Ex-board members Monahan and Fitzpatrick running to return to Costa Mesa Sanitary District
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Two former Costa Mesa Sanitary District directors have announced plans to mount bids to rejoin the board this fall.
Eastside resident Jim Fitzpatrick and Costa Mesa Councilman Gary Monahan have said they will run for spots on the five-member board. The district provides sewer and curbside trash collection services to about 116,700 ratepayers in Costa Mesa, parts of Newport Beach and unincorporated sections of Orange County.
The seats of board members Art Perry and James Ferryman are up for election Nov. 8. Both have pulled papers indicating they plan to run again, but neither had filed as of Monday afternoon, according to the Orange County registrar of voters office. The filing deadline is Aug. 12.
Monahan is unable to run for reelection to the City Council this year because of term limits.
Previously, he served three council terms from 1994 to 2006. He has served two more terms since being elected again in 2008.
He was elected to the sanitary district board in 2006 and served one four-year term.
“I think I can bring something very positive to the sanitary district,” Monahan said last week. “I’ve been there before and I know the issues.”
Though he rejoined the City Council in the middle of his previous term on the sanitary district board, Monahan said he has no such plans if elected to the board this time.
“I’m not going to run for City Council ever again,” he said. “I’m over it.”
Fitzpatrick, who was elected to the sanitary district board in 2010 and served until 2013, said Monday that he decided to run for the board again because he doesn’t think the current board is acting in the best interest of ratepayers.
He pointed to recent decisions to spend about $5 million to buy and remodel a new headquarters building at 290 Paularino Ave. — which he labeled the “poop palace” — and to increase board members’ pay by 33%.
Monahan also criticized the decision to raise the pay.
“It’s not about the pay,” he said, “it’s about serving people.”
Fitzpatrick also was a member of the Costa Mesa Planning Commission during his board term.
His sanitary district colleagues at the time found his concurrent service problematic and filed a lawsuit contending it was a conflict of interest.
Fitzpatrick argued there was no conflict, but he resigned from the Planning Commission in May 2012 in an effort to end the lawsuit.
The litigation continued, however, and Fitzpatrick resigned from the sanitary district in January 2013. He later served again on the Planning Commission.
City Council members are not barred from simultaneously serving on the sanitary district board, but the state attorney general’s office ruled in 2012 that conflicts of interest could arise from Fitzpatrick serving on both the sanitary district and the Planning Commission.
Despite the legal clash, Fitzpatrick said he “still had a very long list of proud accomplishments” during his time on the board, such as increasing transparency by getting “board meetings to be recorded and made available for future review” and bringing “awareness that they hadn’t put the trash contract out to bid since World War II.”
“I’ve always been a champion of the ratepayer and been able to make the appropriate business case,” he said.
Sanitary district board members have been embroiled recently in an increasingly contentious back-and-forth over a study their counterparts at the Mesa Water District commissioned to examine whether it would make sense to merge the two agencies.
Mesa Water’s board decided last week to put an advisory measure on November’s ballot to gauge public support for the merger concept. The study calculated that consolidation could result in about $15.6 million in one-time savings and an additional $2.7 million in savings annually.
Sanitary district officials blasted the study, saying the possible savings it calculated are incorrect and would mislead voters. They indicated they might make a legal challenge to the language of the ballot measure.
Monahan said studying the possibility of a merger “makes a lot of sense.”
“I think consolidating government agencies, when it saves a lot of money, is a good thing,” he said.
Fitzpatrick criticized the sanitary district board for choosing not to participate in the study, saying he’s “offended that the board is allergic to even getting informed.”
Twitter: @LukeMMoney
