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if the City moves forward with the Specific Plan and the Fairground's value is diminished, the State will consider whatever options may be available to preserve the Fairgrounds' value.
That's the key sentence in a letter to the City of Costa Mesa from Teresa Bierer, Acting Deputy Director of General Services for the Real Estate Divisision of the Department of General Services' Executive Office in Sacramento.
Ms. Bierer reminds Mayor Mansoor that her department is planning to "obtain the highest return on the property, as the Legislature directed us to do".
So much for Costa Mesa's idea to prepare a Specific Plan that matches their General Plan designation, traffic limitations, floor area ratio restrictions, that reflects settlements reached in lawsuits over noise, and that mirror the Master Plan adopted by the Fairgrounds.
Just in case the City didn't get it, Ms. Bierer repeats herself,
"We are concerned that the Fairgrounds commercial value will be negatively affected by preparing and adopting the Specific Plan. While we are, of course, sensitive to local matters, we also need to be sensitive to the economic consequences that could result from this action. We also need to carry out the Legislature's direction to "obtain the highest, most certain return" from the sale of the Fairgrounds.
Fairgrounds opponents have figured out the right line of attack, and it's not listening to hollow promises from Assemblyman Van Tran.
Derail the Sale.
Demand that our local representatives carry a bill to undo this deal that already stinks. Legislators up and down the state are prepared to support a measure, but on a local issue, they won't act if a local rep doesn't carry the bill.
Via FaceBook, we get a great quote from Katrina Foley who notes that the Daily Pilot missed the point in their article on the Costa Mesa budget solution, which relied on great cooperation between the City's management and its employees.
This headline should read "City Employee leaders bring solutions to the table for budget cuts that prevent layoffs!" City Council votes 4-1 (Bever voting NO) to approve furlough plan negotiated with employees; City Council votes 3-2 (Mansoor & Bever voting NO) to approve CM Fire proposal that saves more than $5million over 4 years! The employees found budget solutions that are long lasting and prevented 23 layoffs! They are the real leaders in this process. THANK YOU.
Costa Mesa employees will take furloughs that amount to a 5% pay cut.
So, what the heck is it with Eric Bever? At last night's City Council meeting he seemed to either be too stupid to understand the intricacies of the budget issues placed before the council or he just has some kind of a bug up his rear that won't let him vote affirmatively on anything having to do with the budget. Heck, maybe it's both...
Meanwhile, do you think the County might learn something from the process. Or will they keep pissing away millions on pointless lawsuits against employee pensions?
No city in California got savaged as badly as Costa Mesa by the budget deal, when selling the Orange County Fairgrounds became a part of the backroom deal slammed through the legislature during all-night sessions.
Every City lost money. Some will suffer from closure of nearby state parks. Sacramento and surrounding cities will take a huge hit from layoffs and pay cuts for state employees.
But Costa Mesa was singled out as a target to pay for Orange County Republican intransigence and the long-running Yacht Party mantra that we could solve our problems by cutting taxes, gutting services, and selling public assets.
The group of Republican legislators we sent to Sacramento from the OC is such an impotent crew of wingnuts, ideologues and slowpokes that they went along with the plan,voting to sell one of the crown jewels of Orange County.
Now Costa Mesa faces a challenge to respond to this sale under the direction of a Council majority that is as dull and witless as any you might imagine, nativist immigrant-bashers bereft of imagination and leadership. They have appointed a planning commission that's dominated by developers and ideologues that is ill-equipped to respond to this challenge. Add bully-boy supervisors like Moorlach and Campbell to the mix, and the political hacks on the Fair Board, and you've got a toxic stew.
Last night at the monthly DFA Meeting I was able to listen to Katrina Foley, current Costa Mesa City Councilwoman, discuss the challenges her city faces with their budget. It was distressing to the say the least to hear that although the budget that was presented to the City Council was balanced that 3 of those 5 currently sitting on the council decided that more cuts needed to be made.
More cuts to a balanced budget. And cuts that were aimed at programs that help low income families in Costa Mesa. Doesn't that sound familiar?
When Naomi Klein wrote her brilliant book, Shock Doctrine she documented how the Bush Administration had taken the tragedy of 9/11 to push through policies that really had nothing to do with what happened in New York City. It was more about a political agenda and it was pushed through while our Country was in shock.
Bad news for local cities gets worse. Costa Mesa faced the music Monday night in a budget session. Forecast for 2009-10 is a 10.8 cutback in staff from 611 to 545 positions, based on a significant revenue decline.
What many fail to realize is that Orange County's economy for the last several years has relied on two major factors - massive equity withdrawal from existing homes and a finance/real estate industry that has disappeared.
At the national peak in Q4 2006, taking money out of homes was as high as 9% of disposable income, and 6% of income. Here it was higher because the values were higher, and this was ground zero for the really evil rocket scientists doing things like negative amortization option mortgages.
Add the Great Recession into the mix, and we're looking at double digit declines in retail sales, with no new jobs on the horizon to provide a recovery. If anything, we'll continue to lose jobs in local government, retail, and services.
Mayor Allan Mansoor just got back to us and said he didn’t want to go because he would have found the experience “frustrating.” Making a more or less libertarian argument, he says he basically doesn’t agree with the federal government’s big-spending plan to jolt the economy upright. This makes no sense to me. He had a perfect opportunity to tell the president to his face how he feels and he whiffed. He says he didn’t think he would have gotten that chance, but by skipping the town hall he guaranteed that. Let’s hope it doesn’t jeopardize the city’s chances to get some of the stimulus money. With the huge deficit the city’s facing it needs all the help it can get. Alan Blank will have more on this in an article to be posted tonight on our website. Also, check out Brady Rhoades’ take on this issue.
The Costa Mesa City Council was visibly unimpressed with the OC Fair Board CEO Steve Beazley and his presentation at the study session we reported on previously.
Tonight's Costa Mesa Council Agenda includes a Resolution in opposition to the Fair Board's plan.
Update: The Resolution Passed Unanimously
Interestingly, the City's resolution misses one key element in the proposal. The Fair Board isn't just proposing parking. The "flat flexible space" could be used as parking, but it also increases the area that can be used for events.
If you want to see a government servant without a clue as to what he's doing, take the time to watch (Starting at the 3:22:00 mark) the Video archive of the Costa Mesa City Council, where Fair Board CEO Steven Beazley lays out his plan to evict the Equestrian Center and replace it with something that will capture the "highest and best use" of the space.
The County Fair is actually a state agency, the 32nd Agricultural District, with its directors appointed by the state, and it's certainly seen its share of news as Deborah Carona and other politically connected directors doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free concert tickets to their cronies.
Now the CEO has set his eyes on evicting the trainers and replacing this low-impact use with more paved "flat flexible space" that will allow any mix of high-intensity uses to bring more events to the fairgrounds.
And in his rambling remarks, he talks about the idea of actually outsourcing the agricultural component of the fairgrounds to some other area, perhaps Irvine's Great Park.
We've seen a lot of attention paid to the state budget, the cash flow crunch, and its tremendous impacts on counties, whose primary function is delivery of state social services.
What's going unseen is the fiscal crunch at every one of the thirty-four cities in Orange County. where every single major source of revenue is flat or declining.
Budgets that looked like they would be balanced when they were prepared in May and June have had bad news every time they looked at a report on the revenue they were actually receiving. Because they rely on the state and county to collect most taxes, there's a lag before the boom drops.
Some cities are going through mid-year budget adjustment processes. Others are making administrative decisions quietly.
Last night at the monthly DFA Meeting I was able to listen to Katrina Foley, current Costa Mesa City Councilwoman, discuss the challenges her city faces with their budget. It was distressing to the say the least to hear that although the budget that was presented to the City Council was balanced that 3 of those 5 currently sitting on the council decided that more cuts needed to be made.
