WHO ARE THE IMPROVERS?
(From # 94--March 1, 2007)
Because there are new readers of the CM PRESS, we thought it might be time to again talk a little about the "Improvers" and the CM PRESS.
The Improvers is the name we give to many citizens who are interested in improving Costa Mesa and who understand the reasons for the way it is today.
We often use the big "I" version of the word for those who regularly show up at city meetings even when issues being discussed aren't just in their own neighborhoods. These are generally the people who understand that all of Costa Mesa is connected. If one neighborhood has problems, then all neighborhoods have problems. Most of these folks want the whole city improved and they're putting energy into making it happen.
Many improvers probably started out because of some seemingly minor problem in their own neighborhood that they might have thought was confined to their neighborhood. Then, when they tried to fix that problem, they discovered the gestalt--the fact that many such problems are not confined to one neighborhood at all, but are city wide problems or are somehow connected to other problems.
So, to really fix their problem in their own neighborhood, they had to take an interest in other problems in other neighborhoods.
BIG "I" vs. LITTLE 'i"
We often use the little "i" version of improvers for those who generally side with improvement but who aren't as active.
And, we often don't use the two versions of improver very precisely; because the whole thing isn't very precise to begin with. Improvers are not really an organization, but a state of mind.
As far as we know, there are no leaders in the improvement movement--if we can call it that. There are just ordinary work-a-day people who probably disagree on many things, but who pretty much agree that Costa Mesa should be nicer than it is, that we should have schools that aren't failing, that we should have a low crime rate, and that we should have a quality of life that is closer to that of our coastal neighboring cities.
Most improvers also agree that the key to improving all of Costa Mesa is the Westside. Instead of being the best part of the city--which is what it should be--it's the worst. Fix the Westside and many other problems in the city will take care of themselves.
You can be an Improver or an improver too. All you have to do is go to city meetings and communicate your ideas on making Costa Mesa nicer. But, in our opinion, anyone who does that, should try to be dispassionately logical, not emotional, and should be open to facts and the truth about why Costa Mesa is the way it is. It's no more complicated than that.
You won't be met by people in black helicopters and you won't have to sign anything or donate money or join anything or follow anyone. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican or anything else. Just show up and get active and you're as much an improver as the next guy if your positions are logical and well thought out and will make Costa Mesa more like our surrounding coastal cities.
This is your city. Your help is needed to make it nicer.
Closed minded bigotry doesn't help make Costa Mesa nicer whether it's coming from the so-called left or the so-called right. Open minds and critical thinking are what is needed.
Because there are special interests who don't want to see changes in Costa Mesa and who have been trying to stop those changes with smears and false information, the CM PRESS long ago came up with what we call the Ring of Cities to help supply objective information and avoid fuzzy thinking.
THE RING OF CITIES
The Ring of Cities is comprised of Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Santa Ana, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach and Irvine.
The CM PRESS is Costa Mesacentric. We see it as the center. All five of the other cities touch some part of Costa Mesa's land and that's why they are part of the ring.
The CM PRESS gathers and publishes statistics from the cities in the Ring. This gives us objective baselines--our vital signs--on how Costa Mesa is doing as compared to these other cities. No emotion. Just facts. Then, we try to discover the reason for why the statistics are the way they are.
It's like going to your doctor. He can take your blood pressure or your temperature, but if he doesn't have a baseline for these two indicators of your physical condition, the results are meaningless. He has to know which numbers indicate health and which indicate a problem.
We live in a cause and effect universe. Things happen for a reason. For example, our schools are bad for a reason. What is that reason? What do our schools have in common with other failing schools in the Ring of Cities? How are they different from high performing schools? By boldly asking such questions, and by not being swayed with emotional arguments and self-serving comments, we can usually get to the source of the problem, and this will suggest remedies.
You probably won't be surprised to read that most of the statistics we've gathered over the past eight years show that Costa Mesa, traditionally the sister city of Newport Beach, has been trending more like Santa Ana than Newport.*
THE CM PRESS
The CM PRESS is a labor of love. We started it as a newsletter about eight years ago because we were fed up with crime and gangs and graffiti and failing schools and all the rest of the negative things we were seeing in our city and we were fed up with politicians who seemed oblivious to the conditions that they were allowing and, in some cases, causing.
When we started the CM PRESS, we had people on the City Council who wouldn't even admit we had gangs in Costa Mesa. These people claimed that those with a gang appearance were just making fashion statements. Graffiti? It was art to these people. We kid you not.
Our first few issues of this newsletter were called the Community Watchdog. At that time, it was handed out to people at meetings and was delivered to some homes and was then faxed to those who requested it.
It was soon renamed the Costa Mesa Press and we started sending it via email to those who asked to receive it.
Next, thanks to the suggestions of an improver on the Westside, it was changed to the present "blog." We put blog in quotation marks, because unlike most blogs, we don't run comments--except as letters from improvers and we continue to use the newsletter format. Also, along the way, its name was shortened to the CM PRESS.
We try to attend most city meetings and we try to keep our ear to the ground to inform readers about what's going on that may be shaping 0ur city. To this end, we receive tips from others around the city on breaking news stories. We're often on the scene of the latest gang shooting before the ambulances arrive.
Apart from the statistics and some straight reports on events, the CM PRESS is not an objective news source. It is mainly commentary and opinion. We are unabashed advocates for a nicer Costa Mesa and we have a filter through which we put things being done by government and various other entities in this city. This filter is this: "Is this good for Costa Mesa and will it help improve our city or not?"
The CM PRESS has little loyalty to politicians or others on a personal basis. We often say that we have no friends in politics. We look at the things that politicians say and do and we put these through our filter that we just mentioned. We then weigh the many individual things they say and do and try to determine if, in our opinion and on balance, these individuals are more for improving our city or less for it. If they seem to be more on the improvement side of things, we support them. If they're not, we don't.
Then, we write our opinions on things that we think were done right or wrong and why we think that.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
