City Council did what was truly just

Ron Davis

I guess it’s time for a small rant. This rant du jour is aimed at

those who wrote letters to the editor stewing about the Huntington

Beach City Council’s decision to impose about $17,000 in fees on the

unwitting purchasers of illegally converted condos. I’ve read far too

many letters roasting the City Council as pre-conversion Ebenezer

Scrooges bent on heaping insult upon injury by not waiving the fees

at the expense of the residents of Huntington Beach.

Fortunately, the City Council didn’t follow the bad advice of

those who spoke publicly at the podium and those generous letter

writers so inclined to spend your money. As a result, the council

saved the taxpayers more than $2 million in lost revenue, and not at

the expense of the condo owners either.

And what was the letter writers’ rationale for their generosity

with someone else’s money? It was that these innocent purchasers had

been duped by a collection of scurrilous individuals who illegally

converted apartments to condos by circumventing the rules. They made

the argument that since these purchasers were “innocent” -- ignorant

that the conversion rules had been circumvented -- these “victims”

should not suffer the further indignity of paying conversion fees to

the city of Huntington Beach that the city was entitled to. While you

might suspect the contrary from reading the letters, the city had not

victimized these purchasers. The city hadn’t participated in the

transactions. The city hadn’t blessed these deals. Indeed, the city

was as much a victim of the scam as the condo owners.

Had those generous letter writers and speakers from the podium had

their way, they would have cost all of us the $2 million in fees the

title companies are prepared to now pay on behalf of the condo owners

-- money the title companies would not have to had to pay had the

City Council had not insisted on the payment of the fees by the

owners. It’s simple legal fact that if the city had forgiven the

fees, then the owners would not have suffered the fees as an element

of damage, and without damage, the title companies would have been

the beneficiaries of the letter writers’ generosity and the taxpayers

would have been the big losers.

Thankfully, the City Council rejected doing what so many letter

writers considered the “right thing.” In reality, while it may not

have been the popular thing to do, or the nice thing to do, the

council had the courage to take an unpopular, misunderstood course of

action that by any measure was really the “right thing” to do.

I understand the fun of treating public officials like pinatas.

But, they’re not some paper mache container stuffed with sweets that

pour to the ground with every beating. They’re human beings, without

the hides of elephants, who don’t go out of their way to hurt the

citizens they’ve sworn to protect, but who sometimes do the facially

unpopular thing, because it really is the right thing. And that takes

real guts and courage. And perhaps some of you who wrote letters or

pontificated from the podium might remember that the next time you

tie your local pinata officials to the nearest tree and blindly beat

the dickens out of them with your pens.

* RON DAVIS is a former Huntington Beach Planning Commissioner. To

contribute to “Sounding Off” e-mail us at hbindy@latimes.com or fax

us at (714) 966-4667.