Kids These Days:

Now that Costa Mesa has finally decided to grant a permit to a basketball league based in Santa Ana, there are a couple of loose ends to tie up, both of which could affect kids in the area.

First, it is important to recognize and applaud the higher level of communication by someone we must assume is Costa Mesa City Councilman Eric Bever. At least twice, the person claiming to be Bever has posted comments on dailypilot.com about the permit issue. We have to assume it is Bever because we have no way of identifying him other than to ask him, which I did last week, but my call was not returned.

Bever’s apparent communication is an example that all public officials should follow. The next generation of voters will not settle for the old way of conducting the public’s business.

The kids, the future voters, in both Newport Beach and Costa Mesa are going to think that given the vast communication options available to all of us, a public servant who is not available from dawn to dusk and sometimes beyond, through e-mail, online chats and texting, to name three, is behind the times.

Bever did not want the Santa Ana league in the city. His rationale was irrational, given the precedents set by Costa Mesa and other cities, but he is certainly entitled to his opinion.

The part of this that has escaped Bever, Mayor Allan Mansoor and Councilman Gary Monahan was one of priorities.

At the council meeting in which the permit was approved, it took five minutes for the council to spend more than $1 million on a new fire truck. The permit discussion that followed on generating the permit revenue took 39 minutes.

Please note that this is not a question of the merits of a new fire truck. It is a question of priorities, for last week’s permit evaluation was the third public meeting on the topic.

Yes, it took two meetings of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission and one City Council meeting to decide whether to make up to $39,000 in profit by renting a severely underutilized city facility.

If anything, the council majority of Bever, Mansoor and Monahan is consistent, for they seem to be spending ample amounts of time sweating the small stuff, whether it is rearranging the chairs on the dais, figuring out how to prevent teams of kids from playing in parks or scrutinizing a no-brainer gym permit.

Abraham Lincoln spent less time writing the Gettysburg Address than the council, Parks and Recreation Commission and staff have spent vetting this gym permit.

Still unanswered is what to do with the revenue the permit will generate.

At the City Council meeting of June 16, during which Bever, Monahan and Mansoor voted to cut the heart out of the city’s youth programs, Mansoor indicated that if times change, he hopes these things “can be added back.� If only for the receipt of the revenue from the new basketball league permit, it’s time to start adding back.

It seems only right for Mansoor to propose a motion at the next possible opportunity to use the permit revenue to help restore the youth programs.

If the council can spend $1 million in five minutes at a meeting, investing the initial $18,000 from the permit should take about five seconds.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to [email protected]