OC Political

Anaheim Councilwoman Gail Eastman really stepped in it after the recent Anaheim riots. According to the Voice of OC article Eastman declared that, “In spite of how it happened, it was a big time win for all who opposed seeing that placed on the November ballot.” Regardless of how this might have been taken out of context it should not have been said. Eastman is referring to the Anaheim TOT item that was potentially going to be placed on the ballot which I will explain later.

Eastman is the one Councilmember that currently does not live in East Anaheim. Chris Nguyen and Emami constantly refer to this region as Anaheim Hills despite their being no such geographic region as Anaheim Hills. She was elected back in 2008 coming in as the top vote getter over Kris Murray who was also elected out of a field of 14 candidates.

Since I do not actually live in Anaheim I took the opportunity to watch the Council meeting online and was amazed at how much stuff was actually being discussed during public comment. The recent police shootings, Anaheim TOT, and creating districts for City Council elections. Watching the Councilmembers it felt like they were going to get whiplash from all the bouncing around of items during the public comment period.

I felt that most commenters on the Anaheim shootings were professional in the way they laid out their concerns to what is obviously a very frustrating issue for many people in the community. The real problem was the idiots outside of th meeting that were instigating violence. It helped that Tom Tait announced at the beginning of the meeting that the U.S. Attorneys office would be conducting an independent investigation into the actions by the Anaheim Police  Department (Hey Fullerton, how do you like them apples).

The second issue up for discussion was the Transient Occupancy Tax discussion over the hotel developer that got a huge subsidy to build a hotel in the Garden Walk area. It appears that a lot of organized labor came out in support of Councilmembers Sidhu, Eastman, and Murray. Due to the riots outside shortening the meeting this item was unable to be voted on (placing it on the ballot). This was the item that Eastman commented on and got herself into hot water.

Creating wards in Anaheim wat the third item that was discussed by people during public comment and it was an absolute circus. The majority of people speaking on the need for wards did not appear to actually live in Anaheim it appeared to mostly be the LULAC crowd that comes to all the meetings to speak when LULAC runs their drill. Although some speakers from Anaheim spoke in a very passionate way as to why Anaheim needed to draw wards for representation purposes others came across as for lack of a better term “Latino Supremacists.” Due to the rioting outside this item was also unable to be placed on the ballot for November.

Eastman clearly did not help her cause but in reality the rioters outside of the meeting are the ones that cost the residents of Anaheim the ability to vote on 2 items that I believe they should have had the opportunity to vote on.