Let’s hope that the American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t read this column.
Last summer, the Aztec Basketball League, based in Santa Ana, turned to Costa Mesa to use the gym at the downtown recreation center because the gym it had been using was undergoing repairs.
The league’s administrator, Rigoberto Bautista, requested a few hours of gym time each Sunday for a few months. The rental of the gym would have generated about $39,000 in revenue for Costa Mesa.
Very few people play in the gym on Sundays. I know because I have played basketball there many times. After the first hour, I am often the only person in the gym. The permit underwent far more than the usual amount of review, which included someone counting cars in the rec center parking lot to determine the league’s impact on the facility.
The City Council questioned the rate being charged to Bautista’s league. It questioned Bautista about whether he was going to profit from the registrations. It questioned whether displacing a tiny number of Sunday basketball players was enough to say “no,” even though no evidence was presented that the few Sunday players live in the city.
Approval of the permit was recommended by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. But that wasn’t enough.
This no-brainer permit was delayed over and over while the council tried to decide which constituency it wanted to serve: the anti-Santa Anans or the fiscal hawks who wanted to get their hands on that $39,000.
At one point, Mayor Allan Mansoor, who could easily have led his majority to make the fast and easy decision to approve this permit, reported that he had met privately with Bautista and worked out a deal that would have the city approve the permit if the league would, among other requests, change its name.
Yes, you read it correctly: Despite the fact that no other league using city facilities has ever been asked to change its name, and despite the fact that the city was in the middle of a lawsuit with the ACLU over the ejection of a Latino activist from the council’s chambers, Mansoor asked the Santa Ana-based league to change its name to something that includes “Costa Mesa.” During the deliberations, one basketball player told me he was sure the council was stringing the decision along in the hope that the league would run out of time and have to look somewhere else.
That is exactly what happened.
But wait, there’s more!
