COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:Mayor acts in city’s interest

Last week I was contacted by the Daily Pilot by e-mail. This e-mail contained a letter submitted by Costa Mesa City Councilwoman Linda Dixon and requested my reaction to it. Having received the e-mail after deadline, I am compelled to write this response.

I am saddened, but not surprised by Dixon’s use of divisive racial pejoratives, name calling and utter fabrication of Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor’s positions. Dixon’s letter demonstrates the hatred and deception that she and her cadre of Return to Reason gang members will stoop to in their attempt to elect Bruce Garlich and Mike Scheafer to the City Council.

One has to wonder whether her hateful letter has anything to do with the fact that Dixon may still be smarting over being beaten by upstart Mansoor in the 2002 election? Dixon is the only sitting mayor in Costa Mesa history to have been tossed out of office by the voters. Why? Because she was sadly out of touch with the community and did not acknowledge the pressing problems of the day.

If Mansoor can be criticized, it would be only for his being extremely well focused on the issues faced by our community. What rational person could truly fault him for that? There is so much work to do to pull this city up that I appreciate Mansoor’s focus and tenacity in dealing with the business of cleaning up our city. Mansoor is doing the heavy lifting, addressing problems that Dixon and her ilk have shrugged off and openly exacerbated for 20 long years.

The big question for me is this: How do these people and their pals in the Pilot editorial department and management justify their profound political opposition toward our mayor and toward a good, decent Costa Mesa resident such as Wendy Leece? It looks like pure politics.

Does the mayor and Leece’s support for getting illegal-immigrant criminals off of our city streets and out of our country justify this rash of teeth gnashing and venom spewing?

This whole turn of events raises even more perplexing questions for me: Why are these folks all so bitter and hateful? What is their agenda? What do their anointed and oddly silent candidates Garlich and Scheafer have to say about illegal-immigrant felons?

The only conclusions I can draw are that they are upset that the mayor, by showing true leadership on this issue, has taken an action that the majority of Costa Mesa residents support. The mayor’s insistence that we put our people’s quality of life and safety first, that we take meaningful action to improve our city, and his accessibility to the public also net him a great following among our residents.

These positive factors are hard to take issue with, and apparently the negative campaigning and outlandish fabrications we have seen from the political action committee members are their only hope of unseating our popular mayor. While the progress made lately in our city has been tremendous, these political action committee people act as if the mayor “and his string of puppets,” as Dixon calls them, have acted outside of our residents’ best interests. What utter nonsense!

Dixon and her bunch want to return to something but cannot articulate just what that might be. Despite their sassy and euphemistic banner, Return to Reason, they do not have any idea what that means. Instead, as witnessed by Dixon’s ill-conceived attack, they happily resort to divisive racial slurs and hatred to meet their unstated goals.

Rather than informing us of what the political action committee members’ goals are, Dixon wove a tapestry of terrible things the mayor would do, given the chance, but offered absolutely no basis for her conclusions. To further obfuscate the issues, the Pilot has run a political action committee member’s letter without informing the readers that the writer is a highly compensated director of a local “nonprofit” and also a member of the Return to Reason group. Interesting.

Dixon’s sickening comments about a “big ‘lily white’ community” are bizarre, and one must wonder just who it is that she quotes. I challenge Dixon to produce hard factual evidence that the mayor holds any such belief or ever uttered such words. I also challenge her to name names of those she claims are on Mansoor’s “string of puppets.” I won’t be holding my breath and expect Dixon’s smears and innuendos to continue unabated until the November election. I predict that the Pilot will reprint her lies and smears until they become “fact” by repetition.

Remember, it was Dixon who made the motion to ban adult sports from our elementary school yards, and as intramural sports are under Newport-Mesa Unified School District oversight, they are not subject to council action. Despite Dixon’s wild claims, Mansoor has made it clear that he has no inclination to close the golf course, and our contract with Mesa Verde Partners would certainly preclude any such action.

Contrary to Dixon’s claims, the mayor strongly supported the addition of gang detail officers, and the agreement to work with a gang task force. What he did not support was the undefined $70,000 social worker position. The mayor and I presented a substitute motion to approve the program without the undefined social worker position.

Dixon and her political-action-committee member cronies oppose the mayor who has consistently acted in the best interests of our community, as is appropriate for an elected official. Based upon their strong disapproval, one must conclude that they would not condone acting in the best interests of the residents. Perhaps they need a moniker adjustment.