clean-up is nothing of the sort.

2. As we've written many times before (most recently in # 182), the Mission-Mendoza slum is functionally obsolete. It should be razed, or at least be thinned out by removing buildings. It can't be fixed with this sort of meaningless feel good work. This just gives the impression that something meaningful is being accomplished. And, it can have a dangerous consequence as it lulls some into falsely thinking that all is well with this slum.

Watch as we have more crime and more murders in this slum over the next year. You may recall that a young female student from OCC was murdered in a unit that she had rented in this slum. This crime is still unsolved. Will more OCC students see the flowers and paint and figure the area is safe?

3. These buildings are private property. The owners rent the units out for a profit. So, why are volunteers helping the owners maintain their properties this way? And, how much taxpayer money is going into this?

Who is paying for the paint, the material to build fences and play areas, and the plants for the landscaping on these private properties?

Foley has already had the city spend many thousands of our dollars to repave an alley in the slum and at least one of the streets in front of the barracks style buildings. This money would have been better spent if the City had bought a few of the buildings and replaced them with pocket parks as it did on Shalimar.

This isn't to say that everyone in the Mission-Mendoza slum is an illegal alien, a criminal, or a gang member. However, it is foolish to think that barracks style apartment buildings in our area can ever again be a plus for the community as a whole or that making some cosmetic changes will improve matters.

So, Foley and her bushy tailed, happy faced lib volunteers will put on some old work shirts, smile a lot for the cameras, have a big group hug and revel in the sheer humanity of it all.

As darkness falls on the slum, there will be moist eyes and beatific smiles aplenty along with job well done hugs. Then, the saintly libs, full of that smugness that so characterizes them, will quickly jump back in their cars and go back to their safe homes. And, even before the gangs emerge in the alleys and the police helicopter circles up above, as is usual in the slum, the libs will fall asleep thinking that they "just made a difference."

And, what have they changed in the slum? Nothing.

Now, we want to be clear about something. While we at the CM PRESS will make fun of politicians and parody them in various ways, we are not prone to simply sit back and snipe at them unless we can offer what we think are real solutions to some of the problems we face in Costa Mesa.

And, as we wrote above, the real solution for the Mission-Mendoza slum is to raze it or thin it out. That's what will work. Paint and flowers may look nice, but they're a bandaid on a cancer that will just keep growing until it is cut out.

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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 29

WE GET MAIL ABOUT KATRINA FOLEY

Dear CM PRESS:

You know that "Keep Kids Alive, Drive 25" campaign that Katrina Foley keeps getting press coverage over? I seem to remember that former Mayor Sandy Genis came up with that idea, or something very similar, years ago.

The council majority at that time decided instead to go with the existing, boring "slow down you are entering a residential neighborhood" signs. If I remember correctly, Ms. Genis wanted the plan to start on the Eastside and then expand city wide, while Foley is apparently just doing it in her own Mesa del Mar neighborhood (naturally).

I also noted the coincidence that Foley "happened to" see the Pilot reporter at South Coast Plaza the day after Thanksgiving, per recent new story. Isn't it amazing that with over one hundred thousand people at SCP on Friday, the reporter ran into Foley? Pilot reporters and Foley seem to keep running into each other, just by coincidence, at all kinds of places. Does she have a hired publicist or do the Pilot reporters fulfill that function for free?

Name Withheld by CM PRESS

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WE COMMENT

Anything that makes our city nicer and safer is welcome.

However, it seems to the CM PRESS that many of the things that Foley does are noncontroversial window dressing sorts of things and then the Pilot gives her maximum press coverage as though she's just done something very major and substantive when she hasn't.

We half expect to see a headline in the Pilot that reads: "FOLEY BAKES COOKIES--SAVES COSTA MESA!"

Meanwhile, the Pilot is largely silent or downplays the meaningful things that Mayor Mansoor and Mayor Pro Tem Bever have done and are doing.

Mr. Mansoor and Mr. Bever are responsible for closing down the job center and for the Westside Residential Overlay and for many other substantive things that are already starting to make a real difference in our city. What they are doing is mostly not window dressing.

And, for their genuine efforts to make our city nicer, they're often insulted in the pages of the Pilot. Of course, maybe that's to be expected. If you really do something substantive, it's easy to be criticized. If you do nothing but fluff (such as what Foley usually does) you get little criticism--except from improvement minded citizens who realize that we can't sit on our hands in Costa Mesa anymore.

After years of bad decisions and neglect, we now have to move boldly to fix things to make Costa Mesa more like our coastal neighboring cities. Foley and Dixon won't do it.

If our city is to be improved, it'll be Mansoor and Bever and now Leece who will have to lead the way and do the heavy lifting to get things done.

Meanwhile, if the recent past is any clue, Foley and Dixon can be counted on to sit on the dais, collect their checks, and try to block real improvement while offering nothing new or innovative to fix our broken city.

We'll be watching and we'll report as things develop and we'll let you know who is doing what.

It's our belief that City Councilmembers are supposed to be leaders and they're supposed to initiate things that are then implemented by staff. We'd like to see more of this and we'd like to see more major things being done at every City Council meeting.

Cities don't stand still and they don't fix themselves.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

Thanks for reading the CM PRESS.

CM PRESS # 27

THE CM PRESS IMAGINES HOW STORIES ARE WRITTEN AT THE DAILY PILOT...

Editor to Daily Pilot reporters: "Remember, no matter what the story is about, I want you to work in quotes from Katrina Foley."

And, then...
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WATER DISCOVERED ON MARS--DAILY PILOT ASKS KATRINA FOLEY HER OPINION

Scientists revealed yesterday that they believe there may be liquid water on Mars.

When asked about this discovery, Costa Mesa Citycouncilperson Katrina Foley said that she thinks water is a good thing. "Why, we can drink it, and we can wash with it, and we can cook with it, and we can water our lawns with it, and we can...well, you know, do so many things with it. Yes, I think water is a good thing."
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SITUATION GOING POORLY IN IRAQ--DAILY PILOT GETS THE SCOOP FROM KATRINA FOLEY

Katrina Foley said today that she's ready to go to Iraq to negotiate to end the violence. "Violence is a bad thing," said Foley. "It's too, well, violent."
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Okay, you know the above are spoofs, but don't you see Foley being quoted in just about every story in the Pilot?

Aren't there five City Councilmembers? And, isn't she the least of the five in the sense that she's often the lone dissenting vote--as when the Council sent a letter to President Bush asking him to secure our border with Mexico and she voted against this?

And, didn't she just fail miserably in trying to get Bruce Garlich and Mike Scheafer elected to the City Council?

Why is Foley the Daily Pilot's go-to person most of the time? Hmmmm?
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 20

KATRINA FOLEY

On page A3 in the Daily Pilot today there's a correction to a news article that ran on Thursday.

In the correction, the Pilot tells readers that it was Katrina Foley who was instrumental in organizing the Keep Kids Alive, Drive 25 campaign in a Mesa del Mar neighborhood. Apparently, Ms. Foley wasn't mentioned in the original article.

It didn't take long for the Pilot to realize the error. Now, how do you suppose the newspaper learned that they had left Foley's name out of the article?

We imagine...the phone rings at the Daily Pilot....

Female caller with a fake male voice: "Hello. This isn't Katrina Foley calling. Say, did you know that you forgot to tell readers that the wonderfully compassionate Katrina Foley, who is also very attractive and dresses well and looks years younger than she really is and who is a terrific mother and a fantastic City Councilperson and who wants nothing more than world peace and to save the whales was left out of your article about Mesa del Mar?"

Daily Pilot: "Thank you. Who's calling?"

Female caller with a fake male voice (caught off guard): "Katrin...ah...Katrino. John Katrino. Yes. This is John Katrino calling and I'm a two fisted man's man. Well, gotta go watch some football. How about them Red Sox?"
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LATE BREAKING NEWS--SWAT IN MESA DEL MAR!

At 7:20 a.m. this morning (Friday, 12/1) the CM PRESS saw the CMPD SWAT truck, fully dressed SWAT team members, and six black and white patrol cars involved in some sort of activity in the 1400 block of El Camino Drive in the Mendoza slum (in Mesa del Mar near where Katrina Foley lives).

Whatever was going on appeared to be happening in one of the slum units or the fenced yard and was not visible from the CM PRESSMOBILE.

Our call to the CMPD to find out more details resulted in us being put on hold for many minutes (as usual) so we finally just broke off the connection.
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SPEAKING OF THE MENDOZA SLUM

There have been a number of murders and other violent crimes in this slum.

When will the City of Costa Mesa move to raze the overcrowed slum buildings and replace them with parks or housing that are not a habitat for criminals and illegal aliens?

What has the City actually done in the slum? Recently it spent a couple hundred thousand of your tax dollars to repave the alley behind one row of slum buildings. Now the illegal aliens living in garages have a nice concrete patio outside their garage doors.

The City should have used this money as a down payment on a couple of the slum buildings and torn them down.

If you live in Mesa del Mar, don't count on Katrina Foley to do anything about the slum that is ruining your neighborhood, depressing your property values, and endangering your kids, she's busy doing PTA level sweet nothings (see first article above).

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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

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