Between the Lines -- Byron de Arakal

Usually, planning commissions impress me as exceptionally tedious and

unremarkable government contraptions. They’re necessary, of course, but

mundane. They’re prone to bolt tightening and tinkering and other humdrum

matters of the municipal state that in the ordinary course of events

fetch the interest of hardly anyone save for the poor slob wanting to

tack on a third bathroom. I mean, a farm club halfway between here and

Yuma has a bigger gate than most Planning Commission confabs.

But in Costa Mesa the times are anything but ordinary. And of late,

this hamlet’s Planning Commission is turning heads with its big bat and

its hefty rips at hanging curve balls. These folks are spitting tobacco

and grabbing at the supporter between pitches. They aren’t playing

T-ball.

That the current commission -- skippered by City Council candidate

Katrina Foley -- has taken to toting a big bat on turf where earlier

commissions rarely trod hasn’t been lost on City Hall insiders or plain

city folk tired of watching their town slide toward something resembling

South Central Los Angeles. And it’s certainly catching more than a glance

from residents who’d just as soon their government left them alone.

Among those taking notice is Costa Mesa Councilman Gary Monahan, whose

public calling on the carpet of the commission’s rather robust power grab

earned him a stiff mugging from Foley, Councilwoman Libby Cowan and Mayor

Linda Dixon at last week’s council gathering.

And Costa Mesa City Manager Allan Roeder -- who’s been in this town

almost longer than the Huscroft House and has huddled with a few planning

commissions in his day -- calls this flexing Planning Commission perhaps

the most active he’s seen in his 28 years with the city.

Roeder says the commission is distinguishing itself in two ways.

“Prior planning commissions did not have any real bent toward the

subject of quality of life,” Roeder said. “The current commission is very

focused on quality of life concerns and subscribes to the belief that

they should do more than simply act on projects brought before them.”

Plus, he added, Foley’s Planning Commission is much more focused on

residential neighborhood improvement, while past commissions entertained

themselves mostly with commercial planning issues.

“There are volumes [in the annals of past commissions] about sign

ordinances and banners and [conditional-use permits] regulating just

about everything there is when it comes to business,” Roeder said.

“Residential -- and especially R-1 residential -- has [historically] been

off limits. I don’t need to go into how that differs from our current

Planning Commission.”

Indeed, their rather dogged focus on residential planning issues are

why the current Planning Commission squad is being called everything for

“proactive” to “aggressive” to “out of control,” depending on whose ox is

being spared or gored.

Consider that in recent weeks the Planning Commission has been a

regulatory juggernaut as it both defends the bungalow charm of the city’s

Eastside neighborhoods while taking the offensive against festering

blight on the Westside. It’s kicked around the notion of stiffening city

laws governing the storage of inoperative cars and autos with expired

registrations, for instance. It scrapped the zoning overlay that has

permitted some 19th Street homeowners to operate commercial enterprises

from their homes for nearly 40 years now. And it has the city’s staff

scratching around the idea of a “view” ordinance, which could stop folks

from adding second stories to their homes if those additions crowd or

obliterate the existing views of others.

Just this week, the appointed body put the brakes to chain-link fences

in residential neighborhoods, a new ordinance that also requires

homeowners with existing chain-link barriers to hide them with

landscaping. And its most ambitious initiative -- the Coast Mesa

Cooperative Housing Improvement Program -- is in the middle of its

incubation. That one, in concept, would assess an annual fee on every

rental unit in the city to pay for mandatory citywide inspections and

rehabilitation of targeted substandard rental housing. They’ll be

deliberating over that one sometime in late July.

That the current Costa Mesa Planning Commission is throwing its weight

around City Hall and city neighborhoods is, by my measure, the clearest

symptom yet that this township’s live-and-let-live comportment and light

appetite for regulation are on the wane.

For scores of longtime residents made weary by the erosion and

urbanization of their neighborhoods, this is welcome news. For others --

lured to this community by its laissez-faire tint -- it means a bigger

rule book and less sovereignty.

Welcome to the big city.

* Byron de Arakal is a freelance writer and communications advisor. He

lives in Costa Mesa. He column appears Wednesdays. Readers can reach him

with news tips and comments via e-mail at o7 byronwriter@msn.comf7 .

Visit his web site ato7 www.byronwriter.comf7 .