Gary Monahan: Fighting for the live-and-let-live attitude

Lolita Harper

Gary Monahan never gets a break from his involvement with the

city.

As a local business owner, he deals with City Hall for various

licenses and regulations. As a homeowner and father of a growing

family, he will soon be going through the laborious process of

remodeling his home.

And every other Monday the incumbent councilman is on the dais at

City Hall making the decisions that affect his fellow entrepreneurs,

homeowners and neighbors.

“I deal with bureaucracy at every level possible, so it is really

personal to me to make sure that we treat people with respect and

work for them, not against them,” Monahan said.

Early in the campaign season, Monahan considered hanging up his

political hat but decided against it because of his desire to return

Costa Mesa to the friendly, live-and let-live environment it is known

for.

The city has gotten away from what makes it Costa Mesa, thanks to

the large push from a vocal minority that wants to turn it into a

planned community, Monahan said.

“Pretty planning documents don’t fit Costa Mesa, and they squeeze

too many of our longtime citizens and new families right out of the

ability to live here,” he said.

City Hall needs to recognize that, aside from unparalleled

retailers such as South Coast Plaza, small business and industrial

companies are the backbone of the city, Monahan said. The council

needs to work with local entrepreneurs to help them solve their

problems and accomplish their goals instead of regulating them right

out of business, he said.

“We need to have an attitude that supports growth, not one that

places 75 conditions on every small chain,” he said. “We need to use

common sense.”

City leaders have gotten into the bad habit of micro-managing

instead of looking at the whole picture, Monahan said, noting that

every decision that local officials make touches a very personal

aspect of someone’s life.

It has become much too easy to deny something, to place added

conditions on a project or to make a political statement that results

in a huge financial burden to the applicant, he said.

Monahan says voters can trust him to be straightforward and

consistent in his beliefs. If he believes in something he will not

waffle in the face of adverse public opinion or an editorial, he

said. Although he is committed to his views, Monahan does not lose

the ability to reason and compromise. He can keep his position on an

issue while working with the other side to accomplish a common goal,

he said.

“I understand the whole picture and where to go to get answers and

how to treat both sides of an issue with respect,” Monahan said.

“Instead of telling people, ‘you can’t, you can’t,’ we should be

working with them to find a way that they can.”