MAYOR
ERIC R. BEVER
[email protected]
Mayor Eric R. Bever entered local politics in 1999 as co-founder of the Westside Improvement Assn., an influential citizen’s group whose efforts led to the City Council in 2005 approving three comprehensive sets of guidelines (19 West Urban Village Plan, Mesa West Resident Ownership, and Mesa West Bluffs Urban Plan) to spark major private market reinvestment and improvement of 670 acres of the city’s Westside. These plans, which cleverly severed the Gordian knot tying up Westside improvement, also garnered regional and statewide planning awards for the city.
As a result of his work to improve the city, Bever received an appointment to serve on the Costa Mesa Planning Commission in 2004 and later that year, he was elected to the City Council. He was re-elected in 2008, and served as mayor in 2008 and in 2012.
As a councilman, Bever developed the reputation as a fiscal conservative who was first to warn his colleagues and fellow residents about the dire condition of Costa Mesa’s finances. He correctly predicted that if more generous public employee retirement packages were approved, and employee contracts renewed in 2010 without serious renegotiation, the City would be forced to layoff or outsource workers to balance excessive labor costs.
As budget hawk, Bever raised the alarm that the city was heading towards bankruptcy while it burned through its $35 million cash reserve. After the reserves ran out the city made unauthorized use of $9 million of its $14- million emergency reserves to cover ongoing expenses. He successfully advocated a policy specifying that use of the City’s emergency reserves be limited to declared emergencies such as natural disasters, and requiring a council vote before any emergency fund spending can occur.
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