ON THE TOWN:Mayor shows his weakness

My wife will be the first to tell you that I am not the tidiest person she has ever met. Both of the desks I use are cluttered and there are pockets of my belongings stashed all over the house.

At this time, for example, I am having trouble remembering where I stashed some photographs of our new kitten, Kisa.

It’s not that I don’t want to be neat, it’s just that I place a higher priority on other things, such as playing with Kisa.

As with many people with a similar affliction, I will tidy up when the mess gets to be overwhelming.

The mess on the floor of my car reached that point last Saturday, not from trash but from numerous stains on the car’s carpet.

So cleaned the carpet and also cleaned the rest of the interior. Then I realized that the outside needed to be washed.

Paying $10 or more for a car wash is not something I look forward to, but when I don’t wash my car myself, I feel better because I know that most carwashes recycle their dirty water.

Before I left for the carwash, my wife told me that the friends and family of Israel Maciel were hosting a car wash on Baker Street in Costa Mesa to help raise money for his funeral.

Maciel, as you may know, was gunned down days earlier by someone in a car with a gun.

The carwash was being held at Ferrari & Maserati of Orange County, at 1425 Baker St. in Costa Mesa, just down the street from where Maciel died.

At the car lot, the fancy cars were moved to make room for the parade of dirty autos. This was not what you’d call a water-wise event, but exceptions can be made in certain cases.

While my son and I waited for our car, I told him why we were there and asked him how much he would donate to the family if money were not an issue.

“Fifty dollars,” he said.

Roy has always been generous that way, and it was nice to see that at 13, he still had a big heart.

“You’re a nice guy,” I replied.

While we were waiting, I wondered what Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor would think of the sight of 20 or more people who probably could not afford to rent a Maserati, let alone buy one, washing cars all day in the hot sun on a lot where dreams come true.

Not my dream, but a dream for many, I’m sure.

I wondered if he would look at these people and see them as grieving family and friends of Maciel or as the residents of a high concentration of “downscale rental units” and potential visitors to the job centers and soup kitchens that he recently connected with the city’s crime.

Mansoor’s comments were beyond heartless; they were irrational and irresponsible. First of all, there is no job center in the city, the mayor having led the charge to close it in January.

If anything, the reappearance of day workers up and down Placentia Avenue, has been a blight on the city instead of the other way around. But in his stubbornness, he refuses to acknowledge that closing the job center was a mistake.

Second, I have to assume that the mayor owns a home (or like the rest of us, the bank owns it and we pay them each month for the privilege of living there). Otherwise, he would know about the rental rates in Orange County, and he would know that at those prices, there is no such thing as a “downscale rental unit.”

The soup kitchen comment was probably part of a feeble attempt at cause and effect. Like the famous cause and effect example that shows that most pedestrians are hit by cars while they are in crosswalks and therefore crosswalks cause accidents, the mayor has made a huge and incorrect leap from the occurrence of one event, the establishment of a soup kitchen, to the cause of another, in this case, crime.

Poverty does not cause crime, and the mayor should know that. He should know better than to link Maciel’s killing with low income support services such as soup kitchens and job centers.

The mayor’s further comments support something I have believed for a long time. The mayor is someone who has trouble saying, “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong.”

When challenged on his comments the mayor had an opportunity to say something such as, “I was responding in anger to a serious crime. My remarks were insensitive and inappropriate.”

But instead, he continued droning on about removing the “welcome mat for the gang members and other criminals.”

Strong people own their mistakes. They admit them and move on. And yes, they sometimes suffer as a result of their admissions.

Not owning up to mistakes is a weakness. Keeping a messy desk is a weakness, too, but there is no evidence at this time that it causes crime.