The first time Costa Mesa considered a charter
Citing a need to ease public financing for projects and increase local control, the Costa Mesa City Council appointed a citizens committee to study whether the city should adopt a charter.
The city manager and city attorney were directed to oversee the 20-person Charter Study Committee. It was tasked with looking at whether council representation should be broken up into separate districts and whether the city should directly elect its mayor, rather than continue to rotate the post among council members.
This may sound something like the Costa Mesa of 2011 or 2012.
It was actually 1971.
It will be 41 years next month that Costa Mesa first took up the idea of switching to a city charter. Proponents were clearly not successful back then, and though issues of the day were different, there are similarities to today in how the process played out.
Costa Mesa was turning 18, and like many newly minted adults, the city was wondering what life was like when you get to make your own rules.
Now that the city is middle-aged, the City Council is considering the idea again and could vote next week to put a proposed charter on the June ballot. The charter would allow residents and officials to write their own set of rules rather than rely on the state’s general laws.
Just as today, there were vocal proponents and opponents of the idea in ’71.
Costa Mesa Tomorrow, an association of downtown merchants, voiced concern that converting Costa Mesa from a general law city to a charter city could steer away capital improvement money to build and improve the city’s infrastructure.
The Segerstrom family had a lot of pull with the council, skeptics argued, and with revenue-generating South Coast Plaza, the developers would probably see city planners diverting public money their way.
Others detractors said the charter proposal was a power grab by city leaders, an argument made in today’s charter fight.
But proponents were resolute, arguing that the city would have more independence, which is also a position made today.
“It just gave you a better way to, in my opinion, a better way to run your government,” said Fred Sorsabal, who was Costa Mesa city manager the last time the city debated a charter.
He resigned in 1985 and now lives in Placerville in Northern California.
The council decided to create the Charter Study Committee in March 1971. It then appointed members April 5 and received the committee’s report Nov. 1.
The city did not keep the committee’s records. Documentation of its existence seems to be only in a couple of sets of City Council minutes and a letter sent to committee member Hank Panian.
“The question that we wanted to answer was: Does this help Costa Mesa governance?” recalled Panian, who still lives in Costa Mesa, in an interview with the Daily Pilot. “That’s a specific question I haven’t heard anyone ask today. Will this help govern Costa Mesa?”
The answer in 1971 was no, or at least, not enough to make a change.
“I don’t think there were arguments presented to the city that were overwhelmingly in favor of a charter,” said another committee member, Tom Nelson, who lives in Leisure World Seal Beach. “They would rather take what they had than to gamble on something that had to be created. They felt more comfortable continuing what they had.”
The early 1970s was a time of change, not just for Costa Mesa’s 73,900 residents, but the area as a whole. Newport Beach was fighting to keep an extension of the San Diego (405) Freeway outside of its borders and was considering building a city hall in Newport Center — an idea that was rejected.
Costa Mesa’s citizens committee was a cross section of local business owners, activists and residents from all sides of the political spectrum. There were also single-platform activists who would unsuccessfully run for a city seat, council gadflies and political insiders.
“I think the people that served on that committee were sincere and didn’t have a lot of special interests in it,” Nelson said. “In my memory, it wasn’t a particularly urgent thing … and I think they felt safer having the city run under the state guidelines, rather than having some special interests creating a constitution.”
Nelson said he remembers Sorsabal wanting to change to a city charter government.
“Let’s face it: Fred was an administrator, and he wanted things that were easily changed in the city,” Nelson said. “And he could see in the future what was happening, and it was important for him to have the tools to help it happen … But his interest as a city administrator of city government was quite a bit different than that as a general citizen. It was just a different viewpoint.”
Other committee members can’t recall anything from the meetings. The loss has left details of the deliberations up to those few people’s memories and scant city records.
“Mrs. Helen K. Hollingsworth, chairman … stated that the committee does not recommend the initiation of procedures which would lead to the adoption of a charter form of government for the city of Costa Mesa at this time,” minutes from a November 1971 meeting show.
Hollingsworth suggested the city create a committee to identify Costa Mesa’s future goals and objectives, but minutes from the meeting in the six months afterward show no such group was ever formed.
Today’s city leaders could take a lesson from the 1971 group, Sorsabal said.
This most recent effort for a city charter started with a single councilman, Jim Righeimer, who brought it up in November as a way to get out of an employee lawsuit and outsource city jobs. Residents will likely vote on the charter in June.
“That’s really fast,” Sorsabal said. “I don’t think, particularly with the controversy Costa Mesa’s had lately, in my mind that’s not the way to go. That way you’ll have some support when it goes to the ballot.”
“We always had little controversies,” he continued. “My goodness — when you get five people up there, you’re going to have that. But not anything as serious as what’s going on now.”
Twitter: @JosephSerna