Commentary: A dictator or someone who has saved the city?

Last year the Daily Pilot published a list of the 103 most influential people in Costa Mesa (The DP 103). Surprisingly, the newspaper missed the most influential quality possessed by one of those on the list: He’s in fact a superhero who possesses the Joe McCarthy-like talent of recognizing Nazis in our midst.

Yes, 75 years after the genocide of 6 million Jews under a program of state-sponsored murder led by Adolf Hitler, our resident Simon Wiesenthal testified to an epiphany that one of our own has “plans to focus ‘enforcement’ on specific types of groups” just like the dictator did in Germany (“Mayor asks blogger to apologize for Hitler reference,” April 16).

Unbeknownst to all, the man we elected to the City Council, Mayor Jim Righeimer, is in fact a dictator in the mold of Hitler. The proof? None other than the mayor’s creation of a Preserve Our Neighborhoods Task Force to address how neighborhoods are being affected by residents of group homes.

To the average resident, the mayor is doing a Herculean job of bringing Costa Mesa back from the precipice of financial disaster. From the depths of giant deficits that burned through tens of millions of precious reserves, the mayor and his majority in short order have remarkably righted Costa Mesa’s balance sheet to one of surplus and are now rebuilding our rainy day reserves.

Moreover, they’ve done this while devoting 5% to infrastructure and repaving many roads and alleys that hadn’t seen work in decades. In all, $40 million will have been devoted to repaving 25% of our roads. This council majority is making Costa Mesa a better place to live.

To accomplish this, they simply used a common-sense approach that considered the interests of all Costa Mesans rather than those of a few. City Hall would need to be sustainable and better serve the entire community. Ultimately, this required fewer employees and other reforms, including adjustments to workers compensation that is saving half a million dollars a year.

But to our righteous superhero and his followers, these and other accomplishments are the equivalent of a dictator making the trains run on time and further proof of the mayor’s dictatorial ways. They would have us believe that creating a task force is the first step toward the Fourth Reich.

Not only are we blessed with such an avenger but also with a wise councilwoman who vigorously objects to calls that our noble inquisitor apologize for his accusations.

While the unknowing public may continue to believe that our mayor is simply making Costa Mesa a better place to live, this dynamic duo will continue their vigilante ways, fighting evil, one opponent at a time.

Bless their hearts. If we’re lucky, the councilwoman will honor our crusader with an award: Mr. Incredible.

Attorney TIM SESLER is a Costa Mesa planning commissioner and a member of the Preserve Our Neighborhoods Task Force.