Job Center improved Costa Mesa

STEVE SMITH

Last Wednesday, I quoted Costa Mesa City Councilman Gary Monahan on

the possible closure of the city’s Job Center.

“I don’t see that we’ll have the problem that we did,” Monahan

said, “but if it turns out we do, I’ll be the first one to say, ‘Hey,

I screwed up.’”

That’s what he told me. There is no issue there. My concern is

that my follow-up to that comment may not have sent the message I

intended.

Following the quote, I wrote, “I believe that Monahan will say

that.”

That comment could be read so that I believe that the disaster

resulting from the closure of the Job Center is a fait accompli. It

is not, and that is not what I meant. What I should have written

instead was that Monahan has the character to admit when a mistake

has been made.

For the record, no one contacted me on this clarification; it’s

just some internal policing I’m taking care of.

Allan Mansoor, who voted to close the Job Center, is also one who

will have no difficulty admitting that the move was a mistake, should

that be the case.

“I want to give it a clear shot,” Mansoor told me. “We’re in a

time of transition, and I want to see this thing through to success.”

I’m still not sure what is different about the Job Center’s

neighborhood that makes Mansoor, Monahan and Councilman Eric Bever

believe that closing it is a good idea, but Mansoor tried to explain.

“There are only 30 or so [workers] finding work there each day.

The numbers don’t make sense to me.”

“The numbers” are the cost of running the center versus the

benefit, and they do make sense to me. At 30 workers per day, that’s

a total of about 11,000 people per year. The center costs about

$100,000 a year to operate.

So for about $9 per worker per day, the streets on the Westside

have been kept free of people loitering, waving down cars and trucks

and in general, making the city unsightly and uninviting.

I don’t think that the police department -- should it have to

deploy officers to clean up the streets of loitering day workers --

can do it for $9 each.

And if the police department can’t sweep the streets, which I

expect, the $100,000 will look like chicken feed.

There is my risk here of being perceived as the ultimate cynic,

not unlike one regular City Council attendee who insists on letting

the panel know what needs to be done, meeting after meeting.

At last Tuesday’s meeting, this fellow wrote about day workers

hanging out at a convenience store at the corner of Baker and

Bristol. “They should be cited,” he said.

Yes, they should. But in the policing world, the city’s day

laborer challenge is not at or near the top of the list of things to

do. That’s not a failure on their part; it’s strictly a result of

budgets and deployment.

When I asked Mansoor where he expected the expelled workers to go,

he mentioned that some of them will go to Labor Ready, a private temp

firm that can help these people find jobs. “The public sector should

not be doing what the private sector can do.”

I would advise against telling that to the city’s workers. The

fact is that there is very little that the city is doing that the

private sector can’t do instead.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope that, as I told Mansoor I would be

willing to do, that I’m the one who has to raise his hand and say, “I

was wrong.”

If I have to do that, it will mark a turning point in the

development of the city’s Westside, one that bodes very well for it’s

future.

“The Westside is a diamond in the rough,” said Mansoor.

I agree. I lived there for many years and saw how much it improved

once the Job Center opened.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer.

Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at

(714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to [email protected].