BYRON DE ARAKAL -- Between the Lines

Clutter is an affliction most common among writers. With some of us,

only the brain is infected. In others, it is a disease that ravages the

office. With really gifted scribes, we often find clutter worming its

way around in both places. Now since clutter is generally not lethal to

the writer most writers wear their disease like a badge of honor. Clutter

is what writers do.

My office is cluttered with ideas scratched on Post-It notes stuck to

the walls. It’s littered with clipped news stories, City Council reports

and half a year’s worth of Maureen Dowd columns. I have three different

coffee mugs, each containing the beloved java juice in various states of

decay. By the way, did you know coffee takes on the consistency of maple

syrup the longer it sits? Now if I could just get it to ferment.

Dispensing with that rather windy aside, here’s the trouble. I have so

much clutter that I have no more room for new clutter. This means purging

is in order. So here we go.

You may have noticed in the pages of this fine newspaper in recent

weeks a rather indirect tete a tete between Costa Mesa City Councilman

Chris Steel and my column colleague, Steve Smith, over Steel’s insistence

that Costa Mesa is the “least safe big city in Orange County,” according

to the FBI. To date, the back and forth has been a contest of

generalities void of any statistical muscle.

Knowing that, I went wading through the 2000 crime statistics released

by the California Department of Justice and the population figures of the

2000 U.S. Census. Here’s what we have.

The FBI statistics show that 3,472 crimes were reported in Costa Mesa

in the year 2000. These include violent crimes, crimes against property,

larceny (theft) and arson. The 2000 U.S. Census placed Costa Mesa’s

population at 108,724 folks. Now the math will tell you that Costa Mesa

experienced .031 reported crimes for every Costa Mesa resident in 2000.

By comparison, Fullerton’s per capita reported crimes rate in 2000

came in at .032. So in pure numerical speak, Fullerton seems to be the

“least safe big city in Orange County” but not by much.

Costa Mesa’s .031 crimes per citizen rate for 2000 placed it in a tie

for second with Garden Grove (.031) and Santa Ana (.031). Anaheim

finished third with a .030 crimes per citizen. Just for grins, Orange had

a .026 rate, Huntington Beach turned in a .024 rate and Irvine a .022

rate. Newport Beach crime statistics were not available in the California

Justice Department Crime report.

Nevertheless, Costa Mesa did lead Orange County with the largest

percentage increase in property crimes in 2000, rising 6% over 1999 to

921 reported incidents of burglary and auto theft. And, in my book, I’m

not thrilled that Costa Mesa’s per capita crime rate is on par with Santa

Ana’s.

Note to City Council: Hire more cops.

Under the heading, “A Man’s Got To Know His Limitations,” the junk

drawer turns up the names of philanthropist-without-equal John Crean and

former Costa Mesa Mayor Bob Wilson.

Crean grabbed the above-the-fold headline in Saturday’s Daily Pilot

for his rather indelicate trial balloon regarding his interest in running

for what is assumed to be the soon-vacant U.S. House seat of Rep.

Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach). Said Crean: “It would be kind of a fun

thing to take a shot at something like that. If anyone would want a

75-year-old congressman.”

Now I’ve long admired Crean for his entrepreneurial moxie and his

unselfish heart. But, indeed, no one wants a 75-year-old congressman

given the blood battles that are going to erupt over reapportionment and

the shift of the El Toro debate to the national battleground. We need a

vibrant and experienced warrior with brass knuckles and bazookas. Crean

is simply too nice and too old.

As for former Costa Mesa Mayor Bob Wilson, one could only cringe with

the rest of the audience during his lengthy and mostly inconsequential

lecture on the city’s history during last Monday’s City Council

deliberations regarding annexation of Santa Ana Heights. Invited to make

a five-minute presentation by the City Council (a decision that was

apparently made at a study session and that seems -- at first blush -- to

run afoul of the Brown Act), the elderly Wilson careened through his

historied involvement in Costa Mesa for nearly 20 minutes. The audience

and several council members visibly squirmed in wonderment of his point.

Even as Wilson meandered, Mayor Libby Cowan and Councilman Gary Monahan

were seen quietly chewing out one another behind the dais.

No one appreciates more than I Bob Wilson’s founding contributions to

Costa Mesa and the high stature he holds in the community. But a man’s

got to know his limitations.

Finally, this from Balboa Islands’s Thomas A. Butterworth: “Now that

the county has $5 million to promote El Toro, I think I know a way to use

part of it far more effectively than mailers. Remember the flight

demonstration tests? Maybe some of those aircrafts landed at the wrong

field. Perhaps a 747 cannot safely land at JWA in its present

configuration but a 747 could surely fly the (JWA approach) pattern in a

simulated landing. It would overfly all those cities only marginally

affected by current operations at JWA, the same cities that supported

Measure F. I think that as few as five such approaches would make

individuals in at least eight cities think more than twice about

supporting Son-of-Measure-F next March.”

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a writer and communications consultant. He lives

in Costa Mesa. Readers can reach him with news tips and comments via

e-mail at o7 byronwriter@msn.comf7 .