CM PRESS # 396

THE RATLAND CHRONICLES

(THE RATLAND CHRONICLES is a movie you never got to see, because it's a movie script that didn't make it to the big screen, at least not as I wrote it--but you may have seen bits and pieces of it. Well, it's possible. Then again, maybe there's just nothing new under the sun. Or perhaps we just all drink from the same well.)

Int. American Zoetrope Studios. Old factory. Exposed red brick walls. Camera pans left and right.--

I'm sitting in the reception area of American Zoetrope next to the pool table and the receptionist tells me that Francis will see me now.

I walk in to the inner office and Francis Coppola is sitting behind a desk or table (I don't remember exactly), and sitting a little to his left and behind him is a nerdy looking guy with glasses who I figured worked for him.

The actual words spoken have long been forgotten, but this is the gist of it as I remember it.

Coppola: You have a film proposal and a script?

Me: Yeah. I call it the Ratland Chronicles. It's a trilogy.

I wrote it as a trilogy so we can do the first film on a shoestring and if it does okay, it'll be easier to raise money for the other two. No union anything. The first one is called RAGNAROK--it means apocalypse. I was thinking of me as the lead.

Coppola: Give me some of the highlights.

Me: (talking fast and jumping around in my narrative lest I bore him) Well it takes place after the U.S. is destroyed in a nuclear war and the whole country is now bizarre. And it's about a small group of people who travel across the country looking for civilization.

It opens with a dark screen, and then we hear just a few notes of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, but it's been changed a little--the tempo is much slower. I rewrote it a little and I've eliminated some of Wagner's flitty wind sounds and put in some heavy kettledrums and made the whole thing darker and more ominous.

Then, after the titles on the black screen, the music gets a little louder and more notes are played. Suddenly, a big angry, reddish and hot sun rises from the bottom of the screen. We can almost feel the heat coming off it. As it rises, we see in the foreground, and in the middle of the rising sun, the main character, played by me, standing on his head.

Coppola: On his head?

Me: Yeah, well, it sets the stage for what follows in this bizarre new world.

Anyway, as the story unfolds, the main character, ahem, played by me, comes across a couple of trash picking dwarfs named Tick and Tock who live down in tunnels underneath this cow barn. The tunnels are connected up to storm channels and sewer lines and this is how they get around without being killed by the roving bands of bad guys.

I'm thinking, maybe, Billy Barty as one of the dwarfs. I saw him at a SAG meeting and he was complaining that there aren't enough roles for little people. Anyway, the two dwarfs have all sorts of Rube Goldberg machinery made out of scavenged things, including a VW Bus that runs off cow manure that they have in a trailer that they pull behind the bus.

The main characters travel across the country in this bus. That's where all the adventures take place.

Coppola: Well, leave the script with me. I'll give you a call.

FAST FORWARD 1:

Int. Nighttime--Man, me, staring at telephone that does not ring.(Minutes have turned into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and I'm still waiting for that phone call. Hey, a big director wouldn't say he'd call and never actually call, right? Probably lost my phone number. Probably pulling his hair out wondering how he can get in touch with me.)

One day, I hear that Coppola has a new film out called Apocalypse Now, so I go to see it.

Hmmmm (my eyes get all squinty at this point), some of it seems familiar to me. Not major things, just some of the stuff around the edges. There's even a Martin standing on his head-- Martin Friggin' Sheen, not Martin Friggin' Millard. And, what music do I hear? Wagner's Friggin' Ride of the Valkyries (but it wasn't improved as I was going to do it, Hah!). And, instead of a post apocalyptic world and people travelling in a VW bus, it has a group travelling up a river in a boat in Vietnam.

FAST FORWARD 2:

Int. Commercial Airliner: I'm flying into Burbank for some movie type of thing or other, and I hear a guy sitting in the seat directly behind me saying to someone sitting next to him: "Well, in that film, Francis didn't really do much. That was mostly my...." I turn around and look directly into the eyes of that nerdy guy from Coppola's office again. This time I recognize him, George Lucas.

FAST FORWARD 3:

Ext. Daytime. OC.--Line of people going in to movie theater to see Star Wars. I go in. There I see these little trash picking dwarfs. I wonder if one of them is Billy Barty.

FAST FORWARD 4:

Ext. Daytime OC--I hear that Coppola's nephew, Nicholas Cage, bought John Wayne's old house in Newport. Years ago, I used to date a girl who lived a few doors away from that place. Hey, maybe I'll run into Cage in the market. Better keep my script handy. You never know.

Maybe I can give him my phone number to give to his uncle who has probably been losing sleep all these years because he lost it.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 395

TERROR IN BARRIO WESTSIDE

Upwardly mobile families of citizens are moving in and fixing up homes.

The Tan Klan, lefty creeps and slum profiteers are fearful that their dream of turning the Westside into a new Huntington Park is slipping away.

Costa Mesa's Westside is the best bargain in ocean close real estate in the State of California, and more and more people are realizing this.

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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 394

MORE GANG GRAFFITI IN MESA NORTH THIS MORNING

(Note: Photo may be too dark to see on some monitors. We'll try to fix later. Thanks for your patience)

[UPDATE: 11:10 AM--6/15/08--Installed a new monitor at CM PRESS CENTRAL and the above photo is perfect. If it's too dark to see, you may need a new monitor--as did we].

Don't forget, graffiti is just a symptom. Cover up the symptom and you still have the disease.

We will keep having such symptoms until we remove the comfortable habitat for gangs that prior City Councils have established in Costa Mesa and which the present City Council seems incapable of removing.

Instead of coming up with a budget that will allow the City to buy up slum buildings, one here and one there, and tearing them down for much needed park space, the City Council just keeps pumping money into hiring more cops, spending more money on removing graffiti, and doing similar work-arounds instead of meeting the problem head on.

How many gangs in Newport Beach, folks? Here's your answer: None, Zero, Zilch. How many slums in Newport Beach? Your answer: None, Zero, Zilch.

To repeat, here's what should be done: Remove slum buildings. That's about the simplest way we can state this.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 393

INTERESTING ITEM TO BE CONSIDERED AT THE NEXT CITY COUNCIL MEETING

At its regularly scheduled meeting on 6/17, the Costa Mesa City Council will consider a screening request to add a residential loft above an existing industrial unit at 872 W. 18th Street. LINK

The CM PRESS supports just about any attempt to put in living units of any type in the Westside industrial area.

We see this as the logical way to begin the evolution of the industrial area into a vibrant, slightly bohemian/artsy area of the city.

Even though the proposal in this screening request isn't specifically for an "artist's loft," but for a loft above an industrial/automotive unit, we think this is a step in the right direction for the Westside industrial area.

Thus, we support this proposal even though it may need some tweaking.

But, that's what screening requests are about. They're inexpensive ways for property owners to present their ideas to the Council before any real money is invested in formal blueprints and the like. The Council members then give their suggestions on the project.

It'll be interesting to look into the souls of the individual City Council members as they consider this request.

Will Linda Dixon, for example, try to throw cold water on this request because she is a big proponent for various artsy interests along Bristol Street, on the other side of town from the Westside, and may not want a rival to her favored interests?

Most urban artists colonies don't look like suburbs. They are generally a hodge podge of living units, industrial buildings, small stores, cafes, store front theaters and art galleries.

The viability of such areas requires that they not be over planned or be held to design standards that we would expect in single family residential neighborhoods.

Such areas are special cases and require a less anal-retentive and a more relaxed approval process.
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ANOTHER $48,000 OF YOUR TAX MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN

Also at the 6/17 City Council meeting, the Council is expected to renew the shopping cart pickup contract with a firm that picks up shopping carts and returns them to the stores that continue to snub Costa Mesa citizens by allowing customers to take the carts off site. LINK

A couple of merchants in the city are good neighbors. The 99 Cent Store on Harbor and Smart and Final on W. 19th Street both use carts that can't be removed from their parking lots.

So, why can't the Council lean on Stater Bros and some other merchants to have them do the same thing? Hmmmmmm? Why the hell are we paying so that Stater Bros et al. can provide a service to their customers and increase their profits?

It's as though some of these bad neighbor markets have signs reading: COME ON IN. BUY A CART FULL OF GROCERIES AND TAKE THE CART HOME WITH YOU. THEN, JUST LEAVE IT ON THE SIDEWALK AND THE CITIZENS OF COSTA MESA WILL PICK IT UP AND BRING IT BACK TO THE MARKET.
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UPDATE ON EL CAMINO CENTER

The buildings are all gone and the workers are now tearing up the parking lot. The question will now become: When will homes be built on this site? One year, two years, three years, more?
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 392

BREAKING GANG NEWS

CMPD GANG ACTIVITY REPORT FOR FIRST QUARTER 2008

Gang Related Activity to date has resulted in:

ARRESTS

• 35 arrests from Gang related directed enforcement patrols

CITATIONS

• 82 from Gang related directed enforcement patrols

Field Interview Card

• 57 of these were related to Gang affected area directed patrol

Gang STEP Notices *

• 35

* A gang STEP notice is a Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention notice.

A STEP notice contains all the pertinent gang information to document a gang member. It also puts the individual gang member (in this case 35 gang members) on notice of his/their group's illegal activities and it allows law enforcement personnel to introduce the documentation of an individual as a gang member in court.
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CM PRESS # 391

GET READY FOR JOHN WAYNE TO GROW AND GROW AND GROW

(photo of Marine training)

Leonard Kranser has a column in the OC REGISTER today about the inevitable clash that is coming between those who want JWA to grow and those who want it to stay as small as possible. LINK

Although the Costa Mesa and Newport Beach city councils are trying to bring in other cities as allies in their stay-small approach, it's not going to work.

The reason: the only two cities that will really feel the full negative impacts of a larger JWA will be Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. Most other city councils know this. Some may give lip service to keeping JWA small, but their hearts aren't really in it.

The argument for a larger JWA is that the few--the people in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach--will have to give way to the many--all the people in the rest of the county who want convenient air traffic.

The many will win, unless we get serious and demand that a new airport be built that can replace John Wayne.

The goofy alternatives of airports out in the desert to replace JWA aren't going to work, folks. And, the finger in the dike caps on flights won't work for long.

The pressure to expand is constant.

A true replacement for JWA is going to have to be on the coast; for the many reasons that we've previously written about.

And, to us, the logical location is on a tiny portion of Camp Pendleton.

Some have said to us that the Marines would never allow that to happen. Baloney. The Marines don't own that base. The citizens of the U.S. own it. If Congress decided that a new international airport should be built on a tiny portion of Camp Pendleton, it would happen.

Look, we have some knowledge of Marine training and base usage, having been in the Marines, and we're here to tell you that a very small northwest portion of Camp Pendleton could be turned into a major international airport--larger than LAX--and the Marines would not only not miss the land but would be able to offer protection to the airport while having a training opportunity for the types of urban conflicts that Marines are likely to find themselves increasingly involved in.

In addition, the Marines could use the new airport for quick deployment around the world. With a couple of commandeered jumbo jets you could land a thousand Marines anyplace in the world in a matter of a few hours.

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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 390

MORE TERROR IN BARRIO WESTSIDE

The Return to Reason almost-daily Daily Pilot is reporting that a man was hit over the head and robbed on Wallace Ave. near Center Street Monday night. LINK

According to the Pilot, the only description released by the CMPD was that the attackers were three males in their late teens or early 20's and had shaved heads.

Now, why do you suppose the CMPD didn't release a better description? What do you think? Maybe it was three Swedes? Three Chinese?

The CM PRESS will monitor CMPD press releases, and we'll let you know if better descriptions are eventually given.

In the meantime, the CMPD might look for their suspects at one of the "gang-prevention" charities in Barrio Westside.
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CM PRESS # 389

ENDANGERED ILLEGAL ALIEN ORDINANCE

COSTA ANA--2010--Return to no-Reason candidates now control the City Council.

One of the first things they do, after changing the name of the city to Costa Ana, to indicate that the city is the sister city of Santa Ana, is pass the Endangered Illegal Alien Ordinance to restore the illegal alien habitat on the Westside and make it a permanent Barrio

New No-Reason Councilmember Ms. Krazy Katlady, in an exclusive interview with the CM PRESS, said that in the recent past too many citizens of the old Costa Mesa had been polarizing the issue and they were helping destroy the habitat of illegal aliens in our city. "We're all stakeholders," said Ms. Katlady.

"Before these divisive citizen activists started improving the Westside," Ms. Katlady continued, "the area had many wonderful slums and teemed with illegal aliens. It was a wonderful and amazing sight. It was a real Barrio."

"Every time I drove to the Westside from my home in Mesa Verde, I felt a real thrill about the humanity of it. Now, there are too many citizens living on the Westside and fixing up their homes and demanding even more changes. They're gentrifying the area so it'll be like Mesa Verde. I call that mean, racist and divisive.

"Look, if citizens want good schools, they should just send their kids to private schools as many of my neighbors in Mesa Verde have done. And, if they don't want gangs and crime and graffiti and lower than they should be home prices, they should move out of Barrio Westside. These citizens should know their place and they should stay in their place and not be uppity.

"Before I became involved in this important issue, I spent most of my time rescuing stray cats. They're so cute and helpless. They're my children. They need me and give meaning to my otherwise meaningless yuppie life.

"Now I rescue illegal aliens and take care of them. They're so cute and helpless. Next to my cats, I love them best. They also help give meaning to my otherwise meaningless yuppie life.

"The illegal aliens look up to me so much, when I give them free bags of groceries from the trunk of my Bentley, that it brings tears of joy to my eyes. Why, they even have a pet name for me. They call me Gringa Tonto. Tee hee, tee hee. I think that means Beautiful White Princess.

"Yes, I am the reincarnation of an Indian Princess even though I have hateful blond hair and blue eyes. In my prior life as an Indian Princess I was known as Princess Buffalo Patootie.

"Anyway, in the past, in Barrio Westside, there used to be glorious lines of illegal aliens up and down Placentia Avenue soliciting work from drivers of cars stopped at traffic signals.

"And, the many amazing and wonderful charities had lines out the doors. Inside the charities, the nice Great White Mothers and Great White Fathers from Mesa Verde, the Eastside and Newport Beach were handing out free bags of groceries, rent checks, providing free medical and dental care, and giving out free clothes to illegal aliens.

"And, because of all the good work of the GWMs and GWFs, more and more needy illegal aliens came to Barrio Westside. There are many needy people on earth, and we wanted to bring them all to Barrio Westside where we could mother them and still be able to commute back to our own homes when the sun went down.

"Then, the terror struck. Citizens started demanding that the old City Council actually enforce our laws. I could see the fear on the faces of the illegal aliens as they hid in the shadows instead of being fine upstanding illegal alien citizens of Costa Ana.

"Why, no human is illegal. We're all citizens, even illegal aliens. It was a horrible and dark time. Homes were being painted, streets were being cleaned, graffiti was being removed, illegal aliens were being turned over to ICE for deportation. It was the worst kind of oppression.

"Now that we have a progressive majority on the City Council, we intend to restore the habitat of illegal aliens in Barrio Westside. We are planning on erecting permanent signs at 19th and Harbor and some other intersections, indicating the area is now officially known as: "BARRIO WESTSIDE."

"We are going to remove the invasive species--citizens--so the illegal alien habitat, Barrio Westside, can be protected and restored so that illegal alien citizens can live free of the terror of hearing an English word on the streets.

"The Eastside and Mesa Verde are the proper habitats for this invasive species, so they should all move there or they should move out of Costa Ana.

"Of course, members of the invasive species are welcome to visit Barrio Westside to support the roach coaches, the taco stands, the shoe stores the wedding dress stores and similar businesses, just as though they're tourists in Tijuana.

"They should just dress up in loud Bermuda shorts with clashing shirts and visit Barrio Westside and practice their Spanish. I mean, we want these touristas from other parts of Costa Ana to support the local economy of Barrio Westside.

"As part of the ordinance, we're going to ensure that no one builds any expensive homes on the Westside Bluffs or removes any slum buildings. This would erode our efforts to restore the illegal alien sanctuary."

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CM PRESS # 388

COSTA MESA ICE STATS FOR MAY 2008

Total Booked 468

Total Interviewed by ICE 113

Total Detainers Issued 44

% Interviewed by ICE to Bookings 24%

% Detainers to Bookings 9%

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COSTA MESA ICE STATS FOR MAY 2007

Total Booked 484

Total Interviewed by ICE 252

Total Detainers Issued 53

% Interviewed by ICE to Bookings 52%

% Detainers to Bookings 10%

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EL CAMINO CENTER UPDATE

As of this morning, the only building left standing on the El Camino Shopping Center site is the gas station.

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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

CM PRESS # 387

NEW JOB CENTER?
(Plan carefully, watch the details, have a bailout ready)

PROBLEMS WITH THE LAST JOB CENTER

1. It was on the Westside for far too long (17 years) and helped keep the area downscale. It was also part of the illegal alien "Barrio" infrastructure that some brown racists and their enablers wanted (and still want) the Westside to be turned into. They saw/see the Westside as an exclusively Latino city within a city.

2. Illegal aliens used the center. ID was not properly checked. The CM PRESS went undercover and stood in line with day workers one day. We wrote about this a couple of years ago. We could have written a phony ID card with crayon on a bubblegum wrapper saying we were Speedy Gonzalez and we would have been approved.

3. Approximately 50% of the employers were from Newport Beach (we checked the stats), yet only Costa Mesa citizens paid for it (in more ways than one).

4. It acted as a magnet for day workers from all over the county. Once they were here and saw how welcoming Costa Mesa was, many probably decided to move into the nearby slums. You may recall that a long time Daily Pilot employee was stabbed to death by an illegal alien who was living in the Shalimar slum and who presumably was finding work at the job center down the block.

5. Day workers still loitered on our streets and in parking lots looking for work.

6. It served as a communication center for illegal aliens who learned about non-profits in the city that would help them move to Costa Mesa, would help pay their rent, would help pay their utilities, would provide day care for their children, would give them free medical and dental care, would give them free bags of groceries, would give them free clothes.

IF A NEW JOB CENTER IS OPENED:

1. Put it at the end of East 17th Street near Newport Beach's Dover Shores. An attempt to put it there should be funny to watch as the NIMBYs who want the Westside to be a Barrio, scream and yell about not wanting their neighborhood being turned into a Barrio.

Remember, the old job center was on W. 17th and near the Newport Beach border and employers from that city, so E. 17th makes a lot of sense. It's the same street and just as close to Newport Beach employers.

2. Make sure that those who use it can prove they have a legal right to work in the U.S.

3. Pass the cost on to the workers and their employers, not the citizens of Costa Mesa.

4. Don't sign any long term leases on the property, so we can bail out if it doesn't work. And, if we do open a new job center, plan on rotating it around the city every couple of years so that no one neighborhood is unduly impacted.

5. This time, be sure the CMPD will actually enforce our laws and cite those who still seek work on our streets and from parking lots. And, if those cited can't show proof of citizenship, make sure the cops bring them to be interviewed by the ICE agent.

6. Don't let the job center undergo a mission creep to offer classes in English, etc.

7. Make sure the job center is a bare bones operation.

8. Be sure any new municipal codes are for a proper purpose, such as safety.

POSSIBLE LEGAL CHALLENGES

The legal challenges to cities and their municipal codes involving work solicitation and loitering are all based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as it has been interpreted by case law.

Basically, under current law, you can't simply tell people that they can't stand around and look for work anyplace in a city.

If you want to tell people that they can't stand around and look for work on streets and in parking lots, then there needs to be a "reasonable time, place and manner," for them to find work. In this context, this usually means some sort of job center.

Costa Mesa should have no problem with the "reasonable time," and "reasonable manner" requirements, because the City has experience from the old job center in meeting these requirements.

However, the "reasonable place," requirement is more knotty and is where the legal fight (expect one) will likely take place.

Such a legal fight might look a little like this: A day worker, cited by the CMPD for looking for work on a street corner or parking lot, will sue the city saying that he tried the new job center, but that not enough employers are using it--which indicates that it is not a reasonable place. So, to get work, this worker has gone back to where he has a chance of being hired--a street corner or parking lot.

Before a new job center is opened, we hope the City Council will consider all of the above and will make sure the legal work is done correctly.

We also hope that Mayor Bever is not being stampeded into doing something rash as a result of the false praise being heaped on him by the Return to Reason crowd who want the Westside to become a permanent Latino Barrio.

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CM PRESS # 386

THE STATE OF OUR CITY

(Turn away from the shoals Cap'n)

The ability of some people to see negative statistics about our city and simply shrug them off as though they're an aberration, or not see them as symptoms of a larger problem, and look at them as though they're just isolated problems not connected to anything else, never ceases to amaze me.

How much of a pattern must one see to understand that it is a pattern?

The latest negative stats involve our two high schools which have now been ranked down in the cellar with the worst high schools in the county.

Of 63 high schools in Orange County, Estancia was ranked at 51 and Costa Mesa at 58. And, those aren't golf scores, folks. The worst high school in the county was Century in Santa Ana, which came in dead last at 63.

The sad truth is that the problem with our high schools is not a school district or a school or a teacher problem. And it is not a problem that can be solved by concentrating on "fixing" the schools.

The low rankings are just symptoms of a larger disease. These rankings are to our city what a bump on the skin is to skin cancer. We have a city problem. That's what needs to be fixed. Fix it, and the bump will go away.

The fact is that schools are ranked good or bad based on how well or how poorly the students do on standardized tests. If a city sends students to the school who don't test well, then the school is ranked accordingly.

And, Costa Mesa is sending too many students to our schools who are doing poorly on tests.

So, what does this have to do with Costa Mesa, generally?

Just this. So long as Costa Mesa remains an ersatz illegal alien sanctuary city with a seeming wish to become a new Santa Ana, we are going to have failing schools, high crime, loitering day workers, lower than they should be home values, gangs, graffiti, abandoned shopping carts and all the badges of slum cities.

Instead of fixing these problems, our City Council continues to put bandaids on them. And, folks, we're running out of room for bandaids.

The patient is now covered with them. Abandoned shopping carts? Hey, put the bandaid of paying $40,000 per year to have a service pick them up. Graffiti? Why, pay more than $ 200,000 per year to cover it up. Gangs? Hire more and more gang police officers. And so it goes.
We're constantly covering up the problems instead of solving them.

And, the maddening thing about this is that Costa Mesa should be trending more like our traditional slightly prettier sister city of Newport Beach instead of like Santa Ana.

But, dear reader, you're sharp as a tack and you're saying, okay so why are we the way we are and what do we do about it if we don't like it?

The answer is simple.

Our City Council has to stop hiding in the tall grass and needs to start doing the things that have not been done by prior City Councils. It needs to cure the disease. And, specifically, what are some of the major things that have to be done to turn our city around?

--We have to break the stranglehold of the mostly out of town industrialists who are holding 60 plus acres of ocean close Westside Bluffs land captive to downscale industrial uses so that land can rise to its highest and best use for homes that will attract upwardly mobile people back to our city. As these high achievers put their kids in our schools, our school scores will go up.

--We have to break apart the over concentration of slum buildings and start meeting our state mandated affordable housing requirements by building modern affordable housing to replace our present sardine-can, barracks style, functionally obsolete deteriorating apartments--our version of the projects--that are over crowded breeding grounds for gangs and crime.

--We have to pull in all the welcome mats for illegal aliens. This means, in part, that we have to stop funding charities with tax payer funds that are acting as magnets for illegal aliens and which supply them with everything from free medical and dental care to free bags of groceries.

There's more that could be written, but they are mostly lesser included things of the above that a competent City Council will automatically do, if the Council keeps its collective hands on the rudder and starts steering our city away from the shoals that loom ever closer.

Doubt that we're heading for the shoals? Go back and read about our low High School scores. Do you need to feel the salt spray from the waves crashing against the rocks to understand that's where we're heading?

I've used some terminology of the sea for a purpose. Costa Mesa is a coastal community. We should never forget this, and we should use this geographic fact to help our city improve. Once again, that means we need homes on our close to the ocean Westside Bluffs--not factories.

Costa Mesa is not a landlocked inner city with little going for it, and we should stop acting as though it is.
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ARTISTS SPUR GENTRIFICATION IN THE BRONX (ARE YOU LISTENING, COSTA MESA?)

LINK

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MAYOR BEVER ON THE RIGHT TRACK WITH NEWPORT BEACH

The CM PRESS has long believed that Costa Mesa and Newport Beach should cooperate on just about everything.

We see the two cities as natural sister cities and we believe that almost every link between the two cities can provide benefits to both cities.

So, we were pleased to read that Costa Mesa's Mayor Bever and Newport's Mayor Selich are working together on a possible sports complex on the Westside Bluffs. LINK

Politics is a people business. Building relationships of trust and friendship (and, we're just assuming that this is what is developing between Mr. Bever and Mr. Selich) can only, in our specific situation in Costa Mesa, benefit the citizens of our city as we try to make Costa Mesa a nicer place to live.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.