A Primer to Ballots for Feb. 5

Absentee ballots have been delivered, and voting has now started in California for the Feb. 5 presidential primary. Here are my picks, starting with the propositions.

Proposition 91 transportation funds: According to the proponents, this initiative is no longer needed. Subsequent to 91 qualifying for the ballot, a bipartisan group of legislators and the governor put Proposition 1A on the ballot in November of 2006 that accomplished what Proposition 91 set out to do.

Proposition 1A passed with 77% of the vote. Therefore, 91 is not needed. VOTE NO

Proposition 92 Community College Funding: This is the first time in my life I agree with the California Teachers Assn., which is against Proposition 92.

This initiative is a feeble attempt by one part of the public educational monopoly — community colleges — trying to get a locked-in share of the state budget by changing the California Constitution with a funding formula based on population and unemployment, and not on the number of students that attend their schools.

They try to pass it off as something to help poor students by lowering fees from $20 per unit to $15. The problem is this reduction is for all students. Poor students already get the fee waived. All this initiative does is give wealthy students more money for Starbucks and iPods. VOTE NO

Proposition 93 Term Limits: This is filed under, “How stupid do they think we are?”

Though it is called a term limits initiative, it does not add limits and in fact adds four more years to all incumbents senators and six more years to all incumbent Assembly members.

In fact, the reason we have two primaries this year was so they could pass this in February and then place their names as incumbents on the normal June primary before they are termed out.The Democratic leaders thought with some slick ads and good spin they could pass this in the dead of the night. VOTE NO

Proposition 94-97 Expansion of Indian Gambling Casinos: The Native Americans have more money to influence elections than any other special interest because they have the only gambling franchise in the state.

Almost every elected official, Republican and Democrat, is too afraid to ever upset the American Indians. The tribes will spend millions against any senator or assemblyman who gets out of line. The tribes always get what they want.

These particular compacts allow four tribes to more than double the amount of slot machines they have to 17,000. Tribes have been trying to get casinos into Orange County for years.

I enjoy gambling just as much as the next guy, but expanding this monopoly only puts more political power in their hands to do just that.

And please don’t fall for that argument that it will help the state finances.

Every dollar put in a slot machine would be spent in some other business and those businesses pay more taxes on each dollar they get than the tribes do. VOTE NO

Measure B City Hall in the Park: This is for my friends in Newport Beach. I have written extensively on this issue; it’s a simple no-brainer.

Cities should build on property they own before the buy more. It is the only fiscally prudent thing to do when you already own a perfectly good piece of property in the center of the city that is only growing weeds.

It makes no sense to spend $8 million to buy a smaller piece of property from the Irvine Company a few blocks away, which does not have enough room for its own parking. Not exactly the relationship the city needs; to be a tenant of The Irvine Company. VOTE YES

Now, when it comes to picking the nominees for president I will cede the choice of the Democratic nominee to someone who has a clue. I do not. You can pick a Hillary Clinton with no charm, a Barack Obama with no resume or John Edwards with no chance.

On the Republican side I told you before that I was already extremely biased. I hitched my wagon to Mitt Romney over a year ago when nobody knew his name.

I said last month that Romney would sweep Iowa and New Hampshire. Boy, was I wrong. He took second place in both, but won Michigan and Nevada handily.

Lo and behold, he is in a dead heat in Florida with John McCain. Giuliani spent the whole campaign in Florida and looks like he will place third there this week, which will end his campaign.

If Romney wins Florida, he will be the front runner when the race gets here.

So it’s now down to two horses, Mitt and McCain. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher made his choice this week and endorsed Romney. We need a Republican, not a rebel. VOTE ROMNEY

Reporting Violations Helps All

Last week in this column I discussed what we as individuals can do to improve our town. Improving the city is all of our responsibility, but the reality is that most of us have day-to-day obligations that do not leave a lot of extra time. Working to pay the bills, raising kids, keeping the house in order or doing some charity work leaves little time for civic involvement.

The city of Costa Mesa has a powerful resource that will help you fulfill your civic responsibility, and it only takes five minutes. Just remember two words: code enforcement.

We have seven full-time and two part-time positions in the code enforcement department. The department also has a very sophisticated system in place that tracks all complaints for any property in the city.

Looking around the county, Costa Mesa may have more code enforcement staff per resident than any of the other cities in the county. Past and present councils have made funding this operation a top priority.

There are two ways that a code violation gets into the system. The first way is for a code enforcement officer to drive around town looking for violations. The second (and this is where you come in) are complaints filed by citizens.

Under both scenarios, a complaint goes into the city code enforcement data bank, and it gets a case number. Once the complaint has a number, a code officer follows through by contacting the property owner to rectify the situation.

According to Don Lamm, city development services director, 75% of all complaints get rectified once the property owner gets notice of the violation.

The remaining 25% may get a fine before the problem is rectified. In an extreme case the city can do an abatement procedure, which is to correct the problem and lien the property for the cost of doing so.

The city is not looking to collect fines and in most cases a fine is never imposed if the violation is corrected. What the city is looking for is compliance.

Now let’s look at the second way a violation gets into the system; a citizen-reported complaint. It is a lot more efficient for the citizens themselves to report violations, and have code enforcement officers spend their time getting compliance.

One way to make a complaint is to call the department at (714) 754-5623. A very friendly city employee will put your complaint in the system and create a case file number.

This case will be followed up very quickly by a code enforcement office. I notified the city of a violation at 11 a.m. and had a phone call back from a code enforcement officer that afternoon.

Filing a complaint online is even easier. A form pops on the screen, taking three minutes to fill out, and bingo, your complaint is now in the system. Your name is kept confidential and is only used to let you know the status of your complaint.

One last gripe of mine: people that park their cars or oversized trucks so that they hang over or sometimes completely block a sidewalk.

Do not call code enforcement; call the non-emergency number of the Costa Mesa police (714) 754-5290. Any violations from the sidewalk to the street should be reported to the police, including cars parked on a city street for more than 72 hours. An officer will go out on his or her normal rounds and ticket the vehicle.

So when you drive around town and see chipped paint, broken fences, inoperable cars or cracked up driveways; do the right thing and file a complaint with code enforcement. Don’t wait.

The sooner it is corrected the better. It will take only a minute, and you will be doing your civic duty to improve your city.

Tips for Boosting City Pride

There is a lot of talk about what it’s going to take to improve Costa Mesa. The complaints are endless: over-crowded apartments, over-parked streets, not enough park land or lighted fields, and the list goes on.

Many of these issues are structural and cannot be fixed over night. Some will take years.

But what can a resident do right now to improve the city?

The first thing you can do is take a look at your own home. The second is to take a look at your neighborhood.

How does your house look? Is the paint fresh and bright? Are the colors from the ’80s or earlier? Do you have large oil stains on the driveway?

How about your landscaping? Those shrubs you planted 30 years ago may have a lot of sentimental value, but they may also just be overgrown. You might want to think about replanting.

How are your fences? If they are original, chances they are more than 40 years old.

Now the next question will have more impact on your home and neighborhood than all of the above.

Can you park a car in your garage? We are all guilty at one time or another of putting so much stuff in our garages that we cannot get two cars in.

But if you cannot get even one car in the garage, it is way past the time to think about an early spring cleaning. One of the biggest blights to any neighborhood is cars on the street.

What has happened to many neighborhoods around town is that over time garages have become so full of stuff that more and more cars are being parked in the street. Though this is not in any way illegal or violation of code, it just looks better to have cars in garages.

Now I know a lot of you are going to say, “I can park both my cars in the driveway, so it shouldn’t matter if my garage is full.”

Trust me, it looks better to have cars in the garage instead of the driveway. It frees up space on your driveway for friends and family to park when they come by. It also makes the neighborhood look better.

Think also of the benefits. It’s so much nicer to get into a shiny car in the morning instead of one dripping with dew, especially if you just had it washed the day before.

By the way, this issue is more critical for apartment owners. Are your tenants using the garages for storage? Especially in these areas of higher density it is very important that garages are used for cars. These neighborhoods were not designed to have everyone park on the street.

Now, you may not be able to force tenants to park in the garage, but you can require, as a term of the lease, to keep clear a space for a car. It is easy to tell which landlords monitor garages and which ones don’t. The good ones check every 60 days to make sure they are not stuffed with junk.

While we are on the subject of landlords, how about implementing occupancy standards?

Though the city has its hands tied in enforcing reasonable occupancy standards, as long as you follow Fair Housing guidelines, you can restrict how many people live in an apartment. Seven people in a two-bedroom apartment may not be illegal, but it sure brings down the neighborhood.

I will let you in on a secret: It is hard to get good quality tenants if they cannot park their car and two families live in the apartment next door.

Next week I am going to talk about code enforcement and how you can get involved to improve your neighborhood.

Costa Mesa may have some issues but it has a great coastal location with terrific people and a lot of outstanding neighborhoods.

Let’s have everyone do their part to keep it that way. It’s called neighborhood pride. Costa Mesa pride. I would not live anywhere else.