A local resident reported some hazardous conditions relating to drug use at Davis Field at Lions Park and noted that it was potentially unsafe for children who use the field for soccer practice.To better protect the kids who use the field, the city has installed screens along the existing walls to deter drug use or paraphernalia from being left on the field.

In addition, city parks maintenance workers will conduct a manual foot sweep of the field each day to ensure it is safe for youth sports activities.

Costa Mesa Police Chief Rob Sharpnack welcomed four new members of the Police Department on Monday during an official badge-pinning and swearing-in ceremony outside his office.

“Obviously this is an awesome day for the department,” Chief Sharpnack said. “This really sets the momentum for the next year. The spirit of police work, teamwork and excellence is continuing to grow here in this department.”

Joining the department this week are Officers Frank Nguyen and Bunnath Phot both of whom are lateral transfers from Fullerton Police Department.

Also, welcomed on Monday were two recent graduates from the Sheriff Academy, Eric Molina and Mark Garcia.

Nguyen has a degree in criminal justice from Cal State Fullerton and has worked for Fullerton PD for the last 10 years. He has earned a MADD Award for DUI arrests and in 2010 received an award from the Chief of Police for exemplary service.

Phot is currently attending Cal State Fullerton and is working on a degree in kinesiology. He has been a Marine Corps reserve since 2012 and has worked for Fullerton Police Department since 2014.

Molina grew up in Costa Mesa and is an Estancia High graduate. He served as a Police Explorer for five years and later as a part-time aide in the traffic bureau. He has completed course work at Golden West college.

Garcia is a 2013 graduate from the University of California Riverside with bachelor’s in sociology. He also volunteers in the evening hours after work helping children with psychological challenges.

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Costa Mesa Police officers recently attempted 19 residential home checks of Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS), Formal Probation and Gang Terms Probation offenders. Over the course of the evening, the team made multiple contacts, which included 21 offenders, 15 of whom were classified as being on formal supervised probation or were PRCS/Probation offenders living in Costa Mesa.

An additional six offenders on Supervised Gang Terms Probation were also contacted. The compliance checks resulted in 14 offenders being arrested for violations of conditions of their probation and/or new criminal law violations. Teams also assisted patrol on a felony battery investigation and searched a hoarder/unsafe nuisance house at 769 W. Wilson Street where they contacted 17 persons inside.

Code Enforcement will have to follow up due to numerous violations and safety issues at the home.

The public is invited to view some of Costa Mesa’s finest homes decked out for the holidays as well as the new Heroes Hall museum at the OC Fair & Event Center at the third annual Costa Mesa Home Tour on Dec. 1.

The event dubbed “Home for the Holidays” is presented by the Costa Mesa Middle and High School Foundation and takes place from 3 to 8 p.m. and will finish with a closing reception at the Room & Board store at SOCO.

Tickets to the event are $50 and proceeds will benefit high school arts programs as well as help provide transportation for Orange County students who are visiting Heroes Hall on field trips.

In addition to Heroes Hall, those taking part in the event will get to visit five local homes that are decorated for the holiday season.

Sponsors for this year’s event includes the City of Costa Mesa, Greenleaf Gourmet Chop Shop, Room & Board, Gatehouse, SOCO, Pottery Barn and realtors from RE/MAX and Star Real Estate.

For more information on the Home Tour please click here.

Below is a video of last year’s Home Tour

The OC Fair & Event Center  will celebrate the Nov. 11 Veterans Day holiday Friday with a public dedication and ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new Heroes Hall veterans museum at 1 p.m. at the OC Fair & Event Center.

Heroes Hall at the OC Fair & Event Center will be a permanent, year-round museum with exhibitions, performances and educational programs that celebrate the legacy of Orange County veterans and others who have served our nation. The two-story exhibition space will rotate themes semi-annually with each focusing on an aspect of the personal stories and experiences of veterans.

The event free to the public.

The fairgrounds property was once part of the Santa Ana Army Air Base, a 1,300-plus-acre training facility active during World War II. Orange Coast College, Vanguard University, Costa Mesa High School, Davis Elementary School, Tewinkle Park and several commercial and residential areas are also on former army air base land.

The dedication ceremony will be a salute to local veterans and veterans groups including Vincent Okamoto – the most decorated Japanese American veteran of the Vietnam War and a Los Angeles Superior Court judge – and Santa Ana Army Air Base veterans.

Approved by the OC Fair & Event Center Board of Directors in 2014, Heroes Hall is expected to encompass more than 12,000 square feet with indoor/outdoor exhibit space. Crews broke ground in March and the former “Memorial Gardens,” a two-story, 5,000-square-foot WWII-era building, was placed on the site in April to house exhibitions.

Crews have been diligently working on the building and the surrounding courtyard which includes a 50-foot-wide centerpiece designed after the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. military decoration that is awarded by Congress for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Construction is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

The City of Costa Mesa donated $50,000 toward the construction of Heroes Hall.

Attendees on Friday are also invited to attend the free Veterans + Labor Community Celebration scheduled at the OC Fair & Event Center on the same day from 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Details for the community event are available here.

The Heroes Hall Veterans Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit, provides fundraising support for exhibitions, education, programs and operation. Information about how to become involved and make a contribution is available at ocheroeshall.org.

For more information about Heroes Hall  visit ocfair.com/heroeshall.

Heroes Hall is at the OC Fair & Event Center, which is located off the 405 and 55 freeways at 88 Fair Drive in Costa Mesa. For more information about the event center, please visit ocfair.com, become a fan on Facebook.com/OCFair, follow us at twitter.com/ocfair or call (714) 708-1500.

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On Monday Oct. 17, Costa Mesa Mayor Steve Mensinger presented longtime Westside business owner John Hawley with the Mayor’s Award.

Hawley founded Railmakers in 1969, which specializes in the fabrication and polishing of round tube and flat-plate products.

Originally founded to serve the large ship building industry on the Westside, Railmakers has evolved over the years to create multiple products, including industrial projects at South Coast Plaza.

Railmakers even created the iconic Bell that Costa Mesa and Estancia high school football teams battle for each year.

“Through the years John has been a leader for the Westside business community,” Mayor Mensinger said. “For nearly 20 years, John has been actively involved in fostering a cohesive relationship between the business and residential communities. He’s the quintessential Costa Mesan. He lives in our city and creates jobs in our city.”

Hawley thanked the mayor for the honor and is grateful to be in Costa Mesa like many Westside business owners.

City Council Member Sandra Genis and City staff, along with more than 400 local leaders from throughout California, gathered in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 11 for the Southern California Association of Governments’ California Housing Summit, “The Cost of Not Housing.”

The event brought government, business and community leaders together to address the state’s housing crisis and share strategies for addressing it. The summit opened with a panel of experts familiar with the housing crisis, who discussed why California is experiencing a housing deficit, and the extent of its economic, environmental and social costs.

Breakout sessions investigated different avenues for mitigating the housing shortage: funding strategies including incentive programs state-authorized systems, integrating housing into planning at all levels and public engagement to demonstrate community benefits of housing projects.

The summit concluded with a call to decision-makers across the state to build stakeholder partnerships and say “yes” to housing.

The Public Services Department advertised the “Bristol Street Improvement project” for construction with a scheduled bid date of Oct. 31, 2016. This much-needed improvement project will extend along Bristol Street from the I-405 Freeway to Newport Boulevard and includes roadway resurfacing, new storm drain catch basins, new landscaped medians, new traffic signal installation, and a storm water diversion project.

This project represents more than $6.5 million in improvements with funding coming from various sources including Federal, State and County agencies, gas tax and local funds.

This project will provide a smoother ride along this stretch of Bristol Street, better operational conditions for vehicular and pedestrian traffic, and improve the water quality of the Back Bay area by providing treatment for some of the storm water runoff.

Construction is anticipated to begin in early 2017.

City and Fire Department leaders were pleased this week to host a contingent of Chinese government leaders from the city of Chengdu, who visited Costa Mesa as part of a multi-week, fact-finding mission on the best practices of Community Emergency Response Teams or CERT.

Brenda Emrick, the city’s CERT manager who has visited Chengdu several times last year for training purposes, said the group was in the United States on a study tour sponsored by The Asia Foundation. 

Welcoming the group to Costa Mesa along with Emrick was Mayor Steve Mensinger, CEO Tom Hatch, Police Chief Rob Sharpnack and CERT leaders from the State of California and the cities of Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Downey and Irvine as well as members of The Asia Foundation.

Chen Liuting, who represented The Asia Foundation, said the visitors from Chengdu were all emergency managers who had prior training from the Federal Emergency Management Association. She said the city of Chengdu in the Sichuan Province of China has a population of 13 million people.

“It is a big city with lots of responsibilities,” she said. “That’s why there are here to learn more about CERT.”

The past two weeks the group has been studying at the University of Maryland, before winding up in Costa Mesa on Tuesday and Wednesday. During their visit to Costa Mesa, the group got a tour of the city’s Emergency Operations Center as well as a visit to Orange Coast College to learn about campus-based CERT.

The trip also included workplace seminar as well as a visit to South Coast Plaza for lunch at Lawry’s and dinner at Maggiano’s.

Costa Mesa’s public safety employees were treated to a free lunchtime barbecue at the OC Fair & Event Center care of the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce that included live music and performances from the Orange Coast College cheerleaders.

About 200 people attended this year’s Public Safety Recognition Barbecue on Thursday Oct. 8, including 90 police, fire and dispatch personnel.

Guests were served up dishes of chicken, tri-tip steak, mashed potatoes, vegetables and salad.

The community and civic leaders in attendance which included City Council Members Katrina Foley and Sandy Genis, OC Fair & Event Center CEO Kathy Kramer, Orange Coast College President Dennis Harkins, Costa Mesa Police Chief Rob Sharpnack and Fire Chief Dan Stefano.

“It was an honor to attend today’s Public Safety Recognition Barbecue,” Chief Sharpnack said. “On behalf of the CMPD staff, I want to thank the Chamber of Commerce for their generosity and others in attendance for their support of public safety personnel. We are proud to serve the Chamber of Commerce membership and look forward to collaborating in the future to make Costa Mesa an even greater city in which to live, work, and visit.”

Chamber of Commerce CEO Eileen Benjamin said the chamber is proud to honor the city’s protectors.

“The men and women of our Fire, Police and Communications departments keep our community safe and are willing to put their lives at risk for us every workday,” said Benjamin, who emceed the event along with Chamber President Tom Johnson.  “This event is a small way to demonstrate our appreciation.  It is wonderful to see many supporters joining together to show gratitude to these fine guardians.  The people of Costa Mesa are inspiring in so many ways.”

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In addition to the OC Fair & Event Center donating the venue, the Orange County Marketplace donated the catering and other supporters were Care Ambulance, Harbor Center and ICI Development, Metro Pro Towing and The Triangle. Longtime Chamber Board of Director member Patty Mason was also instrumental in supporting this event, and the music was provided by the Mike Donahue band.