READERS RESPOND

AT ISSUE: A Daily Pilot editorial sparked debate from readers who say

council members should be free to hire assistants (“It’s a tough job

councilmen, but you need to do it,” Dec. 16).

A major concern in both the editorial and Lucille Kuehn’s letter

(“Mailbag: Council members should do their own jobs, “ Dec. 16) is that

an aide would come between constituent and council member. Kuehn added

the charge that it would be “a dereliction of duty to delegate . . .

responsibility to a non-elected aide” and punctuated her disapproval by

quoting Harry Truman’s “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the

kitchen.”

The same Harry S. Truman, though, had a sign on his desk with the

promise, “The Buck Stops Here.” Truman, an old Army officer and business

owner, recognized that you can’t delegate responsibility, you can only

delegate the authority to get something done. Locally, we will expect

council members to remain on the hook for everything.

While I am not worried that an aide would lessen my access to council

members, I am concerned about population growth and the pace of life

affecting my access. As Newport Beach and Costa Mesa have grown, our

council members’ attention has become excessively fractionated. Consider

that, at incorporation, Costa Mesa had five council members for a

population of only 17,000. Back in 1953, there was time to gather ‘round

the cracker barrel. In addition, laws and regulations were far fewer.

There was no Brown Act. Mom stayed home with the kids.

We still have the same number of council members, but Costa Mesa’s

population has grown to about 105,000. And we’re on Internet time: We

have cell phones grafted to our ears as we race through red lights to get

to that next appointment we’re late for. If there were any cracker

barrels left, we wouldn’t have time for them. For these reasons alone,

it’s not possible for council members to have the same quality of

connection with constituents that they had 50 years ago. Further, it’s

not realistic to expect the council to serve six times as many residents

as the original council did and still make a living and have a life.

So, shall we have 30 council members to keep the same

constituent-council member ratio? We needn’t do anything so drastic. Five

full-time aides would significantly help our five council members keep in

touch. Aides could perform field representation functions that we are

familiar with from our dealings with legislators at state and federal

levels. They would do only the tasks for which authority could safely be

delegated.

For this to work, an aide’s first loyalty must be to the council

member. Consequently, aides would need to be political appointees of the

elected politicians, not civil service staff members borrowed from City

Hall.

I support the Costa Mesa tradition of council members being in close

touch with their constituents. To make this possible in the light of

modern day realities, though, I believe it’s time for us to pay for a

full-time aide for each council member.

TOM EGAN

Costa Mesa

The Pilot got it wrong in the editorial by criticizing Councilmen Gary

Proctor and John Heffernan for suggesting a needed improvement to the

efficiency of the City Council.

The vast majority of governmental bodies pay for staff for their

legislators. That frees the legislators to concentrate on policy and

major issues.

We need Gary Proctor because of his airport expertise. He should be

working on this very important issue for the major part of the time he

can devote to the city, while letting some assistant handle routine

administration.

We need John Heffernan because he is the only Greenlight candidate

dedicated to Measure S and immediate practical action to preserve

residents’ quality of life. We should free him up from mundane

administration so he can spend all the time he can devoted to the city to

supporting residents’ issues.

Otherwise, council members are so inundated with minutiae that they

must at times blindly accept whatever the city staff recommends. For

example, buried in the consent calendar of the last City Council meeting

was an item to support an extension of [the Orange Freeway]. Dr. Jan

Vander Sloot opposed it in public testimony because it could impact our

water quality and hadn’t been adequately studied. The council members,

who had had insufficient time to study it themselves, then voted for the

needed study.

Why did 63% of the voters vote a low confidence in the previous City

Council by supporting Measure S? Those council members had no staff

assistants, handled their own calls, and yet were still out of touch with

the vast majority of the voters!

This is not to say that councilmen should not maintain close

communications with the public. But let’s permit assistants to sort out

the calls that need their immediate attention and handle routine

administration so that they can devote quality time to public interaction

and thoroughly study major policy issues.

So the present system is not performing adequately, yet the Pilot

wants us to retain it. I say these two public servants are correct and

doing us a service by making efficiency improvement suggestions.

PHILIP ARST

Newport Beach

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Philip Arst is a community activist who is a

co-founder of Greenlight and an officer of the Airport Working Group. He

states that this is his personal opinion and not necessarily that of

these organizations.