Many ill effects of Job Center closure

STEVE SMITH

For the past couple weeks, I have tried to keep my Job Center

arguments confined to the facts, particularly the facts as they have

been related to Daily Pilot reporters and to me.

All along, I have wanted to believe that closing the Costa Mesa

Job Center was strictly a matter of dollars and cents; that it no

longer made sense to maintain the facility because it had moved past

the point of self-justification. It was to be closed for that reason

or because the Westside of town now had so little demand for the day

laborers it processed that even if they returned to Placentia Avenue

to wave down passing cars and trucks, their activity would barely be

noticed.

In a previous column, I ran down the Job Center’s numbers, quoting

Mayor Allan Mansoor as to why the center was no longer needed.

But the success of the center cannot be measured by the number of

workers who receive jobs every day -- 30 according to Mansoor. That’s

because the daily job placement is a secondary benefit of the

center’s existence. The main reason the center was created in the

first place was not to provide a labor clearinghouse for Newport-Mesa

and surrounding communities, but to remove day laborers from the

streets, the parks and the front of businesses.

So, the number that is of more importance to measuring the

center’s success is not the number of workers finding work through

the facility but the number of laborers using it. More than 120

laborers, on average, use the center every day. That is about four

times the number that are placed in jobs. Using this figure makes the

elimination of the center even more disastrous as the number of

laborers now back on the streets seeking work is far too much for our

police department to handle.

Further, both numbers -- the 120 who seek jobs and the 30 who get

them -- are not the same 120 workers using the center every day. And

the 30 workers going out to work every day are not the same 30 every

day.

So in reality, the number of workers off the streets is not 30 but

many times that. Plus, it is important to note that many laborers who

are picked up for work are picked up and work for more than just that

one day. So If a person lands a job that lasts for five days, or two

weeks, how is that person to be counted?

“Person” is the key word from this point forward. Because as much

as I’ve tried to stick the facts, one undeniable fact is that these

laborers are people.

So imagine my dismay when I read my colleague Humberto Caspa’s

column in Tuesday’s Daily Pilot when he outlined what he believes is

the broader agenda of the Job Center critics.

Caspa wrote that the City Council’s move to close the center was

“flagrantly alienating a large part of the [city’s] population” and

that versions of the Westside revitalization plan “might have been

taken hostage by a few radical interest groups” whose next agenda

item is to shut down the swap meet at Orange Coast College.

The final answer, offers Caspa, is drive the Latino community out

of the city’s Westside.

Caspa is entitled to his opinion, of course, and at this point

that’s all this seems to be. I read no evidence of any master plan,

but in his defense, it is naive to think that any group with such an

agenda would announce it, particularly to a newspaper columnist.

But I’m not a fool, either. So to those who think they can

legislate out the existence of the Latino culture in Costa Mesa,

here’s my message: Forget about it.

To these people, if they exist, I’d recommend that you think

seriously about a community that consists only of people who look and

think like you. That is truly a scary thought, but if it’s true, it

conjures up images of the deep south in the 1950s and 60s, with

hooded criminals -- cowards, really -- circumventing the law for

their own petty interests.

Finally, I offer this: I am a regular at the Orange Coast College

Swap Meet. That swap meet is a festival, offering both culture and

deals -- the kind of deals that used to be found at the “marketplace”

(formerly swap meet) held at the Orange County Fairgrounds. At the

fairgrounds, the shopping is now mostly an extension of existing

retail businesses. Deals and haggling are rare.

If Caspa’s version of the hidden agenda is true, it will be sad to

say that even Chris Steel never took it this far.

* 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].