Commentary: City should prioritize park use, medical pot ordinance

In his March 14 commentary “Let’s be done with free spending and neglected roads,” Costa Mesa Mayor Steve Mensinger addressed Councilwoman Katrina Foley’s suggestion to establish prioritized goals for the city.

In addition to the obvious priorities of recruiting public safety personnel and monitoring sober living homes, I have a couple of other suggestions.

First, I suggest that instead of the parks department spending our tax money on a public opinion survey about the city’s recreational needs, which may be falsely interpreted to justify developing unwanted sports fields at Fairview Park, that it collect facts about the utilization of the parks. A survey will only provide more opinions, not more facts.

Many people who have spoken at the Fairview Park Citizens Advisory Committee meetings and recent council meetings have asked to see such data to determine, for example, if the city needs more parks or simply more lighting of existing parks.

Second, because city voters are likely to approve medical marijuana dispensaries, I suggest that the council continue its efforts to write an ordinance that would properly control these businesses and their products.

I suggest this because two marijuana initiatives, both certified for the ballot, have some subtle but significant flaws. Because neither of these initiatives can be revised until after they have been voted on, only an ordinance written by the city can correct these flaws now.

I am specifically concerned about the ability of the City Council to amend or repeal a measure. Amendment or repeal can only be done through an election in which the majority approves. This is a slow and costly way to deal with the frequently changing field of medical marijuana and would be particularly problematic if there was an urgent patient safety issue.

CHARLES MOONEY lives in Costa Mesa.