City Council meetings: must-see TV

OK, those of you out there who do not subscribe to Comcast Cable,

drop what you’re doing, pick up the phone and call them right now.

No, not so you can get HBO, although “The Sopranos” and “Deadwood”

are worth the price. You need to get cable so you can pick up channel

24 and watch the best show on TV this summer -- the never-ending

drama of the Costa Mesa City Council Meetings.

Perhaps the best recent example of this soap opera were the

deliberations on the 2004-05 budget last Monday night. This one was

worth the price of a cable connection alone.

Those of us who hung in there until after 11 p.m. were treated to

the first split vote on the adoption of a budget in recent memory,

when Mayor Pro Tem Allan Mansoor and Councilman Chris Steel voted

“no” -- one of the few times that night they agreed on something.

This inexplicable display of pique and disunity was preceded by

Mansoor and Steel having a little running spat on the dais. I

half-expected them to begin throwing spit wads at each other, so

juvenile was the display between them.

What a team.

It’s hard for me to understand -- after all the meetings and study

sessions and with the mountain of data provided by Finance Director

Marc Puckett and his staff -- how this crew could still have so much

difficulty addressing those items before them without resorting to

such junior-high-school behavior.

Of course, it is an election year and it is possible that Steel

might actually try to retain his seat in November. I guess some

sniping is to be expected, particularly since he’s proven to be such

an unpredictable and unreliable ally for Mansoor and his other

Westside pals. The term “loose cannon” comes to mind

One of the few bright moments during this show came near the end,

in the council-member comments section, when Councilman Mike Scheafer

admonished himself and his fellow council members and urged the

council to do a better job avoiding the expenditure of staff time and

energy on frivolous appeals of Planning Commission decisions, using

the appeal Steel had brought forward regarding the St. Joachim

Catholic Church expansion as an example.

While I agree with Scheafer on this issue in general, had it been

followed in the 1901 Newport debacle, we would now be staring at an

even larger and even more inappropriate development at that location

than the one recently approved.

Maybe it’s time to consider requiring two council members to

approve submission of an appeal. Or, maybe it’s time for

consideration of a change in the ordinance governing appeals -- to

raise the fee for an appeal to more fully cover the costs, but

provide for a full or partial refund of the fees charged in the event

it is upheld.

In the meantime, the drama on the dais continues.

So, as homework for you voters out there, I hereby give you the

assignment of watching future City Council, Planning Commission and

Parks and Recreation Commission meetings until November, either in

person or on channel 24, so you can see many of our potential council

candidates in action.

There will be a test this fall. It’s called an election. Besides,

it certainly beats anything else on TV this summer -- except, maybe,

the Olympic Games in August.

GEOFF WEST

Costa Mesa