THE BELL CURVE:

The Pilot Forum page got 2009 off to a rousing start Sunday. Judge James Gray outed himself as a card-carrying Libertarian and former Costa Mesa City Councilman Mike Scheafer mounted the ramparts to take on the outspoken critics of the Costa Mesa Senior Center, on which he serves as a volunteer director. Both offer an escape from this year’s interminable Christmas holiday season to the real world. A few weeks of local politics will probably leave us longing for Christmas again, but meanwhile, there seems no little irony in the Senior Center hassle.

We have all been exposed — in reading and film especially — to the lone fighter who stands tall and sturdy for truth and finally prevails over the arrogant power brokers who would bend us to their will. James Stewart comes to mind in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” We cheer this lone vigilante and the handful who supports him or her because they are fighting the good fight for all of us, and all we have to do to feel good about ourselves is cheer them on.

But in all my years of moviegoing, I can’t recall ever seeing these lone fighters for truth — as they see it, of course — fixing something that didn’t need fixing, that was working quite well for the majority of the people it represents. A reverse twist to a familiar story and what may well be taking place at the Costa Mesa Senior Center.

As happens to so many local issues, this one has been bludgeoned at great and repetitive length. But there is one approach that has yet to be explored. We are a nation in which the majority prevails, but only if it promises to protect the freedoms of the minority. In this instance, the minority has apparently prevailed, thereby standing fundamental democratic rule on its head by not protecting the rule of the majority.

The current board and director of the Senior Center have charged repeatedly that the complaints threatening the freedoms of the center majority to run its own shop are based on the personal bias of a half-dozen members against the current director. The minimal number of protesters to surface and the vagueness of their complaints beyond personal dislike of the director would appear to bear this out.

According to Scheafer, there was no move against the administration of the center until City Councilwoman Wendy Leece offered a sounding board to the complainers and turned a footprint in the sand into a small tidal wave of anger.

Typical was a letter that appeared on the same Forum page as Scheafer’s, written by a non-member of the center and filled with such unsupported statements as the center is “falling apart,” and is “the laughing stock of all centers,” replete with “horror stories you wouldn’t believe.”

So why, I asked Scheafer, don’t you conduct a survey, or an in-house election, and give your members a chance to join the protest if they choose — or to pledge support to the current board if they don’t?

He said that such a survey was made recently seeking reaction to future plans and including a request for volunteers among the membership to fill two empty seats on the Senior Advisory Board that offers ideas and recommendations for the operation of the center.

The survey went to 1,500 members. And, according to Scheafer, only 35 responded to the plans — all favorable. And how many volunteers for the advisory board? None.

“They don’t want to get involved,” Scheafer said. “They just want to use and enjoy what the center has to offer. They’re saying: ‘Don’t bother me with anything else.’”

So the people who stand to lose the most if the center closes down or has to reinvent itself in Leece’s image because of the complaints of a few, remain mute and disconnected.

And in this vacuum, the City Council on Tuesday — citing its contribution of one-third of the center’s budget for authority — voted to form a committee to examine the relationship between the Senior Center and the city. So much for “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

There’s the irony here. Until the council began meddling in the operating affairs of the center, it was a model of self-government.

So much so that a recent city staff report on the center found that it was offering numerous services not available at neighboring fully subsidized senior centers.

Scheafer wraps it up this way: “I thought that we were doing a pretty good job of managing our own affairs and dealing always with valid complaints. If the city doesn’t think so — especially on the basis of these complaints — then we would have no other option than to dissolve our center and turn it over to the city.”

And if that should happen, all those members who didn’t want to get involved can look in the mirror and see a co-conspirator.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.