Staying on top of Costa Mesa’s needs

If there’s one Costa Mesa city employee who hears a slew of complaints

about various controversial topics, it’s Steve Hayman.

The three-year administrative services director has worked for the

city for 24 years now and, these days, focuses much of his attention on

the city’s Job Center, AT&T; Broadband’s public services, skate park

planning and the Farm Sports Complex. The 49-year-old also leads the

charge on the city’s Concerts in the Park series -- the kickoff of which

he enjoyed attending Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, City Editor James Meier sat down in Hayman’s third-floor

city office overlooking the Orange County Fairgrounds to discuss these

issues and a few others he has his hands in.

Q: I notice you’re the point man on many of Costa Mesa’s most

contentious issues, including the Job Center, cable, skate park and the

Farm Sports Complex. How do you manage to balance all of these?

A: It’s interesting. It’s actually the part that makes this job

exciting. While I’ve been here for 24 years, it felt like I was starting

really a new job, taking this from just being a personnel director simply

because of the diversity. I can tell you the real key is I have some

wonderful managers in each one of my divisions that allow me and this

department to be successful.

One of the interesting things you didn’t mention because, fortunately,

it doesn’t make for a lot of press, is probably the most sensitive of

subjects: labor relations. We’ve enjoyed a very, very successful

relationship with all of our labor associations over a long period of

time. It’s been one of my responsibilities since 1988, and I can say I

think the city of Costa Mesa and our employee groups have on average

truly maintained an outstanding working relationship. So that’s one

reason it doesn’t appear as a contentious issue.

But I think the real key is we really do have some wonderful people

working in the department who have a passion for what they do and are

dedicated to providing good quality of service to the community. That’s

the key. It isn’t about me. I like to think I’m pretty good at allowing

the managers in my department to exercise a certain degree of autonomy

and to express their creativity, and that’s what I think makes it work.

But it’s a lot of fun.

A lot of people at my age and after this many years would consider

themselves mid-career or looking more toward retirement. It’s truly been

an exciting opportunity.

The biggest question I always get, though, is: What in the world is

administrative services? It’s very unusual to find in that many cities

our size a department called administrative services. Oftentimes, it’s a

catchall. It’s somewhat here because there is no rhyme or reason. Having

personnel, risk management, recreation, telecommunications -- which is

really a public safety function, although it includes Channel 74, a fun

aspect -- and our MIS computer division, it really is a diverse group.

That is probably one of the other things that makes it exciting is I

have a good deal of diversity both culturally, ethnically and just

personality-wise. A staff meeting always ends up with an interesting

dialogue because I have people that bring such differences in terms of

their backgrounds and interests.

Q: Do you think the Job Center works as it is now?

A: I think the Job Center provides a valuable service that meets a

specific need that this community wanted to establish years ago. And that

was, very simply put, to create a safe, acceptable place for day laborers

and prospective employers to meet, therefore not taking up park areas,

disturbing the peace by means of potentially causing traffic and safety

problems. So I do think it does serve that purpose.

I think it is personally naive of some communities that choose to

ignore the situation. I live in the city of Orange. Clearly, the exact

same situation exists there, and Orange does have a job center. It’s one

of the other few cities that does. But there are cities that we contacted

that don’t acknowledge the situation.

Now, one of two things is what that means. They either accept it and

they allow it to occur on an impromptu basis, or they want to just ignore

it and pretend it doesn’t go on. I think that’s a fact of life in

Southern California.

Q: Do you foresee any changes or updates to the center?

A: We do have staff exploring some possibilities with the school

district of bringing in an educational component to where we may be able

to, if you will, get more bang for our buck. We lease the site. It’s ours

100% of the time. Are there viable, additional programs that could be

brought into play that would be of assistance to -- whether it be the day

laborers or other members of the community on the Westside? It’s

literally just something we’re beginning to explore.

Q: AT&T; Broadband has begun making changes to its customer service

practices. Have you seen it make much of an impact yet with residents?

A: Understand most of the city’s involvement with the franchise

agreement is, truthfully, hearing complaints. At one time, there was a

committee that was established right after the original franchise, but

the world was very different then. It was before the Federal

Communications Commission really stripped local governments of much of

the authority that they once had over franchisees. So the committee has

obviously gone by the wayside.

But clearly, when people aren’t happy, they want to talk to somebody,

so they talk to the city. I can tell you that we have preliminarily heard

from AT&T; that their next quarter’s reports show significant improvement

in the measurable aspects of customer service. Now, don’t get me wrong,

it doesn’t mean that there’s nobody out there that’s still complaining to

either the city or AT&T.; I can tell you that our staff has received fewer

complaints. But it does appear, based on a verbal telephone conversation

our staff has had with AT&T;, that their quarterly numbers are going to

show substantial improvement to the acceptable level.

Q: What are the chances of a Newport-Mesa skate park?

A: I’m very hopeful it’s still going to occur. I think you’re well

aware we have our mobile skate park, which, to be honest with you, I

thought was a good suggestion at the time. It allowed us to have a

facility, and its portability is probably its strength. It goes a long

way toward advancing one of the goals of the recreation division,, and

that is to bring recreation more to the community as opposed to the

traditional sense where you may have a recreation center and the

community will naturally come to it. So it really advances that goal for

us.

We recognize it certainly is less than satisfying for serious skaters.

In conjunction with our Public Services Department, we continue to

evaluate opportunities for us to find the right location. And there’s a

couple of things that are going that continue to go on.

Clearly, I think Newport Beach has shown some interest. I don’t think,

in my opinion, they have demonstrated the interest Costa Mesa has in

trying to find a suitable location. It’s a very, very difficult subject,

and it isn’t just restricted to skate parks. It’s difficult today in a

community that’s, in simple terms, built out, to establish recreational

activities that involve either high numbers of people or parking issues

or lighting issues. Those are all difficult subjects. No matter where we

look to locate a facility, there are some people that welcome the

facility and some people who think there’s a better place in town it

should go.

I’m hopeful that we are, indeed, someday going to see a park. And we

are actively pursuing a couple of things. I just wouldn’t feel

comfortable talking about those in this forum.

Q: Is there a way to balance the use of fields at the Farm Sports

Complex?

A: I absolutely think there’s a way to balance the fields. It’s very

interesting to me that we continue to talk about field allocation. We’re

the third year into programming the farm site and utilizing this. Without

getting into the entire focus of the article being on the farm site, we

never really had an allocation policy before bringing the farm site

online. But even my predecessor -- well, there was no previous

administrative services director -- the community services director

foresaw the fact that we needed to bring into this city an allocation

policy.

The simple truth is there are limited resources and tremendous demand

for use of athletic fields. Developing and then bringing the farm site

online, we just knew it was going to heighten that. My perspective is

there is balance. I guess the definition of what’s acceptable depends on

who you’re talking to.

Our policy, as it’s currently crafted, basically gives priority in a

very specific order. City programs are first. School district programs

are second. In some cases, they’re actually first and, without getting

too detailed, if we’re talking about the fact that we permit a school

site, obviously during school hours, it’s whatever they want to do. But

basically, the school district is second. Right after them is youth

organizations that meet specific criteria. The most important of those

criteria -- we call them people who are willing to partner with the city.

In other words, an organization that runs a program that otherwise the

city would likely run or need to run -- let’s use youth soccer as an

example.

AYSO expounds certain criteria and that is the notion that everyone

plays regardless of skill level and regardless of financial resources.

That is consistent with municipal recreation philosophy. That’s what we

mean by they’re an example of a partner. So any organization that meets

that criteria and also is defined as a resident organization has the next

priority. Then we have several more priority levels, but as you can see

it very quickly doesn’t provide for a lot of access to organizations from

outside of the city.

Some of the discussion is that we somehow use our fields as a revenue

generator. Frankly, nothing can be further from the truth. That’s because

with partner organizations such as AYSO, we don’t charge to use the

fields. If there are adult-use groups or groups from out of the city,

yes, they are charged a reasonable fee for use of the fields, but in

reality, the fields are just not available that often for groups that

fall into those lower priority categories.

Balance? I do think there’s balance. Right now, we do program some

city activities like the flag football program out there. We have done an

occasional special event out there. We had one of our Concerts in the

Park there our first year.

The other competing interest, I think, on why there’s a question of

balance is a certain sense by some groups that they need to protect the

fields to make sure they don’t get worn out. That’s a delicate situation.

We do have maintenance staff and a Public Services Department that are

responsible for maintaining those fields and are capable of making the

decisions and taking the appropriate action to keep those fields in

proper playing condition.

Why I said I’m a little surprised that we’re still debating this three

years after opening it is because there really is a certain sense that

those fields were built for the exclusive domain for youth soccer.

There’s some sense of truth to that in that they were built with youth in

mind. One of the things very clearly established by the City Council when

those fields were opened was that they would be for youth activities

only, but not necessarily only soccer and, specifically, not only one

region of soccer. And that continues to be one of the sore spots. Those

fields were truly built for all the youth in Costa Mesa.

Q: That’s probably why it’s also contentious because some say Newport

Beach’s AYSO region uses it quite a bit.

A: And they really don’t. There is some suggestion that we go out of

our way to encourage them. Understand what AYSO 120 calls Newport Beach

AYSO Region 97 includes everyone east of the Costa Mesa Freeway. So AYSO

as an organization has its own geographic boundaries. We don’t have the

luxury of building fields like that, that are lit, all over this city, so

I don’t believe in my wildest dreams it was ever the vision of the City

Council, when we had the opportunity to acquire that property and the

decision was made to build those six fields of that nature, that it would

only be for youth that happen to live west of the freeway.

What becomes an interesting dilemma is the fact that because of their

geographic boundaries, we have a significant number of youth that fall

into Newport Beach’s region. Truly, AYSO 97 has come to us and said as

long as they have sufficient fields between what exists on the Eastside

of Costa Mesa and what they utilize in Newport Beach, they don’t need to

use the farm. They have some inter-region games that they play. The truth

is we’re not encouraging Region 97 use. We’re just trying to recognize if

they have a need and desire that we would do what would be appropriate to

facilitate that.

Q: OK, now on a lighter note, you brought up the Concerts in the Park

series that began Tuesday.

A: It was the first concert of this year’s series. I think that’s a

wonderful program for the city. A number of cities are running concerts

in the park. They all do things perhaps a little differently. This year,

we’re trying to run them all at one park. The last two years, we rotated

them. While I think that worked, we’re just interested in seeing if this

perhaps increases attendance. Just a rough estimate, but I think

[Tuesday] night, I think we had between 250 and 300 people. The concert

was very enjoyable from my perspective.

What we’re trying to do is bring quite a variety of musical tastes to

it, so we will have virtually everything. [Tuesday] night was a country

group. We have a swing band on July 16, then rhythm and blues and pop

style group on July 23. On the 30th, we have a group that does ‘50s and

‘60s music. On Aug. 6, we have a group that plays classical rock ‘n’

roll. And we finish Aug. 13 with a salsa band. So we’re really trying

cover quite a group. It is interesting to note our biggest concert last

year was a swing band, and that’s the group we have coming up.

And we hope the Fairview Park location works out pretty well. There’s

a lot of parking at the park and next door at Estancia High School. But

it is a fun family program, which is another one of the aspects that we

try to bring in our recreation program.

Q: Any final thoughts?

A: Yeah, a couple of things that are noteworthy because they are

exciting things -- maybe not considered controversial -- but some

community members have become involved in our effort to finish an open

space and recreation master plan. We have one more focus group session

that’s being planned. But other than that, the consultant will develop

their draft report. We’re going to create a special 30-day comment period

when that draft report is out, and we’ll do our best when that comes out

to distribute throughout the city to encourage additional comments. The

cornerstone of the effort actually is a phone survey that was done. And

we’ve had a series of meetings, workshops and focus groups.

What we’re really looking forward to is establishing a new master plan

and hopefully being able to develop a long-term financial strategy to

obviously be the implementing tool for that plan. Otherwise, it just

becomes yet another document that’ll sit on somebody’s shelf. So we’re

hopeful that will truly reflect both the community needs, as well as

reflect the acceptance and tolerance in the community. By tolerance, I

mean it’s one thing to say, “We want more XYZ types of fields,” but we

also need to recognize if there’s an additional cost that we as taxpayers

will do our part. And those are some key components.

I know our Parks and Recreation Commission has embraced that project

as perhaps certainly the most significant project they will be involved

with this year.

We have a couple of projects that we worked in concert with the Public

Services Department that are coming on board that are pretty significant.

We’re in final design on a new softball complex at TeWinkle Park, and we

hope to have that built within this next 12-month period.

There are two other neighborhood parks we hope to develop. Public

Services is responsible for the development and construction, and my

department, through the recreation division, is responsible for running

the programs. So we’ll be building Ketchum-Libolt Park, a new

neighborhood park at the corner of Maple and Victoria. Originally, it was

going to be called Maple Street Park, but now it’ll be named after two

police officers who were both killed in a helicopter crash on March 10,

1987.

The other new park is a new community garden being built at the corner

of Charle and Hamilton streets. Those will be more things for the

community. We could probably go on forever, but I know this needs to be

condensed.

BIO

Name: Steve Hayman

Age: 49

Position: Director of administrative services for the city of Costa

Mesa for three years; has worked with the city for 24 years, previously

serving as personnel services director, facilities and equipment

superintendent; management analyst for public services director; and

planning/zoning assistant

Education: Master’s degree in public administration from Cal State

Long Beach, bachelor’s degree in political science from Cal State Los

Angeles

Residence: Orange for 17 years

Family: Wife of 11 years Kayoko, two children and one grandchild, and

one collie

Hobbies: Golf, fishing, hunting, reading and traveling