Orange County News Blog

Photo by Russ Roca

Chief Anthony Morales came up empty at November 2008 California Coastal Commission hearing.

​

UPDATE: Jaimee Lynn Fletcher reports in Orange County Register: HUNTINGTON BEACH--The city will absorb an unincorporated county island that some environmentalists believe is an American Indian burial ground that dates back more than 8,000 years.

A proposal goes before the Huntington Beach City Council tonight to have the city annex 6.2 acres of land on the Bolsa Chica Mesa that the owner wants to sell to developers and Native Americans want preserved because it's considered sacred.

Soon to be legal at one Aliso Viejo business.

​Massage parlor owners rejoice! The city of Aliso Viejo is in the process of changing local law so that you and other hands-on businesses in town can operate table showers, which are just what the name implies: tables where people lie down next to bathroom fixtures that workers use to shower them off. 

Table or "vichy" showers had been prohibited under the municipal code to further regulate adult-oriented businesses that might proliferate within city limits. So, why does the Aliso Viejo City Council now seem welcoming to such, ahem, relaxation services?

​Before this evening's Santa Ana City Council meeting, union workers will stage a rally in front of City Hall to draw attention to layoffs they claim will lead to 9-1-1 emergency calls being answered by an electronic menu rather than a live dispatcher.

Wikicommons

Bye bye buses.

​County Supervisor Patricia Bates may have said it best today: "You can't send these people off a cliff, in a bus."

The remark came amidst some low-heat sparring between her and Tustin Mayor Pro Tem Jerry Amante at this morning's meeting of the OCTA Finance and Administration committee. They were talking, of course, about how much they should recommend that the OCTA board of directors cut bus service in response to a budget shortfall.

The recommendation that came out of the committee was to cut a lot, but not as much as once thought--unless the State Legislature keeps screwing local transportation agencies. If that happens, then, well: Bus users will be heading off that cliff.

He's in Surf City and he's okay.

​Best known for its surfers, skinheads and ultimate fighters, Huntington Beach has been overrun with a new breed of hepcat lately.

Radical air huggers.

Photo by Christopher Victorio

Ready for face time with the Lake Forest City Council Tuesday night.

​Medical marijuana advocates offered 1,000 free hamburgers to draw supporters to Tuesday night's Lake Forest City Council meeting, but only 300 showed up to plead with city officials to reconsider their attempts to shut down 14 cannabis dispensaries around town.

(See photographer Christopher Victorio's slideshow.)

With stomachs swelled and munchies satisfied by the burgers, that was enough to jam pack the proceedings.

Lake Forest's tiny council chambers only seat 200 people.

The Anaheim City Council, led by Mayor Curt Pringle, loves to crow about the luxury housing that has and (someday) will continue to pop up within and around the Platinum Triangle, the fabled area near Angel Stadium, Honda Center and the Grove of Anaheim that the city envisions blending "leading-edge business, high-salary employment, world champion entertainment and exciting residential neighborhoods, creating a unique opportunity in the heart of Orange County."

Swell.

But there are some townfolk would like to remember them also. This evening, residents are scheduled to join leaders from the Orange County Congregation Community Organization--a faith-based federation of 22 congregations representing 48,000 families in Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Mission Viejo, and San Juan Capistrano--in presenting the council more than 1,000 signed petitions asking the city to renew the Anaheim Affordable Housing Strategic Plan.

According to the OCCCO, the four-year-old plan has led to the construction of 1,300 affordable units.

Following their presentation at the council meeting, which begins at 5 p.m. in the council chambers at 200 S. Anaheim Blvd., the affordable housing boosters will gather for a procession to St. Boniface Church for an interfaith prayer service.

What will they be praying for? Justice.

Stephen C. Smith calls on others to keep tabs on Irvine City Hall.

CORRECTED!

Lost in Santa Ana a few months ago, half paying attention to the street signs and half to Larry Mantle's KPCC interview show blaring out of the car speakers, I heard the host steer his Orange County "roundtable" guests--Orange County Register senior editorial writer Steven Greenhut; former LA Times religion writer William Lobdell and the Weekly's irrepressible Gustavo Arellano--into the topic of local bloggers. The three amigos had just been talking with Mantle about the demise of daily print journalism in Orange County, and among the first bloggers they agreed was admirably filling the local news-gathering void was Stephen C. Smith, who'd kept tabs on Irvine City Hall through his website, the since-shuttered "Irvine Tattler."

This filled me with pride because Smith and I had many running email exchanges going about Irvine city politics, Islamic radicals, the Orange County Great Park, UC Riverside's former Bull & Mouth pub and players within the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim's minor league system, which Smith tracks through his other website (and passion), "FutureAngels.com."

Smith could comfortably comment on the local goings on in Irvine because he previously worked at City Hall and was once part of the so-called "Larry Agran machine." Insiders agree that Agran--the town's former mayor and onetime U.S. presidential candidate and current city councilman and Great Park Board of Directors chairman--pulls the political levers in Irvine, which leans to the right in every elected office above a City Council that is controlled by the left-leaning Agran bloc. But what made Smith an indispensible blogger was that he eventually became so disenchanted with Agran that he turned on his former master--joining an ever-growing roster that most notably includes Mark Petracca, the UC Irvine political science professor, Orange County politics commentator and former Weekly columnist; Chris Mears, the attorney and former Irvine city councilman; and Will Swaim, the Weekly's former editor and publisher who'd previously been picked by Agran to serve on the city Planning Commission who worked for three years as Agran's council assistant and an employee in his outside urban affairs think tank. (It was Agran's longtime ally on the council, Paula Werner, who actually appointed Swaim to the Planning Commission.) 

That has also made Smith a target of critics, especially at the LiberalOC, who claim he's in the pocket of Agran's council and philosophical foe, Christina Shea. However one views Smith, if we are to pick up Mantle's theme and wonder about news bloggers filling the vacuum created by the demise of daily print journalism, what is to happen when the news bloggers disappear? That is happening sooner rather than later with Smith, who departs within days for his new home and life in Florida. Before the big move comes, I asked for an exit interview . . .

Signs were posted near the construction site.

Spencer Kornhaber / OCW

Remember that brouhaha last Thursday about a cell tower being built next to a Huntington Beach elementary school? Remember the outcry from parents, the indignation from school officials, and the petition from the kid who expressed an interest in having T-Mobile pay for his future cancer bills? Remember how the community around Harbour View park and Harbour View Elementary School weren't notified that a big ole' fake tree would be built on city property literally feet away from a kindergarten classroom?

Yeah, that's all better now. Mostly.

The hole was dug, the crane was in place, and the faux-leafy tower was sitting on the bed of a truck around the corner last Thursday when parents at Harbour View realized what was going on and confronted Huntington Beach Mayor Keith Bohr. Sensing that the council may have erred in approving the tower without public hearing back in January, Bohr called an emergency meeting of the council--held tonight.

About 200 people showed up, and 23 put in requests to speak. But before anyone from the public got up to the podium, City Attorney Jennifer McGrath announced the outcome of the earlier closed session meeting. The unanimous decision: Direct city staff to renegotiate the contract for the cell tower with T-Mobile, and reimburse T-Mobile up to $50,000 in expenses.

It took a few seconds for news, delivered in McGrath's soft, bureaucratic tones, to make sense to the crowd. "Alright!" someone shouted, and the room hesitatingly applauded.

Bohr put a finer point on things: "I'd like to add, although it's not a done deal until it's a done deal, that the T-Mobile representatives committed verbally that they will not proceed with the site, actually to the extent we're deciding who's gonna fill the hole in. So I think we're moving in the right direction."

That's when the cheers, whooping, and true applause broke out. A few of the council members cracked grins behind the dais.

And then came the public comments...

What are you doing here?

UPDATED WITH COMMENT FROM THE CITY...

Weekly editor Ted Kissell encountered more than the usual wet heads, skinned knees and freckled faces scooting into his neighborhood Harbour View Elementary School in Huntington Beach this morning. He also ran into parents pissed off not about grades, ineffective teachers or stale bake sale items (this time), but a cell-phone tower.

Indeed, folks are so hung up over T-Mobile USA's faux-tree tower--which is not the one shown here but is being built on city parkland adjacent to the school's playground--that they have forced a city meeting at 7 tonight at the school at 4343 Pickwick Circle. The mayor, a T-Mobile rep and an Ocean View School District official are expected to attend.

Construction apparently began earlier this week without neighbors or the school being informed. The lack of information being distributed has helped fuel rumors of a radiation-spewing death pole quietly being foisted on defenseless schoolchildren. Actually, radiowaves from such towers are not as toxic as some of the conversations being transmitted. But that's no reason to spring this on a freaked-out populace.

"I'm angry and frustrated at the lack of the city's ability to inform the district and our community about what's happening, so people could at least have their say," said Harbour View Principal Cindy Osterhout, in a Huntington Beach Independent report. "The kids have also now heard about it and are concerned, and this could all been handled in a much better way. To have to be reactive is just not right, and I think we deserve better than this."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Sure, Jon Stewart can mock those courageous Fox News hounds exposing the wussy Socialist tyrannical ways of the 10-week-old Obama administration, but look what the Chosen One's hyper-P.C-anti-freedom-thug governance just wrought.

The Laguna Niguel City Council voted 5-0 last night to crack down on butt cracks opened wide for passing trains, adopting new laws to ban drinking, restrict parking, stem pee flows and cordone off the area where scores of revelers drop their drawers for Mugs Away Saloon's annual Mooning of Amtrak.

Dear God, when will this madness end? 

Good headline, right? Last night, the Mission Viejo City Council sent the long-gestating "Right To Vote" initiative -- which is backed by roughly the same people who back the Lance MacLean recall campaign -- to a city-wide election. The initiative would mandate that all major zone-change proposals in the city be first approved by voters.

Ed Piskor / OC Weekly

The city's $300k Rose Parade float: The recall/right to voters didn't like that, either.

Let's count the levels of democracy for this thing. First, local activist superstars Dale Tyler and Connie Lee headed up a signature drive, which resulted in about 11,000 signed supporters (though the count of verified signatories from the Registrar of Voters came out to be 8,327). Then, the Mission Viejo city council had the option of adopting the iniative as law or sending it to an election. The council majority -- Trish Kelley, Frank Ury and MacLean -- and city attorney Bill Curley have made noises about the initiative possibly encouraging incoming developers to game the system by trying to build affordable housing when they otherwise wouldn't (in Mission Viejo, this is a bad thing). Critics have said those complaints are just fronts to disguise the fact that some of the council's biggest campaign finance backers -- local developers and the groups like the Building Industry Association -- don't like the iniative. In either case, the council voted last night to put the iniative to a ballot instead of simply adopting it. What this means: Another fun campaign to watch when the next election rolls around!

It's interesting to note that Red County republiblogger Matt Cunningham has started sniping at the Right To Vote/MacLean Recall crowd. He's made some intriguing criticisms, including the observation that Lee and Tyler spent $15,000 of their own money to hire a signature-collecting firm and that recall supporter/council member John Paul Ledesma signed off on a few of the votes that MacLean is criticized for supporting. But the recall crowd might want to take the attention as encouragement. If there were ever a sign that Lance MacLean has entrenched himself into the county republican/developer-backed establishment (Saddleback Republicans not included), that sign might be defense from Red County. Either that, or this is all part of the RC/Orange Juice Blog feud.

My own stupid phone picture of the meeting. Compare to Bishop's.

Here's a story. Your reporter attends Dana Point City Council workshop tonight about the proposed Town Center design. Your reporter leaves midway through, unsure of what to later write about the generally uneventful first half of the meeting. Your reporter returns home a few hours later, for some reason fires up Twitter, and sees a post from Dana Point City Councilmember Joel Bishop, age 51:

joelbishop:Town center plunlic meeting in Dana Point. Very well attended. http://twitpic.com/2nwjl

Yes. Text-message typos aside (he meant "public meeting," I think), the council member beat your reporter -- any reporter -- to the story of the meeting. I mean, it's not a story, but it is coverage. His TwitPic is a photo of the audience, taken from behind the makeshift dais set up at the Del Obispo rec center -- and, apparently, posted to Twitter from behind that dais.

And now I'm blogging about it.

Two ways to look at all this. Option one: Whoa, the source-journalist-reader continuum is being mucked up by technology even more to than it already has been since the dawn of the Internet. Option two: What the hell is Joel Bishop doing Twittering during his own city council meeting?

gorriti / Flickr / Creative Commons

The Associated Press put out an item to the national wires last Friday about the mayor of Salisbury, Maryland who took some time from his state-of-the-city address to carp about the bloggers and gadflies whose antics have placed their city "under siege":

Daily, I run into citizens who are weary of the 'gotcha' mentality on the part of a few citizens and City Council members...

This is simply mean-spirited constant intimidation. Combined with the lies and innuendos of several 'bloggers' this city is under siege.

"Gotcha"? "Mean-spirited"? "Intimidation"? "Lies"? This dude is using the same laundry-list of the terms you hear from elected officials in Orange Coutny -- probably anywhere, nowadays -- when they talk about their semi-web-savvy critics. As recounted in last week's Weekly, recall target and Mission Viejo Mayor Pro Tem went way further than this Maryland guy and said that he thought the blogging crowd might rise up and kill him at some point.

And at the council meeting two weeks ago, MacLean spent about ten minutes behind the dais defending himself after a member of the Saddleback Republican Assembly read from a resolution encouraging his resignation. "We have people that have gone out of their way to tell lies often enough that they actually think that makes it true," he said before addressing some of the charges against him. He left a few of the accusations unanswered, though, which of course brought more blog scorn.

He's not the only one of a like mind with this Maryland mayor. Some of the politicians around here give as good as they get. The recent best: CUSD ex-supe Woodrow Carter, who told his critics to "Get a life." Gotcha!

jhecking / Flickr / Creative Commons

Last night's housing-policy forum in Mission Viejo was something of a landmark: For once, you walked away from the council chambers thinking less about the testy one-liners traded by council members and public commenters and more about, well, actual policy.

Turns out, SB 375, a not-so-well-publicized bill passed by the state legislature last year, takes aim straight at that which makes Orange County so Orange County: car-intensive suburban sprawl. According to the way the bill was presented by consultants last night (and the state's official fact-sheet), if the bill has its intended effect, OC and surrounding areas within 30 years will have been greatly rearranged.

The law is part of Sacramento's effort to implement the greenhouse-gas reduction goals the state has set for itself. The way to do that? Reshaping land-use policy to discourage long commutes. It pushes the "Sustainable Communities Strategy," by which premiums are placed on the development of walkable communities near public transportation hubs. That's not a new idea, obviously, but the remarkable thing is that this it's being corralled into a widespread regional policy. 

According to the presenting consultant's slides, the bill aims to "shift or re-direct future growth away from outlying areas (San Bernadino, Riverside and Imperial counties)" and "redirect growth and concentrate growth near transit/employment (Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties)." The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) has drawn up a model of how much land use will have to be rejiggered to meet SB 375's targets. Supposedly, by the year 2035, about 40,000 households (that's equivalent to the housing count of Costa Mesa) and  22,550 jobs (more than provided by Orange County's largest employer, Disneyland International) will have been moved to Orange County from outlying areas.

Obviously, rising population numbers means that local housing and human density will increase no matter what. But according to certain analysts, SB 375 will have the additional effect of move people out of, say, the 909 area code and into the 949. It's currently unclear whether they will be given a tutorial on how to not wear jeans to the beach.

Creative Commons

A series of ordinances before the Anaheim City Council tonight may result in the city incurring the ire of a local taxicab company that says it is being shut out of the competitive bid process.

Konstantinos Roditis, President of 24/7 Yellowcab, tells the Weekly that he might sue the city if it goes through with a proposal to extend the expired franchise of A White and Yellow Cab, Inc. (also called "A Taxi"), a rival cab company. And the city wouldn't be surprised if he did, says planning director Sheri Vander Dussen*. A Taxi's contracted franchise agreement with Anaheim actually expired on Valentines Day; even if the council votes to award A Taxi a new franchise as proposed, the company's taxis wouldn't technically be street-legal until 30 days after the council goes through the required second reading of the agreement at its next meeting in March. But the city attorney has said that Anaheim won't take any action to stop the company from operating in the city while its franchise has lapsed.

This all has Roditis ticked because it means that his company won't be given a shot to get into the Disneyland/Convention Center/Angels Stadium/Chain Reaction (JK on the last one) taxi market in Anaheim -- even though he submitted an application to pick up A Taxi's lapsed franchise. It's not that his application is being denied. It's that it's not really being considered. A committee of local business people was assigned to evaluate competing proposals for a new taxi franchises in the city. Their recommendation placed 24/7 Taxi dead last in the running, but Roditis and a few other firms objected to the way in which that recommendation was obtained. At the council's meeting two weeks ago, Vander Dussen said the council wasn't happy with the idea of idea of reducing the number of competing taxi companies in Anaheim by awarding the franchise to Yellow Cab of Greater Orange County, as was recommended. So, instead of dealing with each of the four franchise agreements set to expire within the next few years all at different times, the council expressed a desire to extend all incumbent cab company franchises until 2012. Great for the companies already in the city; not so great for Roditis.

"I just want a fair shot. If I still fail, that's fine," he says. "We're hopeful that the city will realize what they're doing is illegal and wrong. "

*Originally misspelled. Thanks to Ron Vander Dussen for the catch!

A good number of the people sitting on the Mission Viejo City Council got their political start back in the '90s by holding positions in the Saddleback Republican Assembly, a chartered unit of the California Republican Assembly that serves Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, Laguna Woods and Laguna Hills. It endorsed Lance MacLean, Mission Viejo's current Mayor Pro Tem, back when he was elected in 2002. Yesterday evening, their board of directors weighed in on the recall drive against MacLean, voting unanimously -- with reported unanimous approval by the Assembly's membership -- to ask MacLean to resign.

Saddleback Republican Assembly carefully and deliberately considered Lance MacLean's candidate statements prior to endorsing him in 2002. SRA finds his performance significantly out of compliance with his campaign promises and written responses to SRA's endorsing body. SRA holds MacLean accountable for his broken promises, failed leadership and abandonment of conservative Republican principles.

MacLean's response is essentially the same as his response to the original recall petition, which was signed by a number of SRA members. "They are using lies, exaggerations and falsehoods on a witch hunt to try and instigate a takeover and achieve their radical agenda," he said over the phone. "The SRA is just a radical element, unfortunately, of this community." He refutes the charges against him by citing the fact that the city maintains healthy reserves, that taxes have not increased in Mission Viejo and that no new housing has been built in the city since the 90s.

The rest of the SRA's resolution, and one last comment from MacLean, after the jump.

Local and statewide proponents of Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban approved by voters last November, have a message for local and statewide politicians: stop trying to overturn the election results and get back to work fixing your cities and/or California.

State senators and Assembly members "are authoring meaningless nonbinding resolutions that take up the time of legislators and legislative staff who should be focused on appropriate legislative priorities such as solving the state deficit," claims ProtectMarriage.com--Yes on 8 Campaign.

"Proposition 8 was adopted with over a 600,000 vote margin, gaining approximately the same vote percentage as Barack Obama did nationally," said Ron Prentice, chairman of the group that takes credit for the measure's success, in a press statement. "It passed in 42 out of California's 58 counties, including the five largest counties in California. It is wrong for legislators to disrespect the vote of the people and attempt to substitute their values for the decision of over 7 million voters."

It happened with the haste and informality of a high-five. The honorable and lanky Mission Viejo Mayor Pro Tem Lance MacLean took his seat at the dais around 6 p.m., right before the beginning of tonight's open-session council meeting. A man in the front row of the audience, wearing a vibrant green shirt and tan plaid shorts, jumped up and hustled to where the five council members sit.

Lance MacLean

"You Lance MacLean?" he asked, apparently not trusting the illuminated "Lance MacLean" nameplate.

Chipper, friendly: "Yes, I am."

The green-shirt man handed MacLean a standard letter-size envelope and then turned around, fast, and power-walked out of the room. MacLean smiled and nodded as he reads the papers in the envelope, then nudged Mayor Frank Ury and showed him the note, grinning. If MacLean in that moment was perturbed by the fact that he had just been informed of a recall effort against him, he hid it by treating the notice like a dirty joke that had been passed via paper scrap.

A press release sent to me by city resident Connie Lee and posted by Larry Gilbert on Orange Juice Blog after the meeting clears up the details. Mission Viejo resident Jim Snyder was the man with the envelope. Supposedly, more than 50 people signed the letter in support. And the charges against MacLean, at this point, are these:

"You violated your responsibilities to voters, showing yourself unfit to serve as a City Council member by exhibiting

• Violence when you were arrested by Police for assault and battery on a co-worker.
• Anger and incivility when you ordered a Mission Viejo councilwoman to "SHUT UP" in closed session.
• Hatred and disrespect when you called residents racists and elitists in a LA Times interview.
• Self-dealing when you voted to double your council salary during our current economic crisis.
• Greed and corrupt priorities when you voted to give yourself lifetime medical benefits at taxpayer expense after only 12 years of part-time council service.
• Financial mismanagement when you voted for budget items leading to $11.8 million in deficit spending.
• A tax increase when you authored and promoted Measure K, which was rejected by Mission Viejo voters.
• False promises when you voted to increase housing density leading to more traffic congestion."

More to come on all of this, including what happens next (I believe MacLean gets a certain amount of time to respond, and then there's a designated signature-gathering period to figure out whether the recall gets to the ballot). But it's worth noting that this probably didn't come as a total shock to MacLean: In addition to some chatter on local blogs over the past few weeks, people have been talking about recalling the man since shortly after he was elected to his first term in 2002. Funny, huh?

Cops around here have developed a nasty habit: bogarting joints. That is, they illegally confiscate medical marijuana, get dragged into court for violating state law, lollygag in chambers for years, and have the local verdict kicked up to appellate court, where they ultimately lose and have to give the Devil's weed back, seeing as how state law protects legitimate medical marijuana patients like the ones cops around here keep busting. (Knit beanies off to Newport Beach artist michaelm for having designed the accompanying logo.)

Who knows? In a state where many lawmakers are giddy about a long-delayed budget that includes only a $1 billion deficit, taxpayers will eventually grow weary of our local coppers' blatant waste of their dollars and resources, not to mention the crassness of it all. The latest incident happened in Huntington Beach, where police this week had to give back to 52-year-old trade show decorator Jim Spray the four ounces of pot and “chunk of hash” he had a doctor's note to possess for pain from a herniated disc. The HBPD already knew the drill; under court order in April they returned Dave Lucas' 30 grams of higher-end purple urkel and smoking pipes they'd ripped off in 2007.

Don't assume Surf City has the only blue crew ignoring the law, stealing people's medicine and then being forced by court decree to cough up the grass, however.

Jake Wager picked up the daily newspaper that Aug. 16 Saturday morning and could not believe what he read.

The owners of the Plaza Court Apartments in Stanton agreed to dish out $618,000 to settle a fair housing lawsuit with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), the Fair Housing Council of Orange County and nine families who reside at Plaza Court Apartments.

This was disconcerting to Wager, seeing as how he's Stanton's city manager.

Owners of the Plaza Court Apartments in Stanton agreed to dish out $618,000 to settle a fair housing lawsuit with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), it was announced today.

After investigating numerous complaints that management at the 120-unit complex was discriminating against tenants with children and families, the Fair Housing Council of Orange County filed a formal complaint with the DFEH against Plaza Court Apartments.

The state agency conducted its own probe before filing a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court on behalf of nine families against owners Patria Court Ltd. and Plaza Patria Court LP that alleged unfair business practices, fraud, breach of contract, negligence and discrimination.

A couple of days ago, the Huntington Beach City Council voted to ban campaign donation limits. It would be a noteworthy story in any city, considering most have some type of cap, but it's of primary significance in HB, where streetwalkers in the form of developers have plagued the place for decades. The city is currently mulling how to redevelop its lucrative downtown, and hotels and resorts are already beginning to sully PCH anew (we remember a wonderful nine-hole golf course next to a trailer-park community inhabited by crotchety vets). Allowing Surf City candidates to rake in as much cash as possible is akin to having an AA meeting being sponsored by Jim Beam--faithful readers know the scum that tend to inhabit the council dais. More information at Greeting from Downtown Huntington Beach. In the meanwhile, bring on the whores!

While Latinas have earned a reputation for having “spicy” personalities (just ask the governor!), it was something else to watch Santa Ana council member Michele Martinez and Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez exchanging insults and dirty looks during tonight’s city council meeting.

Things started off with the normal boring stuff (i.e. awards and certificates issued to boy scouts, some children sang. . .yawn), but when the topic turned to adapting term limits for the seat of mayor, the sparks started flying.

The current city charter has no term limits set for the mayor—so as long as the candidate gets the plurality of the votes during the mayoral election (which takes place every two years) he/she can continue to rule over Santa Ana.

Martinez would like to see that change by placing term limits on the seat of mayor via a proposed special election, which would take place some time next year.

Sept. 17, 7:30 p.m. at the Huntington Beach Council Chambers:

Huntington Beach Councilman and Republican Joe Carchio is digging his thumbs into his temples, furiously massaging his forehead, and hiding behind his hands as though they could shield him from the some 22 locals lined up to ask him - and the rest of the council - to put a certain item on the next agenda.

What could perturb the former army man turned T-shirt customizer turned Italian restaurant owner so much that he gets up three times, stalking backstage and away from the neon card-clutching crowd?

How about: George W. Bush and Dick friggin' Cheney?! OK, more like a group demanding that Carchio and pals DO SOMETHING to get the scoundrels impeached. Like, maybe pass a resolution and make a statement like 87 other U.S. cities.

One by one, teachers, mothers with sons in Iraq, veterans, and a student in a hijab holding up a cardboard with bits of the U.S. Constitution on it step forward, each speaking out against the nation's head honchos. They approach the podium, and Carchio stares intently at the rubber band he's wildly flicking between his thumbs and index fingers. Next to him, Councilman Keith Bohr is more attentive, but just as annoyed with the demonstrators, who've made haunting the HB city hall their habit.

"You get an A+ for effort, and an F for communication," he tells one teacher, saying that the group should have contacted him directly instead of eating up council time. But then again, this isn't a city council issue, Bohr adds.

Activists should go nag Dana Rohrabacher, he says. "But I doubt he would do it."