MAILBAG:Costa Mesa dodges bullet with council vote

In the wee hours of the morning on Independence Day, the Costa Mesa City Council, once again, demonstrated their meetings can be high drama.

At five minutes before midnight Tuesday — the time when their rules call for them to cease deliberations for fear of making boneheaded decisions — Mayor Mansoor had the city clerk read into the proceedings the issue of whether or not to place the question of a directly elected mayor on the ballot.

As some will recall, this subject was requested recently by former 12-year councilman and multiple-term mayor, Gary Monahan.

He asked for it to be agendized, and Mansoor leapt at the opportunity to have it placed before the council at the earliest possible meeting — last Tuesday night. Cynics might postulate Monahan and Mansoor thought this move would ensure them a place at the municipal trough for a long time. The debate among the four council members (Linda Dixon was absent) went on for half an hour and even at that early hour included some very cogent public comments by experienced, respected members of the community.

Former Mayor Sandra Genis got off the best line of the night. Apparently concerned about the concentration of power in a directly elected mayor, she said,”I think it’s quite fitting that we’re doing this just at the very beginning of the Fourth of July, because 230 years ago we said, ‘We don’t need no stinkin’ kings’ and that’s what I say here — we don’t need no stinkin’ kings!’ ” Former councilman Jay Humphreys and activists Beth Refakes, Robin Leffler and Lisa Ready, representing the Mesa Del Mar Homeowners Assn., all made excellent arguments against directly electing a mayor.

The only person who spoke in favor was Monahan. As Councilwoman Katrina Foley said at the time, if this had been a burning issue for the voters of this city, more of them would have showed up to support it. Perhaps the most interesting exchange of the morning came between the mayor and Foley as she pressed the mayor for a reason to not include term limits in his proposal. Repeatedly she asked if he opposed term limits for this new position, and repeatedly he ducked the question.

Finally, when forced to answer, he said he was against term limits. It became quite obvious during this contentious debate that Mansoor and Monahan had only their personal and political well-being in mind with this proposal. Neither could give a good reason why the city would be better off with a directly elected mayor except Mansoor’s feeble response that it would give the city more “clout.” He was reminded by more than one speaker that “clout” comes from the size of the city, not the mayor. Foley had been quoted earlier as being supportive of the concept of a directly elected mayor, but I suspect the mayor’s obstinacy about placing the question of term limits before the voters may have changed her mind.

Regardless, when the question was called on the motion proposed by Mansoor and seconded by Wendy Leece, it ended up a 2-2 tie because Foley and Eric Bever voted “No.”

A tie means the motion failed, and Mansoor did a classic double-take that would have done Oliver Hardy proud; he looked dumbfounded as he just glared at Bever, who said nothing and didn’t acknowledge him.

The citizens of this city dodged a bullet in the early morning hours of the Fourth of July, but we may not have heard the last of this issue.

For now, we can thank Katrina Foley and Eric Bever for preventing our government from steering itself into what may have turned out to be a quagmire of corruption and cronyism.

GEOFF WEST

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