After months of hard work, a job well done by Westside study
Geoff West
I attended the meeting of the Costa Mesa Redevelopment Agency in
October, during which the Westside Revitalization Oversight Committee
presented the product of more than a year’s labor.
One cannot help but be impressed by the dedication and tenacity of
those members of the committee who stuck it out though the duration
of this assignment and managed to present the agency with a final
report supported unanimously by the membership of the committee.
This is even more impressive when you consider that some members
have been through several different versions of this process over
many years, most recently as members of the now-defunct Community
Redevelopment Action Committee.
Now the city staff must develop an implementation plan for review
by the agency after comment by the oversight committee. At that
point, the agency will decide whether the sledgehammer of eminent
domain will be necessary to implement some of the recommendations.
This decision will fall in the laps of the new Redevelopment Agency
-- the City Council in a fancy dress -- sometime after the first of
the year.
I, personally, found it interesting that the recommendation for a
study of a bridge over the Santa Ana River at 19th Street was, once
again, cast aside. It’s easy to second-guess this decision -- such a
study seems integral to any serious attempt to revitalize the
Westside. I felt sympathy for long time bridge-study advocate Robert
Graham when agency member Libby Cowan, as she presented certificates
of appreciation to the committee members, referred to him as “Robert
‘Bridge’ Graham.” Although he accepted it graciously, I found myself
wondering if she might just have been rubbing his nose in the fact
that consideration of a bridge study was rejected again.
As an aside, by my count there were around 75 people in attendance
at this meeting. Once you sort out the city staff, agency members,
city council candidates and oversight committee members, my guess is
that there were around 10 residents, fewer depending on how you count
representatives of developers salivating at the thought of getting a
piece of the Westside pie. The only Latino faces I saw were those of
oversight committee members, an interesting fact when you consider
that it has been estimated that more than 60% of Westside residents
are Latino. As the meeting unfolded, I found myself wondering if
those approximately 30,000 people have a clue about what might be
happening to their lives if the recommendations of this report are
implemented in full. My guess is probably not.
Congratulations to the oversight committee volunteers for a job
well done on a difficult task. There are those who, when the
committee began their work more than a year ago, would have bet on
failure. Somehow they managed to forge consensus even though they
represented a very diverse group of viewpoints. I suspect this
process was not as painless as some might have you believe. And they
did it without the help of high-priced facilitators. Good for them.
I look forward to seeing what action, if any, will occur in a few
months. This will certainly be among the biggest challenges facing
our new City Council, so we can only hope that the election this
month has given us the right blend skills and personalities on the
City Council to move forward with this issue to the satisfaction of
all parties concerned.
* EDITOR’S NOTE: Geoff West is a Costa Mesa resident.
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