By John Earl
Surf City Voice

An Irvine water official recently let members of the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) board know that their public relations efforts on behalf of ocean desalination aren’t necessarily welcomed in his agency’s jurisdiction, which stretches across the county’s mid-section as its largest water district.

MWDOC is the retailer for 28 water agencies throughout the county.

Open dissent by local water officials toward ocean desalination projects is rarely if ever heard at MWDOC meetings, where the belief that such projects, however costly, are a vital part of a larger water portfolio is all but officially treated as sacrosanct.

The official, Peer Swan, one of five directors for the Irvine Ranch Water District, spoke out at a monthly meeting of MWDOC’s Public Affairs and Legislation Committee held on Monday, Dec. 19. He told the board that the agencies that don’t agree with the premise of the PR campaign should be able to opt out.

“I would expect that you would respect your customer’s request not to go in and do a PR campaign on something they don’t support,” Swan said.

MWDOC’s directors were discussing plans to increase their efforts to educate county residents about the supposed needs for ocean desalination in Orange County.

MWDOC wants to convince county residents that desalinated ocean water will guarantee them an endless and reliable supply of drinking water during future water shortages to be caused – inevitably – by droughts or by earthquakes that will break water supply lines; or worse, cause the collapse of the California Delta, which supplies about half of Orange County’s water.

MWDOC is pushing two major ocean desalination projects in Orange County. One of them would be in Huntington Beach where Poseidon Resources, Inc. won approval by the city to build (with the help of huge public subsidies) one of the largest and costliest desalination plants in the western hemisphere (the other, similar plant, would be built by Poseidon in Carlsbad in San Diego County)—after offering tax increments and other financial benefits.

Poseidon is stumbling its way through the final stages of the permit process but still lacks private financing. MWDOC is seeking $350 million in public assistance to make the project cost effective for the company and to attract the private investors that it (Poseidon) needs to move forward.

The other, smaller project, which is backed by five south county water agencies, would be publicly owned and located adjacent to San Juan Creek on property that is owned by South Coast Water District.

Unlike the Poseidon plant, which would suck in over 100 million gallons of sea water a day through the intake pipes used by a huge power plant, its ocean intake system would be buried under the beach at Dana Point, where a pilot plant already is operating.

Far from shovel ready, the Dana Point desalination project seems headed for a decision by the local agencies sometime in 2012. From that point it would move into the final design stage and permitting by the relevant government bodies. Construction would start in the 2017 or 2018, according to project manager Karl Seckel.

MWDOC’s staff provided details of the agency’s strategy for gaining public support for the Dana Point project at the meeting.

“We have been working with the project participants to begin getting either letters of support or formal endorsements from community groups, business organizations, and environmental groups within their area, but also county wide,” explained David Cordero, MWDOC’s Director of Governmental Affairs.

Responding to Swan, General Manager Kevin Hunt elaborated on the broader scope of MWDOC’s outreach efforts, including the Poseidon project, which 21 county water agencies, including IRWD, have indicated an interest in, however tenuous. Very few of those agencies disagree with continuing to discuss ocean desalination “as a viable option county wide,” he said.

MWDOC Director Wayne Clark, whose district makes up about half of the IRWD service area, took umbrage with Swan’s suggestion that MWDOC was out of touch. “I represent Irvine as well as other areas and I think that I’m quite capable of communicating with my own constituents,” he said.

But Swan persisted. “We’re in negotiations with Poseidon,” he said. “Until we get a negotiated contract, I think that using the MO that they used in San Diego, creating a tsunami before the agencies approve things, is an inappropriate thing in Orange County.”

Swan told the Voice after the meeting that he doesn’t want the county’s water agencies to be boxed into supporting programs that don’t make much sense. And he thinks there should be a defined program with agreed upon principles and financing before MWDOC or its agencies seek public support for it.

Swan is personally opposed to both ocean desalination plants but not for any of the environmental reasons often listed by other opponents, who are concerned that, especially in the case of Poseidon, marine life will be killed by the associated intake and outflow systems. He is opposed because he believes that neither project will fulfill its intended purpose—to provide a needed or cost-effective water supply.

An ocean desalination plant by its nature has to run 24/7, an expensive operation, Swan says; but the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MET), MWDOC’s umbrella agency, “already provides a reliable supply for water for South County 98 percent of the time at a fraction of the cost of the [Dana Point] desal plant.”

Results of a recent poll conducted by Lewis Consulting

And South County residents would be subject to any water shortages (including rationing) that the MET would apply uniformly as a matter of policy, he adds.

“So the plan itself doesn’t supply water in the event of shortages,” Swan said.  “A couple of hundred million dollars for a very small amount of water is a very expensive project for shortages. And there are much cheaper alternatives to provide reliability to South County which have not been as actively pursued.”

There is no need for the Poseidon project either, according to Swan, because it would serve an area that already gets 70 – 80 percent of its water from an existing underground water supply that could provide 100 percent of the water needed in an emergency.

“What these projects will do is provide an expensive new source of water for MET that the local agencies will pay for,” Swan says. “It will add reliability to the MET system because if you produce water in Huntington Beach or Dana Point, MET will no longer need to supply them because there is cheaper water elsewhere. Thank you very much!”

In this election season, as Orange County voters are constantly warned about government overspending, including bullet train boondoggles, ocean desalination critics like Swan may have found a crack in the veneer of unanimity that MWDOC uses as a cloak to protect and promote its desal dreams.

A new poll, conducted for MWDOC by Lewis Consulting, with a sample of 500 registered Orange County voters, shows a statistically significant decline in support for ocean desalination—from 73 percent in 2008 to 63 percent last October.

In each case the respondents were asked, “When thinking about increasing Orange County’s water supply, do you think ocean desalination is a good idea or a bad idea?”

Sixty-three percent is still a landslide of public support for ocean desalination, but that support might not all be transferable to MWDOC’s two ocean desalination projects, which the 500 voters weren’t asked about.

In fact, there may be a lot of leverage for critics of the Poseidon and Dana Point desalination proposals provided by the questions that, so far, pollsters haven’t asked the public.

MWDOC Director Larry Dick, a stalwart supporter of both projects and ocean desalination in general, may have unintentionally revealed that opening at a Nov. 21 board meeting after the poll’s presenter, John Lewis, explained that seniors, at 75 percent, were more likely than any other group to believe that ocean desalination was a good idea.

Dick asked Lewis if, “The seniors who are so in favor of desalination—are they aware of how much it is going to cost versus other things [water supply sources]?”

“No,” Lewis answered, adding that obtaining an in-depth look at voter sentiments would require asking questions that add the necessary information.

Like, “Would you feel the same way if you knew it was going to cost 40 percent more?”

“Exactly,” Lewis said.

Photo, top right: Mobile testing facility for Dana Point ocean desalination project. Courtesy MWDOC

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Surf City’s number one pilot, the Honorable Mayor Joe Carchio, who has been dubbed by the Voice as “the best mayor Surf City has ever had,” may very well reach the peak of his political career on Nov. 2 at 4 p.m. when he jumps into the city’s police helicopter, HB1, and is carried to the heavens for a two-hour fact finding and brainstorming tour.

Carchio requested the lift so that he can discuss the city’s helicopter outsourcing contracts with Newport Beach and Costa Mesa and to be updated on the copter program, according to an e-mail from Chief of Police Kenneth Small that was passed on to the Voice.

Tours have also been offered to all the other members of the City Council.

The Voice was alarmed at first. After all, when you factor in costs for gas and staff time, helicopter rides are expensive—about $675 per hour in this case, according to Small.

But Surf City’s taxpayers may rest assured that not a single penny of their money will be wasted by our mayor—whose spend-thrift ways with their money are well known.

That’s because, this time, Joe Carchio—our mayor and pilot—has his feet planted firmly upon solid ground.

“He’s going up during one of our normal patrol flights,” the Chief explained in an e-mail to the Voice. “There’s no special flight arranged for him, so there is no real cost associated with it.”

That’s a relief; unless, of course, somebody decides to give the mayor the controls to the copter for even a second, in which case Surf City’s citizens should be no more or less amused than when he is piloting their city council meetings.

One has to wonder how the mayor, even with his known communications skills, will be able to have a meaningful discussion about important city matters in a noisy copter cabin, where even if you shout you aren’t likely to be heard.

On the bright side, however, the mayor can apply the skills he has acquired after almost a year of running city council meetings without listening to or understanding what others are saying to him or being able to make sense of his own words. Based on that experience, all he has to do is say, as loud as he can, “That’s not going to happen while I’m the mayor of this city,” and everything will be fine.

At the next meeting of the City Council, after the mayor returns to earth, it will be a pleasure, as always, to hear him share his unique insights.

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

At approximately 5 p.m. today Huntington Beach Mayor Joe Carchio was sighted at the Albertsons super market in the Sea Cliff shopping center at the corner of Yorktown and Main St. near downtown Huntington Beach.

The sighting was made by this reporter while he shopped for Dryer’s ice cream (selling at $6 for two cartons) for my 91-year-old father, who eats lots of rocky road and vanilla ice cream and who is famous among the store’s check-out cashiers for buying more tapioca pudding than anyone.

It’s not unusual to see local celebrities shopping at my favorite Albertsons. Other notables sighted include: former city administrator Paul Cook; former mayor John Erskine; and, former city treasurer, now our county treasurer, Shari Freidenrich.

Curious about an announcement for the free giveaway of one paring knife per customer, provided the would-be recipients arrived “within three minutes in the center of the deli section,” this reporter, who has no desire for another paring knife if he even has one already (I have no idea), walked slowly from the ice cream freezers to the deli section out of curiosity only, wanting to know what kind of people would rush from one side of the store to the other within three minutes to get a free paring knife and what devious corporate scheme was under way.

When I arrived in the deli, long after another shopper, who smiled eagerly as she pushed her partially full shopping cart past me at high speed, I observed a line of about 20 people waiting for their free knives. Standing with them was the mayor.

He was dressed casually and had been browsing the deli without a shopping cart, unaware that I was watching every move he made.

At first, I tried to hide my face, fearing that he might be angry at recent stories I have written about his political performance, stories that—like all of my other (many) stories about the mayor—probably didn’t show his better side, very much.

But far from holding a petty grudge, the mayor was gracious, cheerful and bouncy—like the former restaurant host that he is. With a big smile on his face he shook my hand, nearly jumping for joy, and said, “We’re going to get a free knife,” gesturing to me to join him in line.

I respectfully declined, but did say out loud to the store employee who was handing out the free knives, “How about some free health care for your workers?” Nobody else seemed to listen, but the mayor laughed.

Then I headed for the checkout stand where I told the cashier that I had given up a free knife just to stand in her line. She informed me that the knife giveaway had been going on for several days straight and that it was getting annoying to hear the announcer everyday telling the customers to run to the deli within three minutes to get a free knife.

“I’m about to use one of those knives on that guy if he says that one more time,” she threatened, laughingly.

Then I wondered, did the mayor, who has been spotted by this observant reporter before at the same Albertsons, have heads up about the free knife?

Was he running some sort of racket at my local Albertsons?

Had he been coming into the store for several days in a row, only pretending to shop so that he could pick up a free paring knife each time?

How many paring knives does he have at home, anyway?

Will the mayor report the gift (or gifts) on his 700 form at City Hall?

Rest assured, the Surf City Voice is investigating.

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Editor’s note: This story has been revised since its original posting. Photo: Mobile home owners attend city meeting in July to discuss possible revisions to the city’s Mobile Home Advisory Board. They were not invited to two subsequent meetings.

To the exclusion of the city’s mobile home park residents, a government review committee has worked quietly in the background to produce proposals that would either officially eliminate the city’s Mobile Home Advisory Board (MHAB) or probably cause it to die by atrophy, the Surf City Voice has learned.

The two meetings—virtually unannounced—were held by the Intergovernmental Relations Committee (IRC) which has been reviewing all city run committees recently for ways to cut costs.

HB residents interested in the fate of the other city committees may also have been excluded from those meetings.

Mayor Joe Carchio chairs the IRC. Councilmembers Matt Harper and Devin Dwyer are its other two members.

Carchio recently joined Harper to accuse the MHAB of bias against mobile home park owners, but under his watch the IRC has been biased in its own way against mobile home park residents, as shown by their exclusion from the meetings.

While Carchio, who as chairperson bears ultimate responsibility for how the IRC meetings are managed, did nothing to inform mobile home park residents of either meeting, he did have the opportunity—prior to the second of two of those consecutively unannounced IRC meetings—to speak with Vickie Talley, president of the Mobile Home Educational Trust (MHET), the lobby group that helped Carchio get elected in 2006 and contributed $10,000 as part of a $40,000 real estate industry PAC fund spent in an attempt to elect Harper—who won—and two other failed candidates in the 2010 city council race.

Based on a report given to the Voice that Carchio had called Talley by phone, Cabrillo mobile home park resident Mary Jo Baretich was “outraged” about Carchio’s alleged call to Talley and being left out of the meetings when contacted by the Voice. “It’s none of her business,” she said, noting that Talley is not a mobile home park owner, despite heading up the MHET.

Baretich is also a regional manager for the Golden State Manufactured-home Owners League (GSMOL), which lobbies for mobile home residents with but a fraction of MHET’s funds (and spent nothing on local candidates). “We have over 6,000 voters in our 18 mobile home parks,” she said, adding that, “We have a right to be informed about meetings and a right to speak.”

Those voters who live in the city’s mobile home parks should not be treated as “second class citizens,” she said, adding that “the city is already allowing many of them to be thrown out into the street,” a reference to skyrocketing, unaffordable rents and park subdivision schemes. Baretich said she will be talking with GSMOL attorneys about possible violations of state law by the city.

But when contacted by the Voice, Carchio said that he had not called Talley but had bumped into her at the last City Council meeting and asked her why mobile home park owners did not show up for MHAB meetings. “I just wanted to get her ideas because they hadn’t participated in the past,” he said.

Carchio also said he didn’t know that mobile home owners and the general public hadn’t been informed of the meetings. “If the message didn’t get out, we were wrong,” he said. “Everything we do should be transparent and if we don’t do that, shame on us.”

Mobile home owner/park residents and their advocates had attended two previous IRC meetings to say that—due to its official city status—the MHAB helps keep them informed and provides some protection that they could not hope to have otherwise. They assumed, after signing contact lists, that city staff would keep them informed of all future meetings.

But city staffer Kellee Fritzal told the Voice that notifications were not sent for its meetings held on the 9th and the 23rd of August.

California’s Brown Act requires government agencies to publicly post agendas for legislative meetings. Compliance can be as simple as posting meeting agendas on the outside wall of City Hall 72 hours before the scheduled meeting times. But few people are aware that agendas are posted on at that location and fewer still are likely to travel across town to view them.

Curiously, a check of the city’s window cases outside of City Hall Tuesday night (Aug. 23) did not reveal the IRC meeting agenda for that night or any other night. However, the next morning, Frymire e-mailed the Voice a copy of a digital photo that she took that morning which showed the IRC agenda. (This paragraph was added for clarification, Aug. 28, 2 p.m.)

Most city agendas are posted conveniently on the City’s website, but as Aug. 23 the IRC’s agenda was not. In fact, the IRC schedule and location information, without agendas, was provided only by an obscure website link and the information provided was incorrect. Informed about the problem by the Voice, Laurie Frymire, the city’s Community Relations Officer, said she would fix the problem.

The MHAB was formed to act in an advisory capacity to the city on matters of mobile home park life in the city, including rent, health and safety, and legal issues, and to assist with settling disputes between park owners and residents. Many park residents are senior citizens living on fixed incomes and hundreds have lost their homes in recent years, according to advocates for those who remain in city mobile home parks.

The MHAB currently is designed to have nine members, including three park residents, three park owners, and three at-large members. All of its appointees are nominated by City Council liaisons (Councilmembers Joe Shaw and Keith Bohr) but must be approved by the council majority.

Harper’s and Carchio’s bias claim stems from the fact that, for the most part, park owners have refused over the past several years to participate in MHAB meetings despite regular encouragement by city staff to do so.

Harper proclaims that the city would be “liberating” mobile home park residents by dissolving the MHAB and leaving them to run their own independent organization; parroting Harper, Carchio says he wants to help them “to get rid of Big Brother streaming down your neck.”

Perhaps unknown to Harper—the city’s mobile home owners already have their own Mobile Home Park Coalition, but the majority of councilmembers, including Harper and Carchio, pay no attention to it. And it’s not big city government which worries the city’s mobile home owners, but the big and well-financed corporate brother that speaks for park owners; without an official connection to City Hall, fixed-income seniors can’t compete with the MHET for the ears of their political representatives.

In previous but announced IRC meetings held in July and Aug. 2, which were well attended by mobile home park residents, the prevailing opinion, minus a stern diatribe by Harper and the inability by Carchio to state a coherent position—was that the MHAB should continue but with greater efforts made to encourage participation by owners who could appoint park managers to represent them at meetings.

During the Aug. 9 IRC meeting, unannounced for mobile home owners, the MHAB was again discussed but no further changes were suggested, according to Fritzal. Although at-large member and current MHAB chairperson Barbara Boskovich, whom Carchio favored in previous IRC meetings, was invited to the meeting by phone call, no other interested parties were contacted, Fritzal confirmed.

Fritzal told the Voice that she also did not send out notifications to mobile home park residents or the general public for the Aug. 23 IRC meeting. Carchio, Dwyer and Harper, who had a copy of Frymire’s presentation of the previous agreed upon MHAB proposal, were the only people in attendance, according to Councilmember Devin Dwyer, who told the Voice that he was surprised when he found out there was a meeting on that day.

Fritzal said in an e-mail to the Voice that she didn’t send out notices “due to just reviewing [the] power point I did not think it would be changed or discussed. My fault.”

Major Changes
But major changes to the original agreed upon proposals were discussed and adopted at that meeting, without the input of stakeholders who would be most affected by any changes adopted by the City Council. Now two recommended options will be put before the council at its Sept. 6 study session. Then a final version will go to the council on September 15 for a full vote.

One change, favored by Harper and Carchio, would dissolve the committee. The second recommended option would cut the board from 9 to 6 members by eliminating the at-large members whose current purpose is to provide a buffer between park owners and park residents and an independent look at the issues. Under this option there would also be two-year term limits instead of the current four-year terms.

Tim Geddes is one of the at-large nominees whose appointment has been held up by the IRC review process, and who Harper has singled out with particular ire, calling him a “political professional.” Actually, Geddes is a high school history teacher, but Harper has been a paid political professional since he was elected to the Huntington Beach Union High School District in 1998. He has served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen since 2007.

Geddes accused Harper and Carchio of coming up with the accusation of political bias after they realized there would be no substantial cost benefits by reducing or eliminating city committees. “The fact they are seeking to eliminate at-large positions means that they are trying to marginalize community involvement,” he said. “How dare they say it is political when they have made it that from the start.”

Dan Kalmick, the other at-large nominee, was a city council candidate in the past two elections and, like Geddes, has had his differences on city issues with the usual council majority that includes Mayor Pro Tem Don Hansen, Bohr, Dwyer and Carchio. But Bohr put aside those differences and joined Shaw to nominate both Geddes and Kalmick anyway, along with Sharon Dana, who is nominated to serve as a mobile home owner representative from Shorecliffs, a mobile home park on Beach Blvd.

Dwyer told the Voice that he doesn’t see the logic in the argument that the MHAB is too political since the process of public representation in government is by definition political. Throughout, he has favored keeping the at-large members as part of the MHAB while going forward with greater efforts to increase involvement by mobile home park owners.

Dana, who confirmed that she too had been unaware of the last two IRC meetings, called Harper’s criticism of Geddes part of a “personal vendetta” and said that the proposal to chop off at-large members from the advisory board would kill it.

Alluding to the theory that mobile home park owners have nothing to gain by legitimizing the MHAB when doing so would only dilute their political influence through campaign financing, Dana explained. “That would really eliminate the board because you will not be able to get the owners or their reps. Then they [the council] will use that as an excuse to eliminate the board.”

Note: Proposed changes to the Mobile Home Advisory Board will be discussed the board’s next meeting, Aug. 29, at City Hall, at 6 p.m.

By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Voice

On August 1, Long Beach became the thirteenth jurisdiction within California to ban single-use plastic carryout bags at supermarkets and large retailers. Huntington Beach (HB) could soon join that list if City Council members Connie Boardman, Devin Dwyer and Joe Shaw can convince other council members.

A proposal to develop an ordinance to ban flimsy, disposable plastic carryout bags is on the Monday, August 15 HB City Council meeting agenda. The meeting starts at 7 pm at City Hall.

If a HB ordinance were to be modeled after the Long Beach one, it would also include a 10 cent customer fee for each paper bag dispensed, as the goal is not to convert to disposable paper bags but rather to encourage use of bags which can be used over 100 times.

The Long Beach ban took effect after a pivotal and unanimous California Supreme Court decision on July 14 which eases the way for local plastic bag bans by ruling that the city of Manhattan Beach did not have to complete a lengthy study of the environmental impact of disposable paper bags before baring retailers from dispensing plastic ones.

Such environmental impact reports are costly, and the plastic bag industry has successfully used them to block a municipality from enacting a local plastic bag ban by suing the city when an environmental impact report has not been performed.

Californians consume more than 12 billion single-use plastic bags per year, according to Environment California, a state-wide environmental advocacy organization. Very few get recycled, in part because plastic bags are rarely included in curbside recycling programs.

Plastic bag litter is not only an eyesore on land but also fouls waterways and kills marine animals who mistake the bags for food. A floating plastic bag resembles a jellyfish, which probably explains why plastic bags are found clogging the digestive tracts of dead sea turtles and marine mammals like whales and dolphins.

Plastic bags are a significant source of ocean pollution because, like all plastics derived from petroleum, they are non-biodegradable and are thought to persist in the ocean for up to hundreds of years as they just fragment over time into smaller bits of plastic.

The Long Beach-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation has been measuring the buildup up of plastic debris in an area of the Pacific twice the size of Texas and dubbed the “Pacific Garbage Patch” which, in 1999, already contained six times more plastic than zooplankton. Preliminary analysis of ocean samples collected less than a decade later indicate that the ratio of plastic to plankton has risen six-fold.

Even here right off the coast of southern California, Algalita has previously found plastic debris at all ocean depths and in amounts sometimes exceeding twice that of zooplankton.

Local attempts in California to ban the dispensing of throw-away plastic bags began to multiply after the plastic industry successfully lobbied the state legislature in 2006 to pass a law that specifically prohibited cities or counties from imposing fees on plastic bags while supposedly encouraging plastic bag recycling by mandating that stores install plastic bag recycling bins for customers to bring back their used bags (AB2447).

Environmental groups, like the Surfrider Foundation and Costa Mesa-based Earth Resource Foundation, had generally favored the bag fee approach as a way to motivate shoppers to get in the habit of bringing their own reusable bags. The prohibition against fees on plastic bags remains in effect until 2013.

An attempt to enact instead a state-wide ban on plastic carryout bags failed just last September when the California Senate voted down a bill already passed by the Assembly (AB 1998). The bill also included a requirement that shoppers be charged for paper carryout bags. Then Governor Schwarzenegger had signaled he would have signed it. Continue Reading

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Photo, L-R: Nancy Meeks, Cindy Ackely, Mary Jo Baretich, Jane Jones. Front row: Summer Taylor. All residents of Cabrillo mobile home park in Huntington Beach.

What do you call a professional politician (besides calling him a professional politician) who tells his constituents not to get political, tries to disconnect them from their government—the government they own and that employs him—and tells them that it will make them stronger?

Do you call him a liberator?

Huntington Beach City Councilmember Matt Harper, that professional politician, says he wants to liberate the city’s mobile home owners from big government by eliminating a city-run citizen-advisory board which exists to “ensure the quality of life in mobile home parks in the city through healthy communication with park owners, manufactured home owners and the City Council” and to “act in an advisory capacity to the City Council on matters concerning the mobile home community,” according to City Ordinance NO 3332.

Harper wasn’t preaching liberation politics when he first hinted at axing the Mobile Home Advisory Board (MHAB) at the July 5 City Council meeting by holding a routine vote to replace three of a total of six vacancies on the board. But he was standing tall for the individual and corporate owners of the mobile home parks whose PACs spent over $13,000 to help get him elected in 2010.

With a “new set of eyes,” he explained in his usual pretentious style, “I always try to ask…, what is the appropriate role for a city.” The board “looks one-sided, where it could be simply an existence of a place where political footballs…could be just thrown in one direction,” he added. Continue Reading

By Gus Ayer
Special to the Voice

A press release from the city of Costa Mesa announced that “The neighboring cities of Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach will formally explore the viability of combining five municipal services to improve efficiency and save taxpayer dollars” on (police) Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) services; lifeguard services; jail services; animal control services; and police and fire dispatch services.

The press release announced that “Management Partners, Inc. has been contracted to prepare a study. Each city will pay a third of the $81,675 fee.”

Like much of the official news from Costa Mesa, it had a few problems.

None of the three city councils had actually approved a contract to spend money on this study, but the item will be on the Huntington Beach City Council agenda for Aug. 1, the Voice has learned.

So the public will have an opportunity to ask questions.

We don’t need to argue about the idea of combining services. We already have numerous successful models for sharing service between cities, and it is long established that some services are more effective when handled by private contractors. All 34 cities in Orange County are exploring better ways to deliver services at multiple levels and the collapse in revenues during the Great Recession has brought new urgency to the discussions.

We can even set aside the fact that Costa Mesa has been declared ground zero in a war between ideological extremists and the public employees unions, despite the fact that nobody in the city wanted to be on a bloody battleground.

Instead, let’s focus on a more significant question. Why would any city want to partner with Costa Mesa on a study right now?  Sure, take their money to provide helicopter services, but trust them to provide accurate information and make a good decision? The question can be answered by focusing on four areas.

Lack of Senior Management
Costa Mesa has a management crisis. Of all the senior managers for the city, only one, the public works director, has been in place for more than six months. Their city manager retired in March and an assistant was promoted. Their long-time city attorney was replaced at the same time.  A new police chief was just hired from a support staff position in Newport Beach. Their finance director, fire chief, assistant city manager, development services director, and human resources manager are all temps. Staff positions like fire marshal are vacant. The city is eliminating the position of emergency medical services coordinator and other key positions are empty.

Who at the Costa Mesa Fire Department will evaluate the needs for dispatch services?

Ineffectiveness of the City Council
In March, Costa Mesa announced that it would send preliminary layoff notices to hundreds of employees while they studied outsourcing 18 different departments.

Four months into the process, the city was smacked down by a judge and ordered into a court trial. More important, the council seriously underestimated the amount of work that would be involved in analyzing services and preparing requests for proposals to outsource services. Although they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorneys and consultants, they haven’t completed a single proposal request.

One study for a proposal to outsource Costa Mesa’s fire department to the Orange County Fire Authority cost $25,000 and took over a year to make. The majority members of the Costa Mesa City Council obviously hadn’t done their homework, had to ask more questions, and postponed any decision until they could get quotes from neighboring cities.

Much of the problem is related to the lack of experienced management and the huge number of requests that inexperienced Council Members Righeimer and Mensinger keep heaping onto city staff.

Does the Costa Mesa listen to its consultants?
Costa Mesa hired Management Partners to evaluate their police staffing. Their team of experts included the former Police Chief in Brea, Mike Messina, a veteran cop with more than 35 years in law enforcement to his credit.  They produced a report that suggested a minimum number of 136 sworn officers.  The council arbitrarily budgeted for 125 permanent positions, choosing to throw money at privately-owned alleys rather than to fund public safety.

In response, their acting police chief, Steve Staveley, resigned in disgust, sending a sharply worded letter.

Some excerpts:

It is safe to say that the council majority – does not know more about the subject of leadership, or leading police departments or serving as an elected than do I – and yet they do not listen, they do not understand and continue to blunder along in complete ignorance and incompetence….

I say that they (council majority) are destroying this police department with their incompetence and that means only one thing. The community building efforts that this department has invested in for many years will stop and the community will begin to deteriorate. No community can stand still and no community can grow and build itself without suitable police services. The cause of justice cannot flourish without those same services and this council has and continues to undermine this agency ability to do its job and for political and in some cases personal reasons – biases and even personal and individual animosity. As I have noted above, they attempt to meddle in routine department affairs for personal benefit and frankly several of them are rude and ill mannered and frequently boorish.

Ability to follow through on commitments
Even if Costa Mesa were able to provide accurate information and reach an agreement, would it be able to follow through? Let’s look at just one of the five areas – combining SWAT services. Will Costa Mesa be able to honor any commitments that it might make?

As its revenues plummeted during the Great Recession, Costa Mesa went from a contingent of 164 sworn officers to 140 sworn officers, and now its city council is shrinking that to 125.  Costa Mesa is losing some of its best trained and most experienced officers, exactly the ones you might want on a SWAT team. Rank and file police officers, tired of the abuse, have been interviewing with other agencies.  The process isn’t quick, but as the interviews and background checks are processed, Costa Mesa is now losing one police officer a week to other cities.

How will Costa Mesa play its part on a combined SWAT team if they can’t hold onto their experienced police officers?

For all these reasons, we need to ask the Huntington Beach City Council why it would ever want to partner with Costa Mesa.

By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Voice

Under a loosely-worded Huntington Beach “nuisance” code ordinance, a clothesline could be considered a public nuisance if “unsightly by reason of its condition or location.” A resident’s complaint would trigger assessment by a code enforcement officer who would determine whether a clothesline was in violation. Editor

During the Leave It to Beaver era of the late 1950s, most homes certainly had a clothesline and probably no one thought much about whether it offended their neighbors. It’s a safe assumption that June Cleaver, the perfect homemaker, would have taken issue with anyone even hinting her clothesline was an eyesore.

Then fast forward a half century to the present where the majority of Americans have abandoned the clothesline in favor of electric or gas dryers and homeowners associations (HOAs) routinely prohibit clotheslines or impose such restrictions as to effectively ban them. One can only guess what June would have said to that, even absent her knowing about the threats from global climate change and the pressing need to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Few today will dispute that tossing a load of wet clothes into a clothes dryer is more convenient than pinning up clothes, one by one, and surveys confirm that most people living in communities governed by HOAs have no problem abiding by the restrictions on clotheslines from the standpoint of curb appeal or property values.

However, interest in reducing the oversized energy footprint of Americans – twice that of people living in the European Union – has given rise in a handful of states to so-called “right-to-dry” laws that rein in restrictions HOAs or other entities can impose on residents’ freedom to use clotheslines. California is not among them, however, despite its sunny weather and reputation for environmental progressiveness. Continue Reading

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Have we got a great show for you?

Hell yes!

Welcome to the Huntington Beach City Council/Three Stooges Comedy Hour.

First, there’s the crowd’s favorite, (Curly with hair) Joe Shaw, the council member who loves to be melodramatic and thinks it is his right to speak out of turn at council meetings whenever his feelings get hurt, which is pretty often.

Second, there’s (Moe without hair) Don Hansen, the council bully who thinks that he is 1) the mayor (he’s actually the mayor pro tem); and, 2) that he is smarter than everyone else. He has the social conscience and testosterone level of Napoleon Bonaparte, William F. Buckley and Sen. Joseph McCarthy combined. Watch out for his sarcasm, condescension, and scary glares.

Third, there’s (Larry) Devin Dwyer, the council member who thinks that being a brat, using potty language and insulting the city attorney, who has ten times his intellect, is witty and funny. Just like a little school boy seeking attention, he loves to brag about his childish misdeeds with that trying-so-hard-to-be-cute (gag me with a spoon, please) grin of his. Continue Reading

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

What is the future of seawater desalination in California?

As of 2006, 22 desalination plants had been proposed for construction along the California coast between San Rafael in the north to Carlsbad in the south. Today, only nine projects are still in the running, and even those are on shaky ground, according to an analysis by the Desal Response Group, a statewide organization generally opposed to ocean desalination.

Critics of ocean desalination (desal) say that the water industry’s dream — shared with evangelical zeal by a growing cabal of public water officials — of sprinkling the coast with desalination plants is dead in the water.

As proof, they point to spiraling costs, lack of financing, stalled technology, and higher than average water supplies after the end of the California “drought.” They say that there are underutilized and much more cost-efficient alternatives such as conservation, increased water collection and waste water recycling – minus seawater desal’s high environmental costs.

That’s why desal critics are upset after a June 6 vote by the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) to send a letter to its umbrella agency, the Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles County (MET), to request $350 million in funding support for the Huntington Beach Desalination Project that Poseidon Resources Inc. wants to build on Pacific Coast Highway and Newland Avenue.

At an estimated construction cost of $700 (according to a recent Costal Commission analysis), the plant would produce 50 million gallons a day or 56,000 acre feet per year of drinking water, 8 percent of Orange County’s supply. The plant would share the seawater intake pipes currently used for cooling by the AES power generating plant.

Poseidon wants to build a nearly identical desal plant in Carlsbad in San Diego County.

The proposed taxpayer-funded subsidy, says the letter, which was written June 23 and obtained by the Voice, would help MWDOC’s agencies to “defray” the high cost of desalinated water—which is generally two to four times higher than other sources.

The subsidy would go through MWDOC’s agencies which would in turn pay it directly to Poseidon over 25 years at $14 million per year in return for water delivered.

Largely funded by taxpayers outside of Orange County who won’t use the water, the subsidy would artificially lower the cost of Poseidon’s desalinated water, which would still probably not be competitive with the cost of water from other sources, including imported water. Desal advocates say that technological improvements for desalination and rising costs of imported water will cause prices to crisscross in the near future, but those improvements show no signs of arriving soon, if ever.

A pro-industry report published in 2004 by the federal government concluded that the invention of cost effective desal technology would require a huge influx of government subsidies to fund the research and development that the industry is lax in doing itself. Even then, it would take over 20 years to make seawater desal competitive, the report estimated.

Without huge public subsidies, Poseidon cannot attract the private investors and get permission to pass tax free bonds also needed to finance the construction of its Huntington Beach plant. To the point, without subsidies—and based on past experience $350 million would not be nearly enough—Poseidon’s HB plant will be out of business.

That is exactly the scenario that played out last year for Poseidon’s proposed desalination plant at Carlsbad in San Diego County. It would be nearly identical in size and type and has received all of the necessary permits but stalled due to lack of financing and increased cost projections for the price of its water.

As reported last June by the Voice, a memo from the city manager Peter A. Weiss of Oceanside, one of nine water San Diego County agencies that had signed water purchasing agreements with Poseidon at that time, pointed out that Poseidon would need $630 million in government financial assistance.

Poseidon's VP Scott Maloni says the debate is over. Photo: Arturo Tolenttino

“In the past few months it has become apparent that Poseidon’s cost of water is going to be greater than originally proposed,” Weiss wrote. “To make the project viable, Poseidon needs subsidies from the San Diego County Water Authority (CWA) and Metropolitan Water District.”

But $630 million was too much money and a lawsuit filed by the city of Carlsbad against the MET had effectively canceled the larger of the two subsidies anyway. So the CWA decided that the only way to keep the project alive was by spreading the costs to all 26 of its member water agencies rather than the original nine with options to buy the desal plant from Poseidon later on.

That’s exactly the same arrangement that MWDOC will seek for the Huntington Beach plant, according to MWDOC’s General Manager, Kevin Hunt.

With MET’s subsidy to the CWA now off the books, Hunt decided that now is a good time for MWDOC to put a claim on the $350 million on behalf of its 28 agencies. So far, not a single one of them has signed on to buy Poseidon’s water, but Hunt believes that, since the MET will be looking at budget priorities next year, now is a good time to make the request.

The subsidy has always been the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room, although previous Huntington Beach city councils and the mainstream media chose to ignore it. But after years of project delays that were mostly self inflicted, and as the time comes for Poseidon to fish or cut bait, the company’s appetite for public assistance can no longer be hidden and has become a sore spot for the god of the sea.

But before voting to approve and mail the letter that it had not read, the board gave instructions to spin the subsidy from the publicly financed project that it is into the 100 percent privately funded project that Poseidon and supporters have always bragged it is.

Director Brett Barbre, representing parts of northern Orange County, started the impromptu skit, asking Hunt:

Does the $250 [per acre foot] go to Poseidon?

Hunt: No.

Barbre: Or does it go to the water district?

Hunt: The $250 goes to the water authority and its member agencies.

Barbre: Those that are actually purchasing the water?

Hunt: Whenever there is a subsidy, it goes to the public agency, not to the –

Barbre: It’s a big distinction.

Member Susan Hinman from south Orange County wanted and received assurance that Barbre’s spin would be applied to the letter before it was sent. “I feel uncomfortable about this,” she said. “I don’t see a copy of the letter and is there any reason why this can’t be delayed until the next committee meeting with a copy of the letter with the wording that you’re expressing,” she asked Hunt.

But Hunt’s other reason for rushing the letter through is to help Poseidon, which is years behind in answering basic questions put to it by the Coastal Commission, to “get the ball rolling.” Three to six months more for needed staff meetings with the MET would occur before the issue is placed on the agenda for vote, Hunt said.

Jack Foley, MWDOC’s appointed representative to the MET, concurred with the need to create confidence in Poseidon’s project by showing the Coastal Commission and investors that the company’s Surf City desal plant “has a real future” with actual water to sell.

When challenged on the real reason for the subsidy—to attract construction money—Foley stuck to the official story, that it will merely assure investors that there is a buyer for the project over the long term, denying the board’s own admission (in its soon to be sent letter) that the money was needed to defray the [highly uncompetitive] cost of Poseidon’s water.

The subsidy’s true purpose has been an open secret for a decade, but a report last year by the DC Bureau – based on interviews with government and Poseidon officials – spelled out in detail how the previously approved but now revoked subsidy for Poseidon’s identical Carlsbad desal project would have directly benefited the company by reimbursing it, at the company’s request, for construction costs plus interest.

Of course, Poseidon vice president Scott Maloni, who was at the meeting, still boasts that the HB desal plant is a privately funded project and is badly needed by the people of Orange County as part of a larger water portfolio – assertions that Orange County water officials accept as articles of faith.

“I feel like these folks are reopening old debates that have been solved years ago and it’s nothing to do with what’s on the table today,” Maloni told the board, responding to audience members, including this reporter, who challenged his assumptions. “They know that the project is needed…There’s no debate about whether the project is needed. And there’s no debate about how the MET subsidy works.”

In the second and final part of Dead in the Water on Wednesday: Is Poseidon’s proposed Huntington Beach desalination plant needed?