City’s legal limbo sheds light on upcoming election

Geoff West

Doug Sutton’s Christmas Eve commentary, “City attorney turmoil

requires bold action,” addressing the abysmal way our elected

officials bungled the former City Atty. Jerry Scheer affair,

chronicled for all of us the missteps our leaders took as they

stumbled through this process on our behalf. The poor judgment used

in this whole debacle shakes one’s faith in our leaders to no small

degree. You know things are bad when Councilman Chris Steel comes out

of this situation looking like the voice of reason, for goodness

sakes.

The poor judgment used by Mayor Gary Monahan in his

post-settlement comments have apparently caused Scheer to reconsider

the $750,000 amount agreed to, so he has re-filed his case and is

getting a running start at the city coffers once again. I’m not for a

minute stating that he was not entitled to compensation for the

purported misdoings of the then City Council -- quite the contrary.

Painful as this whole situation has been for all involved, it could

have -- and should have -- been resolved by now.

I don’t agree with Sutton’s proposal that the individual council

members involved -- past and present -- should not be defended by the

city. As emotionally appealing as watching these people stew in their

own juices might be to some people, it is not a good solution for the

residents of this city. It is, obviously, difficult enough to attract

dedicated, intellectually mature, hard-working people to the arena of

public service without leaving them virtually naked in a snowstorm,

without city support and protection as they go about trying to do the

city’s business.

With less than a year left before we -- the registered voters of

Costa Mesa -- have an opportunity to determine the future of this

city by electing a new majority on the City Council, it is not too

early to begin to assess the candidates as they surface. The

jockeying has already begun, as witnessed by recent appointments of

potential candidates to city commissions. Now is the time for us to

begin paying close attention not only to the public utterances of

potential candidates, but to their actions, as well.

We need to be aware of their associations and try to understand

their underlying motives as they toss their hats in the ring. Are

their goals to serve all the people of this city or only a

disgruntled few? The last time we allowed that kind of fear-based

emotion to influence our decisions in the voting booth it resulted in

Steel being elected. We cannot afford to make that same kind of

mistake again.

Hard as it may be to believe, there are actually more frightening

potential candidates for public office than Steel. There are those

who may be considering a run for a council seat who have demonstrated

an underpinning of intolerance that could tear this city apart and

expose it to sanctions from both state and federal government

agencies.

Further exacerbating this problem is the new policy, approved by

the City Council last spring, which permits each council member to

appoint -- virtually unopposed -- a hand-picked choice for both the

Planning and Parks and Recreation commissions. This means that the

philosophy held by a narrow-minded majority on the council could be

carried down through these commissions -- the members of which serve

exclusively at the pleasure of their appointing council member. The

potential for long-term damage to this city is almost impossible to

overstate.

As I have stated before, now may be the time for this city to

consider election of council members by district rather than

at-large. A council dominated by a geographically-related majority,

with only the interests of a small section of this city at the

forefront of their plans, will not serve all the residents of this

city well.

The election is only 11 short months away.

* GEOFF WEST is a Costa Mesa resident and regular contributor to

the Pilot.