Office appraisal causes apprehension Deirdre Newman’s article...

Office appraisal causes apprehension

Deirdre Newman’s article “City hears review of attorney’s office”

on Dec. 11 was very thought-provoking.

Certainly, the way the City Council handled the affair with former

City Atty. Jerry Scheer -- to the tune of $750,000 of our tax money

-- indicates some changes are necessary. The configuration and

oversight of the city’s legal department clearly needs some

adjustment.

I’m having a hard time understanding the logic behind the

consultant’s proposal, as presented in Newman’s article, though. The

way I understand it, the consultant is saying something similar to

this:

“The city’s legal staff doesn’t have enough to do, so they should

be doing, in-house, all the litigation stuff they’ve been farming

out. Oh, yes, someone in-house should probably learn how to do the

litigation stuff. And we think the legal secretary position,

presently vacant, should be filled by a plain, run-of-the-mill

secretary. One more thing, too, we think the City Council has no clue

about how to manage a city attorney, so let City Manager Allan Roeder

do it.”

Did I get it right? As you might expect, this leaves me with just

a few questions.

First, I don’t disagree that the City Council is ill-prepared to

oversee the city attorney’s office and that Roeder would do his usual

excellent job managing that organization. The question is, will the

next city manager be competent to perform that function? Much as I,

personally, would like to see Roeder in his job for the next 40

years, that seems unlikely.

Also, will the recently approved assistant city manager position

be part of this chain of command? Will the city attorney’s office

report to Roeder through the assistant city manager?

The consultants think it’s a good idea to have litigation skills

in the city attorney’s office. Well, duh. (How much did we pay those

guys?) We certainly have an opportunity before us to fill the vacant

city attorney position with a person with serious litigation

experience -- one who can effectively guide the other attorneys in

that regard.

If we do bring all that litigation in-house, won’t that require

the services of a highly skilled legal secretary, even more than

presently? Why, then, would we not fill the vacancy with such a

person, rather than simply a secretary? How does that make sense?

Where does Assistant City Atty. Tom Wood -- who has been the

acting city attorney since January-- fall in all this shuffling? Does

the plan call for him to become the city attorney? Would we then hire

a litigator as the assistant city attorney? I suppose that could

work, too.

While I would love to think that our City Council has addressed

all these issues, history tells us that probably is not the case. My

suggestion is that Roeder just lean over and grab the helm on this

issue before it runs off the road, as so many others have in the

past.

GEOFF WEST

Costa Mesa

Spending adds to city’s taxing woes

Good grief. The Costa Mesa City Council now wants to enact new

taxes and fees to raise money. Isn’t that nice? The first thing

members of the City Council need to do is stop throwing our money

away on stupid things.

How many citizens of this city know that the City Council voted

this year to put $ 84,000 of our taxes into a tiny community garden

that will only be used by 48 people to grow their organic carrots? It

would have been cheaper to give them gift certificates to Mother’s

Market.

How many citizens of this city know that the City Council spends

between $ 80,000 to $120,000 per year for a Job Center that mostly

connects up employers from Newport Beach with cheap labor?

How many citizens of this city know that the City Council is

spending $48,000 of our money to pick up shopping carts instead of

putting this burden on those who steal them and the stores that allow

them to?

I could give you several pages of examples of waste, but

intelligent, engaged citizens of this city already know these things,

and the apathetic masses probably wouldn’t believe the horror stories

coming out of City Hall anyway.

There’s an election coming next year, and citizens of Costa Mesa

will have a chance to put three new people on the council. Hopefully,

we’ll get some better and brighter people on the dais.

M.H. MILLARD

Costa Mesa