Santa Ana Councilman Riled : City Picks Up $25,000 Tab for Dinner Guests

The City of Santa Ana spent about $25,000 on tickets to a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored black-tie dinner and dance to be held tonight at the new MainPlace mall--a move that has angered at least one city councilman.

City Manager David N. Ream said that about 200 tickets were purchased at $125 each for the Chairman’s Circle Spectacular-Carnival ‘87, which in past years was sponsored by the city and known as the Ambassador’s Ball.

The tickets were bought without City Council approval, and, at least in some cases, without the knowledge of individual council members. The money for the tickets came out of department budgets and did not require prior council approval, Ream said.

City Councilman John Acosta, when told that the city had bought so many tickets, said he was “left speechless. It’s just a total shock to me that this amount of money should be spent for tickets.”

Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young also did not know how many tickets the city had purchased. “Quite often, when an event is happening in the community, whether it’s a . . . banquet or whatever, the city will support that event with buying tickets or a table,” Young said.

‘An Awful Lot of Money’

Ream said such purchases rarely, if ever, approach $25,000.

“It is an awful lot of money,” Ream said. “But the opening of MainPlace is an extremely monumental event for us . . . and a lot of them (those who received tickets) have participated in bringing MainPlace to fruition.”

The tickets were made available to past and current members of the City Council, appointed boards and commissions, mid-level and executive managers and to council members in the neighboring city of Orange, Ream said.

Ream said the city invited all members of the City Council and Redevelopment Commission since 1975, when the MainPlace project began.

Greater Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce president Michael Metzler said the ball is the city’s “black-tie event of the year.” The chamber expects to make a profit off the ball, which will feature a dance band as well as strolling jugglers, flame swallowers and pantomime artists, he said.

Acosta, who earlier this year voted against and called a “subsidy” the city’s financial participation in a Chamber of Commerce public relations campaign--of which the ball is a part, said the city’s purchase of so many tickets represented an “additional city subsidy” of the chamber.

Priorities ‘Out of Whack’

Acosta received two of the city-purchased tickets and plans on attending the event, but he said he now “may want to pay for my tickets come Monday morning.”

“It seems like our priorities are totally out of whack,” Acosta said. “We’re looking at a settlement for the policemen. Why are we spending so much money on this rather than on something else?”

Santa Ana police officers plan to picket the ball to protest the lack of progress in wage negotiations with the city, according to Police Benevolent Assn. president Donald Blankenship. The picketing has nothing to do with the ticket purchase, Blankenship said, even though it “irritates our board, and especially the wage negotiation team. They (the city) keep telling us ‘there’s no money, no money’ . . . and they keep doling out other funds.”

Association members also plan to picket at the homes of council members “just to remind them that we’re still here,” Blankenship said.