Mysteries of the meeting

Let’s start with the good news. The Costa Mesa City Council -- the

same one many have opined to be too disparate to accomplish anything

without poking each other in the eye -- found some middle ground

Tuesday. A comprise.

It concluded, though not unanimously, to keep the city’s Job

Center open a touch longer while the city searches for a more

palatable alternative. The reprieve also gives the city’s attorney

time to fork through the dirt to find out where the legal land mines

of free speech and employment solicitation are buried.

While it’s good that the council found a compromise, it remains

that the Job Center in its current form is an obstacle to Westside

revitalization and, worse, a fertile environment for illegal

employment transactions. The pickle is finding a reasonable solution

to replace it.

That aside, the road the council traveled to reach its accord was

ugly, proving that democracy is indeed a messy process. In fact, had

you witnessed the nearly four hours of brain-numbing proceedings on

TV rather than in person, you might have thought you had found the

latest quirk in reality TV.

Consider these highlights:

Lawyers circled the proceedings with steely stoicism. Two of them

weighed in -- which was probably two too many. In one instance a

barrister alleged the council’s March 15 decision to close the job

center mangled the Brown Act. Another, representing the Mexican

American Legal Defense Fund, coolly placed the city on notice that

MALDEF was watching and -- as lawyers naturally do -- coyly

threatened to sue if the council did not change course.

The truly grimy moments of the evening emerged when the debate

careened into charges of racism.

Some speakers -- faces flush with anger -- pressed to unmask the

forces of racism, which they believe are behind the anti-Job Center

movement. They railed against the “white supremacist” writings of the

city’s ever-prominent Martin H. Millard -- one of the Job Center’s

chief opponents -- as if Millard’s admittedly controversial musings

were the point. Had you arrived at this stage, you’d have looked for

an agenda item titled: “Consideration of a resolution of the City of

Costa Mesa to designate Martin H. Millard as a White Supremacist.”

But it didn’t stop there. When they had finished dragging Millard,

some upbraided the “male” members of the council who voted to close

the center as if they were members of the infamous Minutemen

patrolling the Arizona border. Never mind that the council offered

sound public policy reasons for moving to close the Job Center.

Daring to take an action that Millard would endorse meant these

council members were among his lot, went the arguments.

Utterly mystifying was the striking involvement of the Daily

Pilot’s Latin Landscape columnist, Humberto Caspa.

Mansoor later voiced his dismay and deep disappointment in the

race-tinged debate, robustly denying Caspa’s assertions and wondering

why Caspa would draw such troubling conclusions without talking with

Mansoor.

Caspa later returned to the podium to stand by what he wrote and,

notably, suggested Mansoor could always sue him for libel if he felt

he had been mischaracterized.

Ugliness aside, the striking irony of the evening was the paltry

representation of Costa Mesa’s Westside where the Job Center is

located and where its most vocal critics reside. Of the more than 60

speakers who shared comments with the council, only about a dozen

applauded the body’s March decision to close the center. The striking

absence of Job Center opponents makes one wonder if the Westside

political machine is indeed a massive groundswell, or merely an

enigma led by a few vocal stalwarts.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is chairman of the Costa Mesa Parks and

Recreation Commission. Readers may leave a message for him on the

Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or contact him at

[email protected].