Spindrift August 25, 2022

PROGRAM

Introduced by VP Programs Mitch Mitchell, Joy Brenner. Joy was one of the first graduates of Corona del Mar High, coming from Fullerton at the age of five. Out of the four candidates for City Council this year, she is the only incumbent for re-election, District 6. Among her priorities are:

Controlling excessive development and the resulting traffic.

Supporting fiscal responsibility while still providing first class amenities to our seniors, businesses and the general community.

Existing community-wide support to protect Newport Beach from the impact of John Wayne Airport.

Bringing integrity and transparency back to City Council.

Three of the seats are termed out, so there has to be a new city Council ...I’m the only incumbent that’s running for reelection. I am grateful that I had an incumbent who was widely unpopular. So, I don’t think it was any credit to me that I was able to beat him.

Joy Brenner

I was in government, from PTA, I was student government in high school, I was on Boards of Commission, Parks and Recreation Commission in the 90s, and someone came to me from SPON, (Still Protecting Our Newport) and said ,”We will endorse you and get you some money.” And then someone came to me from the Chamber of Commerce, and he said, “If you’ll run for the City Council, we will endorse you and get you some money” At the time I thought, “Am I talking out of both sides of my mouth?” because this is not usual for these two groups to be in alignment..

It was really interesting and it has come to mean something I am most proud of about myself. City Council today I try to listen to EVERY point of view. I don’t make the final decision on anything until I hear the last comment.

It really doesn’t matter what...if they have their minds made up and they don’t care what the Council thinks. We only get together as a council to talk...we’re forced to not discuss issues “off the record” because of the Brown Act...we can’t sit down at a table and hash things out just with a summary because it’s against the law. And so, when I get to Council, I really want to state their point of view to help me to understand why I should change my point of view, because the only time we have to talk about it altogether, and somebody comes in with their minds already made up on issues.

Fortunately, I’m at the stage of life where I CAN. My kids are raised, my grandkids are practically raised now. I work full time at this. I’m interested in full time jobs, which is why I got elected...you can’t do it well unless you devote that amount of time to it.

About the chances of doing a joint shelter with Costa Mesa, our mayor said, “I’m not talking to ...Foley...” because she’s a different party from what he was, and I said, “You’re the Mayor of Newport Beach, you have to talk ...we need to work together to solve these problem regardless of politics, and so we met with her, we took our seat...with our managers...we wound up with a part share to give ourselves a shelter...which is the only reason we are doing as well as we are now on homelessness.

I knew a lot, but I didn’t know nearly enough...so after a couple of years, I learned the ins and the outs of who to talk to and how to get things done but it doesn’t happen just immediately. It takes a long time. I think that’s the key and we’ve got SO MUCH more work to do...working with the State, with the League of Cities, with the State Legislature...try and get some things done at that level.

Joy Brenner and Shirley Lashmett

They need to enforce the rules against these mini-homes. They regulate them. They won’t give us the right to do that. If you’re going to be responsible for this, you need to do the job. ...and you’re not doing it. Legislators who are helping us with that are trying to get several bills through the legislature. It would enable us to actually crack down on these places. I’m hopeful that Diane Dixon gets elected because if she can go there and can bring some help from the Republican party over to help those who are being reasonable on the Democratic side, then maybe she can get some of these things done.

What’s going on with the homeless issue? We’ve got our shelter, we can enforce our anti-camping laws if we had enough officers to do it. So, three of us went to Jon Lewis and said, “You don’t have enough officers. We are ten officers off. Got one in 2019.” Nevertheless, we may be the safest city in Orange county and probably throughout the nation.

Marge Collins and Joy Brenner won the raffles
Thank you, Joy, for sharing yours thoughts with us.

Bob Wood, Editor.