Costa Mesa trumps Santa Ana in more ways than one

Costa Mesa Mayor Alan Mansoor has been taking a lot of hits on this blog – but whether or not he really has ties to Martin Millard is a matter of conjecture, from what I can tell. However, it is clear that Millard is a first-class jerk.

While we cannot ascertain exactly what Millard’s influence on the Costa Mesa City Council is, we can at least look at how the City of Costa Mesa is run. And, to be fair, I think we ought to compare the way that city is run to what we see in the City of Santa Ana.

For starters, go to the Costa Mesa website and compare it to the Santa Ana website. What a difference! Costa Mesa’s website tells you about their local meetings – and you can even sign up for email notifications. And you can access agendas, meeting information, RFP’s, and more. Scroll down the page and you will even find a link to the Costa Mesa city budget. Amazing. You can even find archived video recordings of city meetings.

Costa Mesa’s website also features city news. Santa Ana doesn’t even have a public information officer! And you cannot find archived council meeting videos on the Santa Ana website.

Costa Mesa’s website also offers archived information regarding all of their commissions. And isn’t it interesting that their Redevelopment Commission meets at 6:30 p.m., whereas the Santa Ana Redevelopment Commission meets at 3:30 p.m. Guess which city actually wants their residents to be involved in civic affairs?

I could go on, but by all means, please go and look at the websites yourself. The differences will be startling. And that’s not all. Costa Mesa has a balanced budget. They are also meeting all of their pension liabilities without any problems.

Meanwhile, it appears that Santa Ana City Manager Dave Ream is working on another assessment scheme, this time to pay to fix our roads. Funny how Costa Mesa manages to meet their obligations without resorting to increasing our taxes!

I would be remiss if I didn’t metion that Costa Mesa has THREE public libraries, whereas Santa Ana has just one. According to Wikipedia, Costa Mesa has perhaps one-fourth the population that Santa Ana has. So the residents of Santa Ana are VASTLY underserved when it comes to our libraries.

Obviously Costa Mesa is much better administered as compared to Santa Ana. Costa Mesa even limits council members to two consecutive terms! That means that Mansoor is on his last term.

The question you have to ask is why would anyone waste time attacking Mansoor when we really ought to be going after Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido. Mansoor is presiding over a well-run city – you sure can’t say that for Pulido. And we can’t rid ourselves of Pulido – he refuses to let the voters decide whether we should have mayoral term limits.

I will admit that I don’t like the Costa Mesa immigration policy that resulted in the arrest of a Guatemalan worker who committed an infraction while riding his bike. However, I thought that the Santa Ana Council’s decision to ban Wal Mart superstores was equally ill-advised.

Bottom line – the people of Santa Ana need to take a long hard look at their own city rather than point fingers at our neighbors to the south. And we ought to demand that our city leaders open up the books rather than trying to pry open our wallets again. We could learn a lot from Costa Mesa – they know how to run a transparent government. You can’t say that for Santa Ana!


About Admin

"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.