I tried watching the entire city council meeting Tuesday night, but it was too damn long. Does that make me a bad person? As anyone who has seen the men who sit on our city council know, bad is a relative word. Besides, what can I say that Chris hasn’t already said! My hats off to you Chris. Not only did you watch the entire thing, you wrote your blog and had it up first thing in the morning. You the man.
To be fair, I did watch about 3 hours of it (Click Here for the entire Video). Not since “Renaldo and Clara” have I sat for so long to watch so much endless drama that ended with a dull thud. In spite of a balanced budget, the lay offs are still on. In my statistics loving fashion, I kept score during public comments. They went on for over 1 1/2 hours. The score was pro layoff folks 3, against the layoff folks TWENTY.
Many speakers were very emotional. Forgive me in advance anyone who’s name I misspell. Perry Valentine referred to what Bever, Righeimer, Mensinger and Monahan are doing to our city as a “hostile take over.” That is a perfect way to put it. I call it, “gutting the city with no regard to what the citizens want.” In Righeimer’s own words, “We don’t care how we look to anybody.”
Greg Cannal spoke so elegantly, as he has done in every meeting that I have watched. This is truly a committed citizen. He said, “If anyone in the press wants to quote me, I want them to know that the Costa Mesa paramedics and fire dept saved my wife’s life by getting her to Hoag Hospital in 5 minutes. That is a fact.” It may seem like a small statement in the big picture of the union busting and totalitarian rule we have going on in this city, but I think it is THE statement. We will all suffer when we lose our city workers. We are suffering now. There isn’t an hour in the day that I don’t think about this situation at least once, and it horrifies me. I have lived here 33 years, and it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to our city. This city council is the worst thing that has ever happened to our city.
People will tell you a lot about themselves if you listen. Righeimer’s words spoke volumes. But as usual, Mensinger said something during the meeting that I found chilling. It wasn’t just what he said, but the way he said it. During a discussion about having a police officer on duty full time at Estancia , and talk about the safety of the school, he assured the crowd that Estancia is a safe school and that he had not heard of any fights there. Then with a smile and a proud twinkle in his eye, he boasted, “When I went to school there were only 2 or 3 fights. I was involved in a couple of them.” Mensinger is clearly proud of being a bully. He certainly is good at it.
I predict that their careers in Costa Mesa will end when their terms are up. It would be satisfying to believe that they are done here if I didn’t know that their true agenda is not just to demolish our city, but to further their own political careers and aspirations. I can only hope they don’t accomplish their goal. I don’t know if the damage they will have done can ever be repaired.
“The score was pro layoff folks 3, against the layoff folks TWENTY.”
Kathy – The score that counts is the vote of citizens to elect their representatives to the council.
Kathy,
I only made it up to 11 something when the vote gutting our excellent police force came. Then I was too tired and disgusted to stay.
Bullies- 1 Costa Mesa- 0. It’s a long game though.
Hi Kathy, very nice article. You know, your friend is wrong about Claire McKaskill. She sent out an email to her supporters/constituents BEFORE the health care vote and an overwhelming majority said they wanted her to vote FOR the HCR act. I know this because I received the email and participated in the survey/poll she took. (I HATE when people call it Obamacare).
Just like with the damage Bush did, this damage in Costa Mesa will be very hard to reverse.
Good commentary and Costa Mesa has now exceeded Irvine as a City Council out of control. The big question is can the City survive until the term of the “Four Musketeers” expire? Seems like the momentum is present for a mass recall effort. Is anyone considering getting it started?
I haven’t heard anything, but it would be my dream. Is it possible to to recall four out of five councilmen??
$1000.00 per hour ($8000.00 per 8 hour shift) to run a helicopter program that buzzed my neighborhood at 7:30pm at night 50 to 100 feet over my roof, so loud that it shook the rafters. People were coming out of thier apartments to see if the copter was crashing. So low that I could see the white cooling fan on the bottom of the copter. I kid you not. No job, No Money, No job creation, Cannot pay my bills.