Hey gang.

First, I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet — I had a lot of work to do for my church in June, and then I promptly got sick for a couple of weeks. Throw in planning for an international vacation (my fault) and kids with nearly pre-professional levels of activities (again, my fault), and, well, there isn’t a lot of time for much else.

So, what did I miss?

Yeah ok I missed a lot. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:

• Costa Mesa passed the budget I kvetched about in mid-May, which, according to local media, was balanced even if it was, in the city’s words, “measured”. I’m not sure what “measured” means, but I have serious questions about whether not the city passed an actually balanced budget, or one that merely met the outward appearance of balance. As I mentioned earlier, I think there is plenty of cause for concern that the budget’s revenue estimates are too rosy, while its cost estimates — particularly with respect to maintenance and operations as well as overtime for public safety employees — are too conservative. But I hope I get to eat crow when the mid-year budget rolls around towards the beginning of 2027.
  
• Priceless Pets got unceremoniously dropped as the City’s go-to pet shelter provider, and decided instead to work with WAGS of Westminster. Normally this would be a ho-hum story — cities change vendors for outside services all the time — but this one will merit a closer look at some point. One reason? The Animal Services Committee was formed about a decade ago precisely to avoid this kind of situation, yet here we are. But another reason this story is pretty interesting is that it has multiple hooks with respect to the upcoming 2026 election. And two candidates, Cara Stewart in District 3 and Steve Smith in District 5, sit on the Animal Services Committee. Loren Gameros, current District 2 Councilmember and a candidate for mayor, has long been connected to Priceless Pets through his wife’s employment with them.
  
• The 2026 primary election was held and all local candidates are now set. Most notably Costa Mesa mayor Katrina Foley squeaked out a narrow victory over Diane Dixon, meaning the two will go head-to-head for the District 5 Supervisor seat in November. The relevance to Costa Mesa here is two-fold. The first is that both candidates, but especially Foley, will have a strong incentive hunt votes in Costa Mesa, so expect a fair amount of campaigning happening in the city. The second is that this puts rest rumors that Foley might parachute into the Costa Mesa mayor’s race if she were knocked out of the supervisor contest at the primary stage.
  
• The senior rides program found a contractor, and the solution to the “OH MY GOODNESS WE’RE OUT OF MONEY!!” problem will (maybe?) be solved by a combination of limiting the number of rides per person to eight, one-way rides per month, limiting the service area, and charging $3-5 copays. It’s great that the city found a way to keep the lights on for this program. One can only hope that these changes will ensure it is sustainable, even if it isn’t as generous as it once was.
  
• The City Council held a study session to look over two proposed tax increases to be included on the 2026 ballot: raising the transient occupancy tax (TOT) rate from 8% to 9-11%, and raising the business license fee from a sliding scale between $25-200 to a rate of $0.60 per $1,000 in gross receipts, capped at $15,000. While the former would net the city an additional $1-3 million per year, the proposed change to the business license fee would raise $5 million in new revenues. Once again, this issue has interesting electoral hooks. In addition to the obvious issue that these tax increases will accompany council-hopefuls on the ballot (forcing them to take positions on these one way or another), there are some notable names associated with the Finance and Pension Advisory Committee, which had a significant hand in crafting these tax proposals. First is Daniel Morgan, who is both a member of FiPAC and a candidate for Costa Mesa’s District 3 City Council seat. And second is Mike Buley, who serves as one of the Council liaisons to FiPAC and is expected to challenge Loren Gameros for the open mayoral seat. While liaisons rarely intervene in FiPAC deliberations (they are, after all, nonvoting members), there is no way Buley will be able to deny he had a front row seat to their discussions.

I probably missed much more than this, but hopefully these are the big points.

As for what’s next, the City Council is in a bit of a Summer break. It’s next meeting won’t be until July 21. That said, I expect that meeting to be pretty contentious, with the city’s contract with Flock likely to take centerstage. I have some thoughts on that; if I find a spare moment in our vacation, I’ll try and put those to (digital) paper.