Critics Perceive Change of Heart in Costa Mesa

For years, Costa Mesa has been described as the Orange County city with a heart, a place where elected officials once proposed--in all seriousness--that the United States buy Baja California in a humanitarian gesture to promote commerce and ethnic harmony.

But with the emergence this year of a new City Council majority, that reputation for tolerance and compassion is being challenged by a series of actions aimed at the city’s immigrant and low-income residents.

In recent months, Mayor Peter F. Buffa has joined Councilmen Orville Amburgey and Ed Glasgow in restricting the way day workers can solicit employment, ousting a social service center that caters to the needy, and ordering organizations that accept city funds not to assist illegal aliens.

The last policy has prompted a review by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to determine if it violates federal anti-discrimination law. It has also created confusion within organizations that operate health clinics, which are supposed to be exempt from the alien ban. When the council meets tonight, it is scheduled to discuss implemention.

While social service officials have been outraged by the council actions, many residents of the upscale and overwhelmingly Anglo city have circulated petitions calling for local government to do even more in dealing with illegal aliens.

“I think the (anti-immigrant) feelings have been there all along,” said Jean Forbath, executive director of Share Our Selves and incoming chairwoman of the Orange County Human Relations Commission. “But the people who possess those feelings now have a voice and an organ through which they can express them.”

That organ, Forbath said recently, is the current City Council: Buffa, Amburgey, Glasgow and Councilwomen Sandra L. Genis and Mary Hornbuckle.

Only Hornbuckle, on the council since 1984, voted against all three measures involving immigrant and low-income residents.

“Up until the last couple of years our stance on the council had been that we would deal with this issue in a positive way . . . that we would try to be that kinder, gentler city, and we had been pretty unified behind that,” Hornbuckle said. “Now all of a sudden we have a council that encourages division. Who is next to be attacked by the council? The homeless? Asians? Where will we end in creating an ‘us-against-them’ situation?”

Critics say the tone of the council began to change when Buffa and Amburgey were elected in 1986. Each received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from local developers, including C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, which had been frustrated in its inability to get its proposed, 20-story Home Ranch office development approved by the city. Glasgow joined the council in 1988, also receiving contributions from Segerstrom while praising Home Ranch as a model project. (In that same election, however, voters rejected a pair of ballot measures that called for construction of Home Ranch, and the project has been stalled since.)

As recently as last March and April, Segerstrom contributed $1,000 each to the political committees of Amburgey and Glasgow.

Segerstrom spokesman Malcolm Ross declined to comment about the recent actions involving immigrants or his company’s past support of the three councilmen.

Genis, also elected last fall, said she joined the majority in voting to cancel the lease of Forbath’s Share Our Selves because she felt that the agency had grown too big for its westside neighborhood, around the Rea Community Center.

But the other immigrant measures went too far, she said.

“I don’t think this is a problem that is going to go away, but the issue is how you deal with it,” she said.

Amburgey, Buffa and Glasgow defend their votes, asserting that the measures are necessary to stem a growing tide of undocumented workers who contribute to crime and other problems in the city.

“We are getting so many illegal aliens in town that they are creating problems,” Glasgow contended. “It’s against the law for them to be in the United States and our actions let everyone know that we are going to comply with the (immigration) law.”

Glasgow, a retired police captain and former city planning commissioner, is seen as a close ally of Amburgey. Both come from law enforcement backgrounds, and Amburgey made significant contributions and loans to Glasgow’s political campaign last year.

But it is Amburgey’s election that critics see as a turning point for the council. A former Costa Mesa police lieutenant and self-described law-and-order proponent, he made illegal aliens a campaign theme when he ran in 1986.

Amburgey acknowledges that recent measures, particularly the illegal-alien funding ban, have exposed him to heavy criticism.

“I know it’s a hot issue, and if this is the one that costs me reelection, then so be it,” he said. “I was elected to do what I think is best.”

Amburgey is also quick to defend himself against charges--often brought up at City Council meetings--that his zeal to rid the city of illegal aliens borders on racism.

“I happen to have been married to a Hispanic for 36 years so that carries no water at all,” he said. “I am really not the bad ogre that people would like to think. I’ll compare my record (on service to the community) with anyone.”

Amburgey said he is not convinced by those who argue that the problem of illegal immigration is tied to the unavailability of work in native lands.

“I have been down to Mexicali on tours to see the situation and would say there is an awful lot of employment in Mexico if they want to work there,” he said.

But while Amburgey is seen as the force behind recent city actions, it is Buffa’s role that has confounded critics the most.

An independent television producer and former planning commissioner, Buffa’s 1986 campaign was geared to improving city services and addressing the needs of the growing Latino and Vietnamese community.

He said his support of the dayworker and alien funding policies was reluctant.

“It was extremely difficult for me personally as a first-generation American (his family is Italian) to take any kind of action against someone trying to make it in another country,” Buffa said. “But when the numbers increase to the extent they are a tangible impact on citizens, I wish I had the luxury to ignore it.”

For Amburgey, Glasgow and Buffa, the issue is a simple one: Illegal aliens are violating federal law and the city is duty-bound to uphold all laws, whether federal, state or local.

“I don’t know if the city has changed so much as the problem has intensified,” Amburgey said. “It had gotten to the magnitude that we had to do something. It would be politically expedient to turn our heads and say we, as local officials, can’t do anything about it.”

Amburgey charges that illegal aliens have increased crime rates and have contributed to overcrowded conditions.

He said Costa Mesa’s reputation for charity and moderation has worked against the city, making it a magnet for undocumented workers.

“When we tell them we will feed and cloth and house them, we unintentionally encourage them to sneak across the border,” Amburgey contended. “If we don’t provide services and don’t encourage them, maybe they will go back home.”

But others dispute the councilman’s claims that Costa Mesa’s illegal alien population has increased.

“It wasn’t a very big problem before, and the situation doesn’t seem to have changed very much,” argued former councilman Dave Wheeler. An attorney and slow-growth advocate known for his freewheeling style, Wheeler was elected to the council in 1984 but did not to seek a second term. “Police statistics then showed there wasn’t a crime problem in the areas where (immigrants) congregated. But the response of the city has changed from one of monitoring for crime to one of usurping federal authority. They have gone beyond their role (as local officials).”

A recent report assessing the impact of immigration reform law in the county estimates that 150,000 people without legal status reside and work in the county. But the study offers no city-by-city breakdown.

Costa Mesa residents have complained about loitering, drunkenness, harassment and litter in the areas where most dayworkers congregate, near the intersections of 18th Street and Newport Boulevard, which encompasses nearby Lions Park, and 20th Street and Santa Ana Avenue.

However, police statistics do not support claims of increased crime.

“There isn’t really any major increase in the more harmful crimes,” said Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Tim Holbrooke, who is in charge of the westside substation. “Certainly some crime is related to the Hispanic population but to what degree it involves undocumented workers we don’t know.”

He added: “Lions Park, where the biggest congregations have been, has shown a decrease in the numbers of dayworkers. We’re not sure why.”

Holbrooke said many residents who complain about large numbers of Latino men coming and going in their neighborhood mistakenly assume that they are undocumented.

“We had a talk with a community group the other day and explained that a lot of the people they see are here legally and work; so when they see a lot of foot traffic, they are going to work,” he said.

Rabbi Bernard King, a member of the city’s human relations committee, said the council’s actions reflect a lingering prejudice.

“My hope is that this is a dying gasp of those who view Costa Mesa and Orange County in general as a last bastion of the white race,” he said. “But the demographics have changed. We will either have to learn to live together as diverse cultures or become totally out of touch with reality.”

King asserted that the council’s actions have given the city a black eye, and he noted that little more than a year ago the city was being lauded for its innovative programs to ease ethnic tensions.

Initial complaints about day workers were addressed through formation of a city task force that promoted greater cultural awareness.

Last year, the city designated a week in April as Human Relations Week and officials also inaugurated a program called Living Room Dialogues where residents were invited to neighborhood meetings to discuss the experiences of immigrants from around the world.

According to King, no community leaders have voiced support of the council’s recent actions.

However, John Brechtal, assistant district director at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, defended the measures.

“The city is on the leading edge . . . in looking for new solutions because the old ones haven’t worked,” Brechtal said.

But he conceded that because of political and economic forces at work in Central and South America, neither current levels of federal intervention nor actions of one city are likely to stop the flow of illegal aliens.

Ultimately, critics worry that as other cities explore Costa Mesa’s actions for precedent, those larger issues will be ignored.

“I think everyone agrees there has to be a solution to the immigration problem, but it is a more global problem and will take a more global solution than what is going on in Costa Mesa,” Forbath said.

How The Costa Mesa Council Voted On issues touching immigrants and the poor, the Costa Mesa City Council majority has included Mayor Pete Buffa and Councilmen Orville Amburgey and Ed Glasgow. Councilwomen Mary Hornbuckle and Sandra L. Genis mostly disagree with their proposals. Issue Restrictive Dayworker Ordinance makes it illegal for a person to show “intent” to solicitemployment within 300 feet of certain intersections, even if in a motor vehicle. Amburgey: For Buffa: For Glasgow: For Genis: Against Hornbuckle: Against Issue Cancellation of SOS Lease forces Share Our Selves, an agency that gives food, clothing and health services to the needy, to move from the Rea Community Center within six months. Amburgey: For Buffa: For Glasgow: For Genis: For Hornbuckle: Against Issue Illegal-Alien Funding Ban witholds city grants from any group--except health clinics-that support, employ or assist illegal aliens. Amburgey: For Buffa: For Glasgow: For Genis: Against Hornbuckle: Against Source: Costa Mesa City Council records