City Council is back in action tonight. While there is the very big-ticket item of the Fairview Developmental Center “preferred” plan — we’ll get to that — otherwise, it seems like a mercifully short agenda.

But appearances can be deceiving. And this agenda is as much as about what isn’t in its four corners than what is. Let’s dive in.

Headline: A short agenda gives the City Council a breather. Subtext: Where is OCPA?

Tick tock. That’s the time ticking down until the end of the year. Recall that the City’s membership with the Orange County Power Authority appeared to be on an accelerated time frame, thanks to the OCPA insisting that, thanks to its long joining process, the City would have to approve its membership by the end of December 2025 to join by 2027?

In order to do that, then, the City Council would need to review and approve an ordinance allowing it to join OCPA before that December 2025 deadline. And, as all general law cities in California require ordinances to be approved by two readings, the ordinance would have to get its first reading by no later than the November 18 meeting.

So, given that OCPA’s proposal was going to be controversial, I expected it to be on the agenda as early as this week. Yet it is nowhere to be found, even though Mayor John Stephens emphasized to the Finance and Pension Advisory Committee (FiPAC) a few weeks ago that the OCPA item would likely be coming forward today.

Why might that be the case? Well, that FiPAC meeting might have been one reason. During that meeting, OCPA disclosed that defaulting Costa Mesa ratepayers to the “Basic Choice” rate — recall this would be the rate that had the lowest proportion of green energy, but also carried a slight discount to the standard SoCal Edison rate — was not financially feasible to OCPA, such that membership would be contingent on Costa Mesa ratepayers accepting the slightly more expensive “Smart Choice” rate.

Given that Fountain Valley was allowed to join at the “Basic Choice” rate, and that OCPA anchor member Irvine recently switched down from the most expensive 100% renewable rate to the “Basic Choice” rate as well, this was bombshell news: Costa Mesa, which will only have one vote on the OCPA board, would be effectively subsidizing the better electricity rates enjoyed by Fountain Valley and Irvine by defaulting its residents to paying the higher “Smart Choice” rate. And with such little board representation, it would be in no position to force those cities to do otherwise.

That doesn’t sound very “smart” — it sounds like a losing hand. In fact, after much discussion the FiPAC ultimately approved a recommendation that the city not join OCPA at this time, which can’t have helped its chance at City Council.

So maybe OCPA is back to the drawing board?

Headline: The City’s snags another OTS grant. Subtext: The DUI unit is back!

As is its habit, the City has snagged yet another grant from the State of California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), this time for $280,000 (which is down a tick from the $305,000 it was awarded last year). And once again it is great news, as these grants help fill the gaps in police funding for critical traffic enforcement work such as DUI checkpoints, operations targeting red-light running and speeding, and traffic safety education presentations.

But tucked deep in the Staff Report is some even better news: the CMPD full-time DUI team is back as of September 2025!! As I lamented this time last year, staffing shortages in the CMPD caused the DUI team to disband in 2023, right after the team netted the top spot for DUI arrests by cities of our size in 2022.

Now, thanks to strong hiring and retention in the CMPD for the last 12-18 months, the DUI team is back in action. I couldn’t be more thrilled. Go get ’em, CMPD!

Headline: The FDC “preferred plan” finally lands in front of the Council. Subtext: No one likes this plan except Sacramento

I’ve already beaten my thoughts about the FDC to death, and the “preferred plan’s” trip through the Planning Commission didn’t change much.

However, in fairness to the Planning Commission, let’s recall what the Staff was asking it (and now the City Council) to do: not to bless a plan in terms of particulars, but rather in terms of establishing floors and ceilings for the most environmentally impacting version of a plan conceivable. “Pollution maxxing” the plan now is, in the Staff’s telling, the best way to get through the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process, as that ensures that the maximum amount of flexibility is preserved for the actual, final plan.

And that might be so. It’s just that the people of Costa Mesa, when given the chance to opine as part of the city’s ridiculously opaque “public input” process, have rejected the size and scope of anything like this “preferred plan”; and, as a result, such “flexibility” only allows distinctions without meaningful differences.

In fact, I find it very surprising that the Staff Report doesn’t flesh out the deep concerns expressed by the Planning Commission about the process and this plan. Commissioners as diverse as Jon Zich and David Martinez both attacked the outreach process as being insufficient and overly weighted towards certain demographics, albeit from different angles. Zich repeatedly asked for the Staff to look into a citizen’s advisory committee — a suggestion that has been floated repeatedly throughout this process and simply ignored by Staff. And Martinez was also the one that grabbed (with both hands!) the third rail of bringing the Mesa Linda Golf Course into this discussion.

Which, frankly, is on the table thanks to the high unit count considered here whether golf enthusiasts want that or not. Any financially feasible plan will anticipate enough units to require cutting through the golf course to create an alternate access point for fire, police and other emergency personnel, not to mention efficiently moving everyday traffic in-and-out. And look, once you cut a freaking road through the middle of the course, what will you be left with? The only way to save the golf course as currently constructed is to win the war with the State of California to reduce the required unit count to well below 2,800 units. And if that’s not on the table? Then it’s time to get real: the golf course’s eastern holes will be mortally wounded by that access road. And the land that remains may have a higher, better use.

And so the FDC process barrels on, like a runaway train. If you are wondering why — why are we so determined to plow forward with a plan nobody likes? — it’s probably thanks to another issue that is left out of the meeting materials. The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), unfortunately, has an enforcement gun to the City’s head, and the FDC process is part of its dossier against us. Recall that Costa Mesa has put a huge number of its Housing-Element-required low-income units in the FDC property. So with the city behind on pretty much all of its other big-ticket Housing Element programs, maintaining pace on the FDC process is critical.

Even if it blows. Sigh.

The hour now is very late. Can the City Council reframe FDC with the voters and the state as the massive, interior urban renewal project that it really is, before it is too late and the city is saddled with a development debacle it can’t fight? 😬

Headline: We’re finally building Ketchum-Libolt Park! Subtext: We’re $600k short and, uh, don’t mind about the other parks projects

It’s great to see the Ketchum-Libolt Park remodel moving forward — even at the very steep price of almost $2,800,000 (including contingency).

But man, that price is a bummer. First, the lowest bid is about $350,000 above what our engineer estimated. And this time I don’t have the community workforce agreement (CWA) to kick around — this project is exempt from the CWA, so inflated labor costs can’t explain why the city’s estimate was so off.

But it gets worse. It’s not just more expensive than we expected… it’s over $600,000 more than the city has to spend??

“The remaining $614,923 needed for the project will come from completed project savings or budget appropriation in future budget processes” (emphasis mine)? Isn’t that the same thing as saying we’re over budget and we don’t have any way to pay for this, other than to wait for the next budget cycle and hope we find the money there?

This is why I was more than a little frustrated to learn that the City Council had blithely awarded $200,000 to support creating a legal defense fund for residents facing immigration charges. Conceding that it is a noble gesture in unprecedented times, the city’s budget is so tight at the moment that, as this Ketchum-Libolt funding crunch shows, just following through on the city’s existing promises with the funds on hand was going to be difficult. In light of these challenges, starting a whole new recurring program using the city’s few unallocated contingency dollars — the legal aid funds came from the City Manager’s contingency fund, which is usually only about $500,000 — borders on the irresponsible.

But I digress. There is another matter left unsaid by this agenda report, actually three in fact: where are Shalimar Park, Brentwood Park, and the Skate Park?

All three should be well through the design phase and onto the bidding process, just like Ketchum-Libolt is. And thankfully, even with all of the wrangling with the property next door that happened earlier this year, it looks like Shalimar Park’s bid is in fact in the RFP process.

But the city’s vendor bid portal doesn’t have anything to say about either Brentwood Park or the Skate Park expansion, even though those were both supposed to go out for bidding during the late summer and fall.

Once again, chronic delays appear to be plaguing our parks capital improvement pipeline. This has really gotten out of hand at this point. Is there anything the city can do to bring these parks projects along faster?