Q & A -- Facing the challenges

James Meier

Libby Cowan was reelected to the Costa Mesa City Council in the Nov. 7

election and in December, her fellow council members named her mayor.

When she took over the position, Cowan couldn’t have foreseen some

challenges the council would face.

In the election, the council lost two members -- Joe Erickson and

Heather Somers -- and gained two more in rookies Chris Steel and Karen

Robinson. After nine unsuccessful campaigns for City Council, Steel made

the cut while Robinson succeeded on her first try. Both are still

learning the ropes while the overall council -- comprised of varying

viewpoints -- is learning how to make things work.

On Feb. 5, the council appointed new commissioners, but not without

controversy. Several abstentions by Robinson led to tie votes. Later, it

was revealed that, according to a forgotten 1972 city ordinance,

abstentions made without conflicts of interest count as yes votes. So,

some of the Feb. 5 appointments may not have occurred had she cast her

votes.

The mayor discussed this and more when she sat down with Daily Pilot

Assistant City Editor James Meier last week.

What are some of your priorities and goals as mayor?

I’m very interested in expanding the citizen involvement process. It

led to the establishment of the Fairview Friends Committee, which is

going to sell the idea and concept of the master plan to the community.

We hit the ground running and it’s working great. I worked to establish

the group that’s studying the library needs based on a library needs

assessment done jointly with the library foundation and the city last

year. That’s another exciting group. I think we’ll bring some good, solid

recommendations back to the city and see what we ought to do with our

libraries.

I have a priority of doing what we can, as the city of Costa Mesa, to

extend the restrictions at John Wayne [Airport]. We don’t have a legal

standing with that because we are not part of the settlement agreement,

but there are things we can do to protect our community.

Survival -- getting through the year as mayor. My other big goal that

I’d like to see by the time I finish my four-year council term is that

Fairview Park will be well into its restoration, and the master plan will

be hopefully 80% completed by then.

Will you enforce the 30-minute rule for public comment at the City

Council meetings, and is there any way to shorten those meetings?

Well, the City Council members had a real good discussion at our study

session on what we should do, because very often the public comment

portion is in fact pushing the business of the city to later hours. We

certainly believe in providing 30 minutes for everyone. These are items

that are not on the agenda. I will not have a countdown clock running,

but if we get through 10 or 11 people and it seems that we’ve gone 30

minutes and we still have several more people to go, I’ll ask my fellow

council members what they’d like to do -- either cut it off and extend it

to the end of the meeting or finish them. That’ll, of course, depend on

how many people are there.

One of the things we’re looking at in shortening our meetings is going

to a system utilized in Newport Beach that requires people to fill out a

speaker card prior to the item being discussed. That way, we can get a

sense of how many people there are. Same things with public comments.

That way we can know how long to set ourselves up for. So the council’s

asked staff to come up with different procedural proposals for that.

Also, the council members -- all of us -- agreed that public comment

is not necessarily the time to engage in dialogue from the dais with

members of the public. Certainly we can direct them to staff. I think

that December, January and February were very unique months. It just so

happened that several major items fell during those meetings and a lot of

people wanted to talk about them. I think we have a new City Council

learning the ropes, learning what it’s like to have the light in your

eyes and the cameras on you. Plus, you have a mayor just learning how to

run a meeting. So all of those things led to that. We got out of our last

meeting at 9:56 p.m. -- before 10 o’clock -- and I would imagine that

will be a more typical meeting for the next year or so. We are cutting

off at midnight.

What would you say are the big issues coming up in the city?

Redevelopment is probably one of the biggest issues. The Home Ranch

proposal by Segerstrom will be a big issue. And these are all big issues

that will generate conversation. I think we have some other important

issues. I personally support the Huscroft House being rehabilitated.

Certainly, things such as Fairview Park and the library will continue to

be issues on the table.

Does the council feel as if it’s under attack by the Citizens to

Improve Costa Mesa?

I don’t think so. I think the Citizens to Improve Costa Mesa is a

group of people who have some definite points of view who want them

heard. I think the council understands that. Individually, we may not all

agree with the extent of their concerns and the solutions to their

concerns, but they’re part of this community and have a right to have a

voice. I don’t think we’re under attack. I think it’s more of a “wake-up

and listen to us.”

How are race relations affecting the city’s business, especially

relating to the Westside and redevelopment?

No one in our community wants to be called a racist, and I don’t know

that that is a predominant issue. I think I would term issues that

directly affect us -- affect our ability to communicate with each other

and come to a resolution -- as not perhaps race as much as

socioeconomics. We have a relatively new immigrant population. We have

housing that lower-income people can afford, or at least until recently.

And those are the kind of issues that we have. Certainly, there are

differences in culture and in interests -- retail and commercial needs.

I don’t think it’s as much race relations as a new understanding that

our community has really shifted, and the new census will show this. Just

as any other community in Orange County has shifted to a new change in

demographics, Costa Mesa has and we all need to adjust to that.

One of the things I hear in conversations about redevelopment is the

interest in reducing densities. Density is a socioeconomic issue because

the more dense a property is, the more affordable the units can be. If

you have to build single-family houses on a 6,000-square-foot lot, those

homes will be much more expensive than that same 6,000 lot with an

apartment complex of 15 units. So that’s really what we’re struggling

with.

I think another thing that’s socioeconomic is [that] property owners

have experienced a downsize in what they can do with their property. The

1992 general plan reduced density and the interest now is to reduce

densities more. People who own a property with multifamily housing cannot

go in and rehabilitate that housing without losing density, and that’s an

expensive proposition. I think, also, the housing stock in this community

is reaching 30, 40 and 50 years old, and that’s a point in time when

housing -- particularly multifamily housing that gets a lot of use --

takes a beating and needs to be rehabilitated.

And we’ve reached that point now where we have more and more areas

where we have to go in and rehabilitate the housing. One of the things

I’d like to see us do in the redevelopment process is continue to provide

affordable housing -- work-force housing.

How are the council members handling their differences with one

another, and what do they need to work on in strengthening their

relationships with one another?

I think we’re all getting to know each other, and we’ve had some very

good conversations with each other recently at the study session and the

Saturday retreat in January -- all very positive opportunities to get to

know each other. I think one of the things we all went through is a

growing process and understanding that it’s OK to have differences in

opinion, to have differences of philosophy, to have differences in

values, and that what we do as a City Council is work to find the good

for the community within those differences. I think we’ve seen a struggle

with that that any new group would have, but I really believe we’ve

turned a corner and we can agree to disagree and yet understand that what

I think may be best for the community, someone else may not. That’s where

we have to do the negotiation.

And finally, are the commission appointments still lurking over

you?

No, I think we have made very good appointments to the commission. And

I apologized for the process being indeed messy. Things are very hard for

brand-new council members to come in and understand the process, but I do

not believe we need go back and redo anything. And I believe the council

supports that position. I’ve gone on, and I’m pleased with the

commissions that we have.