Kids These Days:

Across the country communities have different ways of communicating their problems. This can lead to people’s perception of those problems being different across the country.

Take my brother who lives in New York. He believes that Costa Mesa has a serious problem with illegal immigrants. He formed that belief from hearing Mayor Allan Mansoor talking about the issue on national television a few years ago.

Actually, Mansoor made it worse. A story published in USA Today Jan. 25, 2006, started with this paragraph: “Mayor Allan Mansoor says his city has a problem with violent criminals who are in this country illegally, and he wants them sent home.”

Yes, you read it correctly: The mayor told America, through a popular national newspaper with a major online presence, that the city has a problem not just with those pesky illegal immigrants, but with violent criminals.

Nice job of promoting the city, Mr. Mayor.

Down in Mexico, there are lots of violent criminals, too, just as in Mansoor’s Costa Mesa. You’ve probably heard about the Mexican criminals, though, and so have a lot of other folks. And even though the threat to Americans vacationing in the key resort cities is next to nothing, tourism numbers continue to drop sharply.

According to Business Monitor International, “tourist arrivals [in Mexico] continued to fall in 2009, totaling 12.6 million in the first seven months of the year, a fall of 6.6% [from the same period the previous year].”

In Acapulco, spring break business in 2010 was down 30%.

That’s what happens when government loses control of its message.

On March 2, after years of taking these body blows, Costa Mesa Councilwoman Katrina Foley had had enough.

Tired of speakers at council meetings repeatedly referring to Costa Mesa’s “slums,” and no doubt irked by the failure of the Mansoor Majority to act as proper ambassadors, Foley finally responded to one speaker at a recent council meeting.

“I’ve sat here for five years as a planning commissioner and six years as a City Council member, and nearly every week we have to hear the vile and the venom about the people in our city, and it does not reflect my views,” she said.

Well, Foley, it doesn’t reflect the views of most residents, either.

There are no slums in Costa Mesa. Not even close. Yet, critics have been allowed to use this term for years without being challenged.

The irony, as Foley pointed out to me, is that despite all the ranting and raving — and a council majority for several years — nothing has changed. The same crowd is still complaining about the same issues years later.

“We should be promoting our [South Coast] Plaza, performing arts center, parks, athletics and surf/skate/snow industries so as to attract businesses to the city, attract tourism and attract families who want to make Costa Mesa their home,” Foley said. “We shouldn’t dig our head in the sand on the difficult issues, but our public perception should be to promote the city as a positive, family-friendly and wonderful place to live. Because it is.”

Foley’s message is lost on those who speak before thinking; whose desire to stand in front of a microphone before an audience to promote their narrow agenda trumps acting in the greater good.

But Mansoor’s message will never go away.

You can find him talking it up about Costa Mesa’s illegal immigrants on the Lou Dobbs program — forever posted on the Internet for Costa Mesa’s potential residents and investors across the country to see.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com .