Will job center be rehired?

Mayor Eric Bever thinks that having a job center in Costa Mesa might be the only way to keep day laborers from soliciting on city streets, prompting him to ask the council to consider implementing some of the strategies used in the city of Orange.

These policies would include requiring day laborers to provide identification that proves legal immigration status, a provision not present in Costa Mesa’s previous job center, which the city council voted to shut down a few years ago.

There are also strict laws against hiring a day laborer at a site that’s not approved in advance through a process that involves filing traffic plans, parking plans and other information with the city.

After the job center on the Westside closed its doors, many workers staked out spots in the parking lots of local businesses and on city streets to congregate and seek employment, which has led to complaints by some residents, according to City Manager Allan Roeder.

The 7-Eleven at Placentia Avenue and Victoria Street is the current hub of day-laborer activity in the city, and the most outspoken critics say that the laborers sometimes yell, drink and urinate in public.

“The community is tired of it, and my goal is to give our police force and our attorney the tools they need to get the upper hand on the issue,” Bever said.

Those tools would most likely include an ordinance similar to the one in Laguna Beach, where day laborers are forbidden from soliciting work on city streets — a policy that might not be constitutional without a day labor center — so that the police have an easier time cracking down on people illegally soliciting work.

“Cities have had their day laborer ordinances challenged and have lost because they didn’t have a resource center. Solicitation is a 1st-Amendment right, so courts are going to look for an alternative forum for solicitation,” said David DeBerry, Orange’s city attorney.

Since Orange adopted its new ordinances late last year, police reports indicate an 80% decrease in the number of day laborers found soliciting in six identified “problem areas,” DeBerry said, citing a report given to the Orange city council Tuesday.

Costa Mesa City Atty. Kimberly Hall Barlow is looking into the legality of adopting Orange’s day labor framework, and Roeder expects her to give her opinion to the council within the next month or two.

“I think that what Orange has done is an unqualified success,” Bever said.

Orange’s day labor center is run out of a portable building off of East Chapman Avenue on a quiet street across from an apartment development that is separated from the center by a cinder block wall topped with barbed wire. About 15 laborers on Wednesday morning registered with the center’s administrator, Elvia Candelario, who said the turnout was typical. Eight people on that list were hired for jobs as of the center’s closing at 10 a.m.

About 20 more men sat quietly around the premises waiting for someone to come by.

“It’s always like this,” Candelario said. “Everyone follows the rules. We never have any problems.”

Many of the men who weren’t picked up reported that they hadn’t worked in weeks, even months, but they continue coming.

“We come here to the office because we have more problems out on the streets with the police,” said Juan Lopez, who was last hired Saturday.

Lopez has been coming for four months, ever since he quit his job at Marina Landscaping because business was slow, he said. The first worker at the center, who is almost guaranteed to be hired, usually arrives at 5:30 a.m., according to Lopez.

“If I don’t get work here, I go out on the street and search for bottles,” Jesus Rodriguez said, adding that he hasn’t gotten work from the center in more than a month.

A handful of men quietly gathered on the sidewalk outside of a gas station 50 yards down the street from the center, also waiting for work.

They didn’t go to the center because they didn’t want to wait in the line, they said.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.