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.
