I received this press release from Mark Rosen’s people:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 11, 2007Contact: Mark Rosen
714.285.9838 office
714.319.6029 cellMARK ROSEN SELECTED TO CHAIR
IMPORTANT OCTA COMMITTEECarolyn Cavecche, newly elected Orange County Transportation Authority chairperson, announced today that she has appointed Garden Grove mayor pro tem Mark Rosen to be the new chairman of the Regional Planning and Highways Committee.
The Regional Planning and Highways Committee is the OCTA committee charged with all decisions regarding the county’s highways. The committee oversees the master planning for the county’s transportation system. The chairman automatically sits on the Executive Board of OCTA.
The Regional Planning and Highways committee has significant input on the expenditure of $11.9 billion in Measure M funds over the next thirty years.
As an OCTA member and Garden Grove Mayor Pro Tem, Rosen is known for his leadership for the 22 Freeway widening with additional lanes, sound walls, rubberized asphalt, and widened underpasses. He believes in allocating Measure M’s resources to the most populous areas of the county.
In his two years on the OCTA board, Rosen has emphasized protecting the residents in the central part of the county. This has included fighting for the widening of the Garden Grove Freeway, and protecting homes and businesses in Westminster from being taken for an expansion of the San Diego Freeway. Rosen has never been a rubber stamp for staff decisions. One noted commentator, “Jubal” of OC Blog, wrote in an entry on November 16, 2005: “I second Lurk’s nomination of Supervisor Chris Norby [for OCTA chair]. Garden Grove Councilman Mark Rosen is another bulldog who is skeptical of staff. Both would be good fits for the chairmanship.”
Speaking of OCTA directors, what happened to Costa Mesa Mayor Alan Mansoor. Appointed to the OCTA board by the League of Cities in November, he didn’t bother to show up at the December meeting when Amante and Glaab were sworn in, or the first meeting in January when the other new directors were sworn in. Has he even been sworn in yet?
What possesses guys like this to campaign for appointment, then slack off? Are there any consequences for this sloth?
Note to Mark: “Jubal” is Matt Cunningham. Bad form to write your own press release — looks like your tooting your own horn.
Anon:
It’s not Mansoor’s fault. The backstory is an interesting one I’ll be posting about shortly.
In the excitement of spending on GG 22 Fwy, Director Rosen should not ignore the failed performance of the promised design-build project supervised by Parsons. It is ironic that OCTA staff recommends awarding Phase 2 of the project virtually sole source to Parsons again. There are conflicts of interest in the selection of Parsons that should be independently investigated. The contracting industry has misgivings about OCTA’s procurement methods which fail the competitive goals established. For one, technical information was not shared to achieve free and open competition for Phase 2. Parsons had advantages ad incumbent for Phase 1. Second, Parsons was teamed with Granite on projects elsewhere, so how does the fox watch the henhouse? The public is paying for the delays and increases in costs out of ineffectual oversight by Parsons of Granite’s work.