Letter to the Editor -- Christian Eric

Bravo, Byron de Arakal. As he is one of the few who seems to have a

clear take on our fair city’s central problem(s), de Arakal’s column

(“Merrily on our way to nowhere at all,” April 3) captures the essence of

what most “improvers” have been vilified for even suggesting.

Our Costa Mesa City Council is truly leaderless, stumbling, bumbling

along, while issuing irrelevant proclamations and publicly patting each

other on the back during City Council meetings for “a job well done,”

while the citizenry wearily waits into the wee hours of the morning to

address relevant problems in hopes of finding real solutions.

Somehow the council remains oblivious to the fact that new Councilman

Chris Steel was elected by the largest majority of voters of any of the

present council. His election was a clear message indicating the public’s

displeasure with current leadership. Now he appears to be viewed by the

other four council members as not just a dissenting voice, but generally,

a pain in their collective neck.

Apparently they fail to sense the impending avalanche in the next

election, which will continue to show the citizens’ exasperation with

this council’s inability to help them actually and substantively improve

our city. Leadership appears to have taken a backseat to pandering to

social programs that do more to benefit outsiders.

We are not xenophobic, we just wish we could be prouder of our city.

Those “down on their luck” who appear on our doorstep from heaven knows

where have more value to our city leaders than the hard-working citizens

who have lived their lives in Costa Mesa and would see it become a

first-class city and not continue its fractured and crumbling descent.

By perpetuating a Job Center that is potentially hazardous to our

city’s financial well-being and because it exists on such tenuous legal

grounds, this council issues its own form of negative challenge to us

all: Can’t we do better than this?

We’ll see, come November.

CHRISTIAN ERIC

Costa Mesa