Council complete, but still divided

The surprise ending to the Costa Mesa hunt for a new City Council

member does not hide the latent problems laid bare during the past

month.

Most significantly, there clearly is a great divide on the council

about how improvements to the city, in particular the Westside,

should be made.

On one side of the chasm are Councilmen Allan Mansoor and Chris

Steel, who collectively supported Eric Bever as a replacement for

former Mayor Karen Robinson. On the other are Mayor Gary Monahan and

Councilwoman Libby Cowan, who supported Mike Scheafer to fill

Robinson’s seat.

Bever represented a part of the city that wants to see dramatic

changes made, a group loosely self-defined as “improvers.”

Among their ideas are rezoning the bluffs on the Westside from

industrial to residential, limiting the scope of the charities in the

city and finding ways to clean up areas of towns they often refer to

as “slums.” Where some of the improvers get in trouble is in their

repeated emphasis that much of the city’s problems can be traced to

“illegal aliens.” Crime, trash on the streets and general vagrancy

are all named as direct results of “illegal aliens,” when clearly

many are guilty of these sins, including lifelong residents.

Such demonization -- for that is what it amounts to -- destroys

the opportunity for meaningful discussions about the city’s future

and precludes the improvers from gaining full-fledged support from

leaders like Monahan and Cowan.

Those who want quick change in the city need to realize that

debate about improving Costa Mesa will not become action until they

halt these insistent attacks on a whole group of people for problems

caused by a few.

Bever, perhaps, saw this to be true when he took his name out of

the running, paving the way for Scheafer to be appointed to the

council.

Still, that does not mean all of the ideas coming from the

improver camp do not deserve attention. Everyone who wants to help

Costa Mesa become a better place to live and work should remember

that, as well as hope Bever’s action can be a start to a more

inclusive discussion.

Scheafer, too, is now in a key position to help the debate move

forward. He spoke repeatedly about wanting to be a representative for

all of Costa Mesa. All of Costa Mesa, including the City Council,

needs such a representative, someone who can be a bridge between

different, and all too often competing, groups.

These groups all have many good ideas about how to make Costa Mesa

a better city. They now need to find out where they agree and get

their ideas to work.