Costa Mesa’s Holiday Card to Employees is a Layoff Notice Extension

Costa Mesa CEO Tom Hatch, Photo: Chris Prevatt
Costa Mesa CEO Tom Hatch, Photo: Chris Prevatt

COSTA MESA — When it comes to CEO Tom Hatch and the good old boys on the Costa Mesa City Council, their callousness is demonstrated with unbridled enthusiasm. As many city workers begin to receive their holiday greeting cards, they found a letter over the weekend from CEO Tom Hatch just in time for the holidays.

The purpose of the letter was to notify city workers who received layoff notices on March 17, 2011 of the status of the last layoff notice they received back in the beginning of September. That  notice extended the projected date for layoffs to November 19th. This latest letter attempts to extend that notice to March 10, 2012 as the earliest possible date for layoffs due to outsourcing. This is 7 days shy of the one year anniversary of the initial release of the mass layoff notices.  Hatch states in his letter:

“To date, the city has not issued any outsourcing contracts; however, the possibility that the services will be outsourced still continues to exist. At this point in time, no layoffs will occur due to contracting out before March 10, 2012.”

Orange County Employees Association General Counsel Don Drozd responded to Hatch with a letter of his own. He pointed out that “the contractually required six-month layoff notification cannot be transformed, as now undertaken by the City, into a perpetual layoff notification.” Drozd reminds Hatch in his letter that “contracting out City services to non-public entities or consequential layoffs of Association-represented members would place the City in contempt of the Orange County Superior Court Preliminary Injunction.”

Drozd closes with:

“This most recent act by the city is yet another in a long series of direct and indirect attacks on its loyal and committed workforce. Coming at the beginning of the holiday season, it again demonstrates the total disrespect with which the council majority and CEO hold city employees and their families. We will continue to use all available means to oppose the city’s radical agenda.”

But wait, there’s more!

Councilman Jim Righeimer - Costa Mesa, Photo: Chris Prevatt

And if that isn’t enough, on the City Council Agenda for tonight is Councilman Jim Righeimer’s charter city proposal, which is only necessary, from Righeimer’s perspective, because it would allow the City to go around state law and outsource at will. The bottom line for Righeimer and his sycophants on the council is to Change the Rules so they can cram their radical agenda down the throats of city residents under the guise of “more local control.” The blatant power-grab scheme was probably scribbled out on bar napkins in Mayor Monahans pub. Usually such proposals are drafted by citizen commissions rather than by Council members trying to usurp state laws to facilitate a radical political agenda.

The Orange County Register has more details here; the Daily Pilot here.

Happy Holidays!

3 Comments

  1. Sounds like The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse are trying to beat the clock before they get voted out of town. It also sounds like they are trying to drive city workers out by making them so overwhelmed with a lack of job security that most will move on. They have made this city a political war zone. I hope their Tea Bagger class war blows up in their faces at the end of it all.

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