School bond campaign finds home

One of the greatest supporters of the Measure F school renovation

bond campaign is not a board member or a teacher or even a parent of

a school-age child. He is an environmental and community activist --

and despite the many construction vehicles that will undoubtedly be

required to modernize all of Newport-Mesa’s schools, he sees the

project as a boon to the local community.

The reason is simple: Douglas Bader, the Costa Mesa resident who

providing office space for the Measure F campaign team’s

headquarters, believes that Orange County youths aren’t getting

enough exercise. He sees some parts of the $282-million bond measure,

including a football stadium at Estancia High and an Olympic-sized

swimming pool at Costa Mesa High, as an antidote to that problem.

“I see a connection between a pool and a football stadium and

health and well-being,” Bader said. “Humans nowadays aren’t being

asked to rise to the [level] of health and well-being that would

allow them to play football. Obesity is the opposite, the yin to the

yang of this measure.”

When Bader first heard of plans to renovate every school in the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District, he saw it as an opportunity to

promote some of the issues most dear to him. The founder of the

nonprofit group Anybody Can Make Change, Bader has long promoted both

environmental awareness and community involvement. For the last

decade, he has run the Hub on 17th Street, an office space that

houses a number of environmental groups.

Bader, who runs the Hub with money from friends and benefactors,

rents out office space to his tenants at a reduced price. Earlier

this year, Measure F campaign chairman Mark Buchanan contacted Bader

about arranging space for his team, having heard the activist’s name

from several school board members.

“This was just a word-of-mouth happy coincidence, that we were

directed to him at a time when space was available,” Buchanan said.

Now the Measure F campaign, which began last Tuesday with a

handful of volunteers, has taken on a new dimension. Not only is

Bader providing the office space -- a slim second-floor area behind

Kinko’s on 17th Street -- until after the November election, but he’s

also coming in once a week to call voters.

By the end of this month, he hopes to enlist some of his

environmental friends as well. In recent years, Bader has volunteered

for the Back Bay Science Center’s Sharkmobile, a traveling exhibit

that visits elementary schools, and he expressed a desire to bring

other volunteers to the Measure F office.

“We community activists don’t always help each other very much,”

Bader said. “We need each other on a grass-roots, neighborly basis,

not just throwing money at ideas.”