The Public Services Department has contracted RJ Noble Co. to construct a new asphalt concrete surface layer for Adams Avenue from Fairview Road to Peterson Place.

Work will take place this Saturday, April 29 from 7:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

At least one lane of traffic will be maintained in both directions along Adams Avenue, however, it is highly recommended that motorists and pedestrians use alternative routes to the OCC Swap Meet and neighboring areas.

The construction to fields 3 and 4 at Jack Hammett Sports Complex began this week and progress has been steady.  The upgrades include work to bring the fields up-to NFL quality standard so that the Los Angeles Chargers Football Organization can use the space to host the team’s Summer Training Camp, which will also feature practices that are open to the general public.

The enhanced field space will also benefit the many youth sports leagues that practice and play games at the complex.

Construction began in early April to remove and replace damaged concrete sidewalks, curb, gutter, and wheel chair ramps on both the north and south sides of Adams Avenue between Fairview Road and Peterson Place.

Following completion of this work, street paving operations will be initiated, which includes grinding the existing roadway pavement and replacing with new, rubberized hot mix asphalt, and restriping of lane lines and legends.

Work will be conducted during daytime off-peak hours. A minimum of one-lane of traffic shall be maintained in each direction at all times.

All work is tentatively scheduled to be completed by mid-May.

Costa Mesa Fire and Rescue recruits continue to progress in their academy training.  Recently, the academy cadre was led by Captain Joe Noceti and the recruits trained with live fire. Recruits learned about fire behavior, fire attack principles and the dangers of attacking a fire.

Some of the recruits had eyes as wide as saucers as this was their first time attacking a fire in a controlled environment.

The former Souplantation at 1555 Adams, in the Mesa Verde Shopping Center, will be demolished and replaced by a new, three to four restaurant tenant building.

The building will face the south and will be located at the end of a new walkway to connect this building with the rest of the shopping center as well as the Azulon Apartments.

As required by the California Environmental Quality Act, an Initial Study and Negative Declaration have been prepared for the project and is available for review and comment from through April 17, 2017 either online or at City Hall or the city’s two public libraries.

Please contact the Planning Division at 714-754-5245 if you need any information.

Even the times Elmore McBride found himself homeless, he remained a very meticulous man who preferred things neat and orderly.

Still there was something holding him back that wasn’t so orderly – his lack of teeth.

“I was afraid to smile,” he said.

But that was about to change. The 62-year-old McBride was in a transitional program at the Lighthouse Church in Westside Costa Mesa when he met Muriel Ullman, Costa Mesa’s housing consultant who works to help the city’s homeless residents and Stacy Bowler, one of the city’s Community Outreach Workers.

He mentioned to Ullman that he wanted new teeth.

“She and Stacy are just two awesome people,” McBride said. “I wanted to get my teeth fixed and I told Muriel. Three days later, Stacy gave me a number to call for SOS and I was home free.”

McBride is very thankful for SOS, which stands for Share Our Selves, a local nonprofit that provides dental services for those who are not insured or have emergency need for care.

He also is most thankful to Pastor Phil Eyskens at the Lighthouse Church, who assisted him when he most needed it and while he was attending school at Orange Coast College.

“The type of person I am I would have succeeded eventually,” McBride said. “But it happened a lot faster because of the Lighthouse.”

Eyskens is a key member of Costa Mesa’s Network for Homeless Solutions, which is made up of representatives from the City Manager, City Attorney, Police, Fire, Planning and Code Enforcement offices, as well as clergy, those from non-profit agencies and community volunteers.

The Network for Homeless Solutions implements a range of strategies, including law enforcement, street outreach, prevention, rehabilitation, housing assistance and volunteer coordination. Since its inception in 2013, the Network for Homeless Solutions housed and/or reconnected 269 people as of December 2016. Of the 269, 70 were reconnected to their community of origin or to a place of their choice to end their homelessness.

After four years of assisting McBride through tough times, Pastor Eyskens said he left the Lighthouse and Costa Mesa for a short time, but recently returned and started attending church services again.

“He came to a church service and he had new teeth looking like a million bucks,” Eyskens said. “I’m so proud of him. He is just a real success story. What a perfect example. You got to hope for the best for this guy because you never know what the day is going to bring you.”

For McBride, the days have been getting much better. He now works for the County of Orange In-Home Supportive Services and really enjoys his job. The Boston native is also glad to be living in Costa Mesa, a place he has called home for about 11 years.

“I like the laid-back atmosphere here,” said McBride who is now living in an apartment in the city. “The people are awesome. The police are like the Beverly Hills police. They are so friendly.”

McBride’s advice for those who are struggling financially or homeless is pretty simple.

“You can’t give up,” he said.  “You have to keep plugging. The time I was there at the Lighthouse I talked to a lot of homeless people and I always said keep walking forward. Even when you are stagnant, you got to go forward.”

For more information about the Network for Homeless Solutions visit the website here or the Facebook page here or call the Network for Homeless Solutions hotline at (714) 754-5346.

On Friday, April 14, John Wayne Airport will be conducting a Triennial Emergency Operations Exercise from the hours of 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.  This full-scale exercise is mandated by the FAA and is designed to evaluate the operational capability of the emergency management system in a stressful environment.

The Costa Mesa Fire & Rescue Department will be an active participant with a number of other agencies in this drill since we share a border with the John Wayne Airport and routinely respond to emergencies on the airport campus.

The public should be aware that Airway Avenue will be shut down from Baker to Paularino from approximately 8 a.m. to 12 noon to accommodate the exercise. Also, the CMPD Helipad will be used during the exercise.

This is an excellent readiness exercise for the airport and CMF&R is a proud participant.  It will increase interagency operations and communication between all the public and private resources.  Most importantly it will enhance the safety and security for the tenants and passengers using the airport.

The City Council approved moving forward with the Placentia Avenue Median Improvement Project. Public services was able to secure a grant in the amount of $738,400 from the Federal Highway Safety Improvement Program to begin construction on the project.

The project will result in new landscaped medians on Placentia Avenue between Wilson Street and Adams Avenue. This project will improve the streetscape and also the traffic operations along this corridor. Due to the wide nature of Placentia Avenue, there have been numerous accidents as a result of high vehicle speeds.

Implementation of medians will provide a narrow feel for the street and minimize high-risk accidents.

Costa Mesa once again proves that when it comes to the best restaurants in Orange County, we are the leaders of the pack.

The Orange County Register just published its annual 75 Best Places to Eat by food critic Brad A. Johnson and the top four restaurants are also Costa Mesa eateries.

Topping the list at No. 1, again, is Taco Maria located in the SoCo center. South Coast Plaza’s Vaca is No. 2 followed by Hana re and Arc at Nos. 3 and 4.

The 75 Best includes 10 more Costa Mesa restaurants, including Mastro’s Steakhouse, Restaurant Marin, The Capital Grille, Shunka Sushi, Water Grill, Din Tai Fung, Manpuku Tokyo BBQ, Filomena’s Italian Kitchen and Rance’s Chicago Pizza.

Congrats to all those winners and we know that those restaurants just scratch the surface of all the great places to eat in Costa Mesa.

Costa Mesa City officials conducting extensive surveys of vernal pools in Fairview Park this winter announced they have discovered a new, endangered species of fairy shrimp.

As expected, city staffers found the endangered San Diego fairy shrimp in a number of vernal pools that emerged after the heavy rains in December and January, but what they didn’t anticipate was the discovery of the Riverside fairy shrimp.

“It is likely that the Riverside fairy shrimp, which is a warm-water species, has been present but went undetected because of very low numbers and because they typically emerge after the San Diego fairy shrimp, which prefer the cold water of December and January, are finished for the season,” said Tony Bomkamp, a biologist who consults with the city on Fairview Park.

The Riverside fairy shrimp was named for Riverside County where it was originally found and thought to occur in only a few pools there. Later it was found in San Diego County in many pools including on Camp Pendleton.

In the late 1990s, Riverside fairy shrimp were found in a number of pools in Orange County and a large vernal pool in Ventura County. Unlike the cold-water relatives of the San Diego fairy shrimp, which evolved in colder climates, the Riverside fairy shrimp’s distant relatives derive from Africa.

Fairy shrimp have been around in the fossil record for over 300 million years making them one of the oldest crustaceans on the plant.

In addition, while San Diego fairy shrimp were found and confirmed in the expected vernal pools, the crustaceans were also discovered for the first time in what the city calls Vernal Pool C, which is located on the eastside of Placentia Avenue.

The unexpected heavy rains this winter provided an opportunity to conduct a census of the fairy shrimp in the vernal pools at Fairview Park.

The survey effort was the first formal surveys since San Diego fairy shrimp were first detected in Vernal Pool 5 in 1996 and Vernal Pool 1 in 1997. Other “one-time” surveys found San Diego fairy shrimp in Vernal Pools 4 and 6, but were not season-long surveys like those done this year.

The vernal pools and the respective watersheds are off limits to the general public to protect the habitats and have been temporarily delineated based on historical maps.

Additional delineation will be added to protect expanded areas of the vernal pool basins as soon as the ground is hard and dry.

City Manager Tom Hatch presented Finance Department Accounting Specialist Robindale Shepherd with the March City Manager Leadership Award at the monthly employee Meet and Greet Thursday March 23.

“Robindale has served Costa Mesa for 25 years now and works tirelessly to improve our accounts payable operations and a variety of other Finance Department functions,” Hatch said. “Congratulations to her on this wonderful achievement.”

Shepherd joined the City of Costa Mesa in May of 1992 an Accounting Specialist II. During that time, she has been responsible for multiple assignments, including payroll, payments of essential services and processing vendor documentation.

She worked on several big projects including payments to the San Joaquin Transportation Corridor Agency and Newport Mesa Unified School District developer fees. She assisted with the development of a desk manual for Accounts Payable and improved the storage of Accounts Payable documents through a new labeling system.

Prior to working at Costa Mesa City Hall, Shepherd served the country in the U.S. Air Force. While she was stationed in Germany she met her husband of 31 years.

Shepherd has a Bachelor of Science degree from Vanguard University, and on an interesting side note, for three years from 2006 to 2009, she worked part-time at Starbucks as a barista while still employed with the City.

In addition to honoring Shepherd, City Manager Hatch welcomed several new employees including Tammy Arrington, a new Office Specialist in the City Clerk’s office, Jasmine Vega, the Finance Department’s new Accounting Specialist II, Aracelli Guillen, the Parks & Community Services Department new Recreation Leader II and Nuvia Sandoval-Nava a new Recreation Leader III in the Parks & Community Services Department

He also congratulated Mike Fuentes on his promotion to Buyer for the Finance Department.