CONSTANT IMPROVEMENTMayor Pro Tem Mansoor has a good opinion column in the Daily Pilot today about improvement. LINK
The CM PRESS has no disagreement with anything written by Mr. Mansoor in his column, but as long time readers of the CM PRESS know, we believe in going further to improve Costa Mesa than what we're seeing from improvement supported candidates on the Council.
Specifically:
CRIME AND ILLEGAL ALIENS
Mr. Mansoor speaks of the great work being done by ICE. We agree. However, the present ICE and City approach is to reduce our crime by grabbing individual criminal illegal aliens and deporting them. That needs to be done, but more needs to be done.
The reason we have so many illegal alien criminals in Costa Mesa is because they're (even now) being welcomed here by the left wing status quo establishment.
Until the welcome mat is removed, we'll keep having problems. Those who are deported are quickly replaced by other criminal illegal aliens. There's almost no end to the supply.
As we've written many times before, our present catch and deport policy is similar to having a swamp full of alligators and then going out and grabbing an alligator here and there. It becomes a never ending job because the alligators are comfortable in the swamp and more keep coming to take advantage of that comfortable situation.
If you really want to solve your alligator problem, you have to drain the swamp. Then, the alligators will leave to find some other place that is comfortable.
In terms of Costa Mesa, this means we need to remove our "swamps"--the slum apartment buildings and non-profits that give comfort and safe harbors to illegal alien criminals and gangs.
Even just decimating the slum buildings ("decimate" means to take every tenth one) and putting in some pocket parks to replace some of the buildings would help.
In addition, many of the non-profits in the City are clustered on the Westside and this creates a ghetto without walls. Illegal aliens tend to congregate near these non-profits to get their free services. This over concentration of non-profits should be broken up and the City should stop giving our tax money to non-profits that serve illegal aliens.
Furthermore, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District gives $1 dollar a year rent to several of these non-profits in Rea School and this should be stopped.
The purpose of a school is schooling, not being a location for non-profits. We believe the City Council should investigate whether NMUSD is in violation of some of our City codes by allowing all these non-profits on the Rea Campus.
THE WESTSIDE BLUFFS
Mr. Mansoor writes about overlays and the free market to help improve the Bluffs. Yes, this is a good approach and we've been trying this, but more needs to be done.
We can't simply say that it is now okay to build homes on the Bluffs and then walk away. We need, as a City, to actively encourage the building of homes on the Bluffs. There are many ways to do this that do not include widespread eminent domain, and sophisticated developers and City planners know how to do this.
Also, eminent domain and even just having people know that the City has not ruled it out can help improve Costa Mesa. In other words, eminent domain should not be taken off the table.
After all, the improvement goal is not to just posit nice sounding philosophical principles and theories such as "free market economy." Our goal is to improve the Westside and the rest of the City and we should be prepared to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
GENERALLY
Mr. Mansoor puts great emphasis on fixing potholes. Yes, we find them as irritating as most other people. However, such an emphasis is a little like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at this time in the improvement of Costa Mesa and gives a false illusion that real improvement is happening, even if it isn't.
The CM PRESS believes that our emphasis should be, as we indicated above, on removing slum buildings. If we need to hold off on fixing some streets in order to free up some money to buy up some slum buildings, well that's the way it should be. It's a matter of getting the most improvement for our money.
Again, this isn't a criticism of Mayor Pro Tem Mansoor, but we did want to point out that we'd like to see Mr. Mansoor, Mr. Bever and Ms. Leece do more major things (such as removing some slum buildings, etc.) to help improve Costa Mesa.
As far as Katrina Foley and Linda Dixon go, you can forget about them doing anything meaningful to improve our city. They're both part of the problem, not part of the solution.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
