ON THE TOWN:Rewards and, let’s hope, returns

There is a business management principle that recommends rewards almost anytime one sees a subordinate or associate doing something really right.

Parents know it as reinforcing good behavior.

That reward could be something as simple and inexpensive as an attaboy, or it could move up the scale to a small gift then up to a monetary reward.

Rewarding good behavior is both a parenting and business principle I have followed for decades.

Recently for example, I gave two movie tickets to someone in my office. The tickets cost me $21, but the return on my investment was priceless.

That reward theory was the impetus behind pointing out Costa Mesa City Councilman Eric Bever’s recent interest in greening Costa Mesa.

At a City Council meeting last September, members Katrina Foley and Linda Dixon proposed the formation of an ad hoc committee, the focus of which was to “identify incentives for sustainable growth strategies.”

In plain English it means that they wanted help to see how the city could become more environmentally sensible.

Bever’s interest represents a shift in his position on the issue, if only for the fact that Foley, Dixon and he are finally on the same page on a major issue.

Over the years, changing one’s mind has received a lot of negative press. You know it as a flip-flop.

You are seeing minds change now in Washington, where some presidential candidates who voted to support the war in Iraq are now distancing themselves from that vote and scrambling to find the right spin.

In the end, the president will take the heat as these people blame him for misleading them or lying to them about Iraq’s threat.

And perhaps the president did lie. Or perhaps he believed the intelligence reports he was given. Either way, those who have shifted their position are in a no-win situation.

And that’s too bad because most of a change of mind or heart is not emotional but rational. Simply put, we change our minds based on new information.

You want to buy a new motorcycle but decline because the price is too high. What’s that? It’s on sale you say? OK, there’s the new information I need to change my mind.

I can’t vouch for the intensity of Bever’s position on greening Costa Mesa. Maybe he was interested a lot and wanted to move a different way, or maybe he was not interested at all.

What interests me is that there is at last a break in the stalemates in the City Council. For too long, many people have believed that literally anything proposed by Foley or Dixon had little or no chance of approval, not because a particular idea was without merit, but because Foley or Dixon proposed it.

Bever may be the person on the majority who is willing to look at an issue, not at a person, and for that he deserves to be singled out. And he put his stake in the ground not on a Costa Mesa issue, not on a state or national issue, but on a global one.

Council members Foley and Dixon should be commended for raising the environmental issue. Bever is to be commended for understanding its importance.

In a few days, I just may send him two tickets to the movies.

Of all of the milestones in our lives, one of the best and most important is the wedding anniversary. Those of us who have been married for a time celebrate our anniversaries not because of their length but because of our amazement that anyone can put up with us for so long.

Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of my marriage to Cay West. Not only has the past year been our best, it has also provided me with more of that amazement than ever before.