Council gives Job Center new life

Alicia Robinson

Instead of closing on July 1, the Job Center will remain open through

the end of September, allowing the center’s supporters time to look

for a new location, private funding and an operator that’s not the

city.

After several hours of emotionally charged public testimony

Tuesday, the City Council voted, 3-2, to keep the center open three

months longer and to nix a rule that would have limited use of the

Job Center to Costa Mesa residents. That rule was supposed to take

effect April 15. Councilwoman Linda Dixon, who thought the center

should stay open even longer, and Councilman Eric Bever dissented.

That’s at least a small relief to workers who use the Job Center.

Since the City Council voted on March 15 to close the center at the

end of the June, laborers have been worried about where they’ll go to

get a day’s work.

“Moving it to another place doesn’t bother me one bit, as long as

the Job Center stays open,” worker Frank V. Lopez III said Wednesday

morning, before heading from the center to a job.

The Placentia Avenue Job Center was opened in 1988 to address

problems with day laborers seeking jobs in parks and on streets.

Council members who initially voted to close the center -- Bever,

Gary Monahan and Mayor Alan Mansoor -- said connecting workers with

employers is a task best handled by the private sector rather than

the city, and they said the center would hold back improvements

planned for the city’s Westside.

Closing the center has been suggested nearly every year since it

was opened. The council’s move last month to shut it down brought

supporters and detractors out of the woodwork, and they converged at

the council’s meeting Tuesday.

Extending the center’s closing deadline by three months was a

compromise, but it was one that Councilwoman Katrina Foley said she

could live with. Foley dissented in the vote to close the center and

later asked the council to reconsider, in part because of public

safety concerns.

“I think this is an opportunity to do something that’s better for

the whole city, improve the Job Center, improve the facility, the

programming and take the burden off the city to fund it,” she said.

“I didn’t get everything I wanted -- it was definitely a compromise,

but I feel good about it.”

But the brief reprieve means those who support the center will

have to hurry to cobble together a plan for where to put a new

center, how to fund it and who will operate it.

“Putting a fixed deadline on it is not necessarily a bad thing; it

might act as motivation,” said Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce

President Ed Fawcett.

The chamber opposed the Job Center’s closing, and Fawcett said

he’ll help connect businesses that have ideas for the center with

community supporters. No businesses have made a financial commitment

to the effort, he said.

Although the council authorized a task force of city staff members

and community leaders to look at alternatives and many seem

interested, it wasn’t clear Wednesday who will take the lead.

“Everyone is really willing to be a part of that. I think we

probably need to start some little committees,” said Crissy Brooks,

who has helped organize Job Center supporters. “Right now is when the

real work happens.”

The council will hear a report, likely in August, on what

alternatives are available for the Job Center.

Costa Mesa’s center has been used as a model by other cities, and

those may now prove to be examples. Huntington Beach’s center, for

example, is paid for by federal grants rather than city money, and a

facility in Laguna Beach is operated by a private nonprofit group.

But the deep division in the community over the Job Center isn’t

likely to heal just because the city stops footing the bill.

Supporters say the center is an orderly, dignified place for

temporary laborers to seek jobs and is a benefit to the elderly and

small businesses who can’t afford high labor costs.

Those who oppose the center argue that in some cases it may

benefit illegal immigrants or that it enables employers and workers

to avoid paying taxes and following other legal requirements.

At Mansoor’s direction, the council also asked the city attorney

to research federal employment guidelines and whether those can be

applied to the Job Center.

“I want to make sure that people who are gaining employment are

doing it legally and have a legal right to work in this country,”

Mansoor said. “We have an obligation to uphold the law.”

His ultimate goal is still to close the center’s Westside

facility, he said. Some who urged closing the center said it will

allow forward movement on plans to remake the largely industrial

Westside as a residential area.

“The Westside has had to deal with this for way too long,” Mansoor

said.