Costa Mesa Watchdog Awards

I have this theory that the running amok of awards shows on television is transforming the American culture into a giant Cheeto. There’s just too many of them; awards and telecasts of awards being awarded, I mean.

Even newspapers and magazines are more wont to dish out awards under headlines that read “The best of ...” or “The 50 most ...”

In our quest to remain relevant (even if it leaves our fingers stained orange), we grudgingly present the 2005 Costa Mesa Watchdog Awards.

The Shoot First, Ask Questions Later Award goes to Mayor Allan Mansoor. He grabbed national headlines with his blueprint to deputize Costa Mesa police officers with federal immigration powers. Mansoor may have indeed tapped a vein of community support for such an idea, but his presentation of it was ham-handed.

Rather than give his colleagues and the public the benefit of scrutinizing the idea in a study session, if not several, he ushered the item straight to the City Council’s agenda.

The Smartest Dumb Thing I Ever Said Award goes to Costa Mesa City Councilman Eric Bever. Earlier this year, Bever’s contempt for the dismal performance of Triangle Square (truly an oxymoron) surfaced in an off-handed musing from the dais that perhaps Costa Mesa should explore its eminent domain options where the troubled shopping center is concerned.

Seen as a dumb and outlandish aside when offered, Bever’s comment now ends up being the smartest dumb thing he’s ever said.

Given the seemingly detached and aimless interest of Triangle Square’s current owner, Bever may have been right after all.

The Blood and Guts Blog Wars Award goes to Costa Mesa scribes Geoff West and Martin Millard. West and Millard have been trading pointed adjectives for most of 2005.

In his abubblingcauldron.com blog, West is often lampooning Millard’s tirades against illegal immigrants and the soon-defunct Costa Mesa Job Center in a running narrative called “Your Neighbor.”

In it, West dismisses Millard’s “improvement” mantra as a thinly veiled campaign to drive Latinos out of Costa Mesa. West often cites Millard’s prolific essay writing (lengthy treatises advocating gene purity as a universal truth) for New Nation News to buttress the point.

In his electronic newsletter Millard paints a characterization of West as a “Lonely Old Man” sitting around his rented home in his dirty Fruit-of-the-Looms with tuna cans over his ears. It’s brutal stuff, but great reading.

The You Can’t Win If You Don’t Play Award goes to the entire City Council for its knee-jerk rejection of the Poseidon desalination plant proposal, currently under review in Huntington Beach. Scared spitless by the dust, ditches and delays the installation of the project’s water delivery pipeline would inevitably cause in Costa Mesa, the council poo-pooed the entire project without the benefit of an environmental-effects study.

Unfortunately, the council’s action may well have cost Costa Mesa millions of negotiated mitigation dollars that could have funded dozens of city improvements.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a writer and public affairs consultant who lives in Costa Mesa. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or contact him at [email protected].

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