Costa Mesa must uphold its RV law

Costa Mesa Police officials began punishing violators of the

city’s new recreational vehicle law last week, and already, some RV

owners are complaining.

If it sounds familiar, it should.

The City Council began discussing the new rules for the vehicles

in December and, after months of working with residents and RV

owners, didn’t finalize the law until August. Now, nearly a year

later, the city has begun enforcing the law, only to draw complaints

from the same people who helped draft it.

City officials and council members worked long and hard on the new

law that, at the time, won over a vast majority of people. As a

result, unless there are major problems, the city must stick to its

law. Compromises were already made. Laws are not made to appease

those who break them.

RV owners this week complained that the new law is too strict and

that the city has yet to set up a hotline to handle requests for

24-hour parking extensions.

The city should set the hotline up as promised; however RV owners

need to work on their own habits to ensure they don’t violate the

law. Some owners have begun parking their RVs along the Costa Mesa

border in Newport Beach. That habit, too, needs to be broken, because

Newport Beach officials won’t put up with it for long.

RV owners now plan to go to the next City Council, which will have

Allan Mansoor instead of Mayor Linda Dixon, to ask that the law be

amended. It is like they are children playing Mom against Dad and

vice versa.

Rig owners simply need to do something else: abide by the law.

It’s new and it’s going to take time to get used to. Do you think

smokers stopped smoking cigarettes in bars immediately in January

1998? No, it took awhile -- after some legal crackdown.

And the new City Council -- Mansoor included -- must uphold this

law. Otherwise, it’s breaking its own law and undermining its own

authority.