Mailbag: Criticism of employee payout appears political

Re. “Commentary: Payout to public affairs manager emblematic of bad business,” (Sept. 10):

The perpetually political John Stephens imagines nefarious motives for the payment of $170,000 to the former public affairs manager, Dan Joyce. While the City Council voted unanimously to settle this litigation, to the suspicious Stephens this is proof positive that Costa Mesa is not run like a business, as the mayor promised.

In a different time, and in a sane world, such a payment would be outrageous. But we don’t live in a sane world. We live in California, where it is difficult and expensive to terminate public employees.

How expensive and difficult is it? Extremely. In California, only two teachers on average are fired each year for poor performance. Doing so takes more than four years and between $250,000 to $450,000 in legal and other costs, according to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. Yet, Stephens is gung-ho for the city to spend such sums and risk losing and incurring even greater costs.

Stephens once ran for the council. Let’s hope that when he runs again he isn’t so naïve as to continue to believe that we still reside in the 1950s. Of course considering that public employee unions vigorously oppose the mayor, but had strongly supported Stephens in the last election, Stephens may simply be making a calculated decision to level such attacks in order to curry political favor.

Tim Sesler

Costa Mesa

The writer is a city planning commissioner.

*Measure Y traffic patterns alarming

As a resident of Newport Beach, I have been following statements from the Yes on Measure Y campaign with interest.

Hearing that the proposed land-use amendment will reduce traffic in Newport Beach, I have been researching the measure and the traffic data provided in the original 1988 Newport Beach General Plan and in the subsequent 2006 update.

What I find is that actual traffic volume in 1988, as measured by average daily trips, was 732,000. By 2002 (the figure used in the 2006 plan), they had increased to 764,000, and in 2013 (the figure used in the 2014 plan amendment), they had grown to 792,000.

Thus, over the past 25 years, traffic volume has increased by 13.5%. I think most people would say that traffic around Newport Beach feels significantly heavier now than it did in 1988.

Using the same measures, the proposed amendment projects traffic volume increasing to 942,000, an approximately 20% increase over the 2013 level. How can this be accurately described as reducing traffic in the city?

The fact is the proposed plan will substantially increase traffic. What the Y campaign is resting its case on is that the measure will increase traffic levels slightly less than the 2006 plan. However, since the proposed amendment concentrates development around Newport Center, rather than the more evenly distributed development envisaged in the 2006 plan, the traffic increase created by the proposal is almost inevitably going to be much more concentrated.

Vote no on Y, and then pressure the City Council to come up with a revised plan that actually reduces traffic in the city.

Howard Cork

Newport Beach