Why the Confirmation Bias Regarding the Village Entrance Project?

By Roger E. Bütow 

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”   (Albert Szent-Gyorgyi)

Although it’s very encouraging to sense fellow residents waking up to the fatally flawed revenue and cost projections regarding the Village Entrance Project (VEP), it’s become glaringly apparent that the proponents of this disaster-in-progress are stuck in denial.

You’ll have to yell louder. They can’t hear you cry havoc because they’re cloistered in closed session.

This proposal is a classic screw-up that my fellow military veterans laughingly refer to as “Ready, Fire, Aim!” Like a recipe, what we call algorithms, the City has jumped the gun and ignored a basic formula: Thorough and up to date analyses, and especially precise projections of final costs should have been part of the front-loading cost and risk assessment processes. Then the ramifications (fiscal, physical limitations and their impacts) could have been integrated into projected costs. 

In fact, a plethora of “ ... and then” verbiage abounds, permeates and infects the process due to uncertainties that City Hall seems confoundingly unmotivated to address, that it’s ignored, that are at the core of the fracas. 

Instead, defying logic and plain common sense, they’ve allocated a discrete amount but then don’t know how much of our money they’ll actually need to spend, how far into debt we’ll wind up. Imagine running your business or family household that way, without expenditure restraints, until the bills start rolling in? Akin to credit card debt, isn’t that one of the main reasons we’re still awash in red ink nationally? 

The officials now in charge (Pearson, Dicterow & Whalen) assert they personify and embody classic conservative fiscal responsibility and fiduciary accountability. In contradiction, they’ve written a blank check without the public’s specific acquiescence to do so.

Some residents say that’s why you elect them: You delegate, you trust them to do the right thing. I’m sorry, but trust per se doesn’t travel with politicians any more closely than it does with used car salesmen.

A recent popularity poll by CNN had the following results: People find a colonoscopy runs next to last, yet is more attractive than a politician. “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.” (Ronald Reagan)

We must assume that resistance is futile when the Council sits up there as dictators, as feudal lords and not our servants. Dicterow’s campaign catchphrase mantra was “Common sense for a change.” I guess that sound, prudent and simply-put homily has been set aside for this project. It must in his convoluted elitist mind obviate the need for common sense and thus disallow the hoi-polloi riff-raff a vote.

What City Hall has done is a form of divestment, a disservice. Finding a “workaround,” circumventing contention, disputes or subsequent challenges under California municipal law, City Hall discovered that, to paraphrase the classic flick Treasure of The Sierra Madre: “What public permission? We don’t need no stinking permission!”

“Confirmation bias” helps explain the dynamic that leaves the pro-VEP no other way to analyze it. These three councilpersons seem to be the epitome of deaf, dumb and blind, hear, see and speak no opposition, oblivious to any other alternatives.

Here’s a basic over-view from Science Daily that eerily describes that myopic and self-limiting mentality:

“In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias (or confirmatory bias) is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.

Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study.

Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or under-weigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.”

(Click here for the full story in Science Daily.)

Simply put, our newly configured City Council majority decided that this site and 200 more parking spaces were its pre-determined goals. End of discussion. End of story. “Warp Factor 11, Scotty” (City Engineer), “Make it so, #1” (City Manager). Any information that was then discovered to be adverse or contrary to those two co-mingled goals was to be downplayed, undervalued and dismissed.

So damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, even if it meant taking us into the unknown and potentially fiscal disaster vortices of time and space. Nothing was allowed to get in the way.

Land use and regulatory compliance advisors like myself are uncomfortable with how City Hall is responding to the community’s concerns about the unknowable, undisclosed potential remediation costs. Added to that is the eventual overall building safety, the long-term endurance of the parking structure itself.

Basically, the City is asserting that addressing and funding these disturbing conditions and financial ramifications are “To Be Determined” (TBD) at a later date, a type of 25 year fiscal IOU quagmire that has dire implications and is not found in City concerns. Hey, when it’s not YOUR money, and you’ve crossed your fingers praying that you’ll either be dead or drawing your CalPERS retirement funds in remote Montana when it has gone south, it’s Alfred E. Neumann, “What, me worry?” time. 

Recently, I’ve been asked a lot about just exactly how I’d describe my professional role for my clients. One of my services is that of a “Devil’s Advocate,” a form of an in-house peer review for projects. I look at the preliminary supporting documents and studies, at Draft EIRs and the attendant comments/responses, etc. Subsequently, I inform my clients about the weaknesses, the deficiencies and holes ... especially possible calamities (like huge cost over-runs) down the road.

What’s become painfully obvious is that a combination of confirmation bias and failure to procure independent, 3rd party services like mine at City Hall are how and why we got so far down this cul-de-sac.

Local Rita Conn was right: It’s not too late to admit that mistakes have been made, too late for a mid-course correction, for remorse and contrition, for a revisit, go back to where the road forked, for a do-over.

It just takes visionary nerve, audacity, chutzpah, stones, guts. Like trust, those are attributes that politicians don’t seem to have, either in abundance or even developed along the path. Obtaining and maintaining trust is a fragile, open and honest, truthful way of life. Seems that politicians part company with those notions at birth.

As a side bar, it’s amusing to read that both Dicterow and Whalen purport to be heavy on public safety issues as a platform plank and as one of their highest priorities. This big box, monolithic parking storage for hundreds of non-resident cars will be anything but completely safe. It’s more like a house-of-cards that shouldn’t be portrayed as without inherent hazards.

I’ll wager this year’s income that you won’t find one licensed engineer who would live in it with his/her family 24/7/365, basically betting their lives that it’ll sustain the 7.0+ earthquake seismic experts believe is long overdue.

Yes, you’ll find plenty of engineers who if paid well enough will say that it MIGHT survive, gamble with our money and other people’s lives and limbs. Which is what the City did, found engineers outside of Laguna Beach to support their endgame bias.

You’ve seen your City Manager, John Pietig, in hip waders after the 2010 canyon flood, or up to the rim of his galoshes in human excrement at the two massive sewage spills near the restaurant Mozambique several years ago. If that Tower of Babel parking structure “pancakes,” collapses as many professionals believe it can, anyone envision him and those supporting study engineers digging out the bodies from the rubble themselves, by hand as we’ve seen all too often by first responders on TV? 

"There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris." (McGeorge Bundy)

Just because you can build something doesn’t mean that you do. This is more like an experiment than a public works, capital improvement project. City Hall is proceeding with their heads in the site’s sandy loam (or up in some very dark places) before they have met reasonable argument standards to move it along expeditiously.

It’s absent classic “cart before the horse, look before you leap” thinking. We’re all frustrated, flummoxed and exasperated by this mindset, this preliminary yet critical phase, the corner cutting, because after the fact hindsight won’t cut it. “Ninety-Nine and A Half Just Won’t Do.”

To me, it’s too invasive (goes too deep) and it’s too tall. It’s dangerous because after being completed, it’ll practically be a public nuisance, inviting trouble and yes, horrendously large, post-cataclysmic personal and property injury lawsuits. Built over two stories high from existing grade at that location and you’re in the outer limits of rational planning parameters.

We’re going to pay tens of millions of dollars for hunches, betting that Mother Earth won’t roll over in her sleep or shrug one sunny summer day when the lot is jammed with people and cars. “Our bad. We’re sooooo sorry.”

Meanwhile, ambulance chasers will be parked and camping out not in the structure, but on the grass with national media down at City Hall (if it’s still standing) asking the same questions we’re now asking: Why? Why gamble, why build there when you knew better? Why build there when Act V was a viable alternative? Why didn’t you let your own taxpayers vote on this? 

I listened to Alan Boinus and Jim Kennedy’s nearly 1-hour radio interview of Councilwoman Pearson. (You can too at this link to the show.) Their format for the community talk show “Clashing Heads” on radio KX 93.5 was an interesting departure for me. Usually, we as concerned public speakers only get about 2-3 minutes of fame at the microphone during comments portions at Council meetings with no rebuttal or refutation rights.

Ms. Pearson was extremely defensive and at times perturbed, so one wonders why she agreed to be interviewed. The guys were “gentle men,” were civil and treated her respectfully. Typical long-term, insinuated politician of some 18 years (Planning Commission and Council), quintessential professional marketing and PR flack herself, some of her statements add weight to why the taxpayers should be allowed to vote. 

Reminiscent of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, that same disturbing  “First the punishment, then the trial” irrationality was obvious. Pearson asserted three things that show how out of touch the Council is regarding their fiduciary duties:

First, she typified, placed on par as equals, this situation with the Council’s legitimate right to meet in closed session under California law (the Brown Act). It does allow confidentiality and non-disclosure by officials at certain points. Yes, City officials need not discuss employee wages and sensitive litigation particulars while in progress.  Afterwards, when resolved, they are bound by municipal law to generally divulge the results.

Funding a huge, potential fiscal black hole is not the same thing, it’s apples and oranges, and any dummy knows that. Pearson’s response was disingenuous, and by avoiding to directly answer she just kicked the controversy can down the road.

Second, alluding to, gleefully teasing the Clashing Heads audience with potential other revenue resources to help subsidize this nightmare, she clammed up when asked to disclose them specifically. Yes, the cash cavalry is coming over the hill, but City Hall’s not at liberty to tell you, the very people who could be left holding the bag. No surprise, the Council will also discuss them in (you guessed it) closed session.

Using that illogical metric, if we just left our Council alone and stopped pestering them, EVERY problem could be solved, simply let them categorically make all decisions in closed session, that ultimate tool of public transparency!

This reflects Machiavellian arrogance, reflects how out of touch politicians become once elected. Oh sure, when up for re-election, you’ll hear how responsive to your pleas they are, how they worked really, really hard for you. But please right now, just beat it, buzz off, OK?

What Pearson did divulge is what I’ve alleged all along: They’re doing a form of governmental reverse engineering, knowing that the project has inherent shortcomings that through fiscal hocus-pocus and mitigations can be made right.

Third, she exclaimed that since every building in the downtown district might be affected by a 7.0+ seismic event, all buildings are equal. Not true. How many basements are there in downtown Laguna? Few. How many 3-story structures with an additional subterranean level built down to the water table at the hydrological choke point of Laguna Canyon exist or are being planned? Only this one, m’am. 

The downtown location was pre-determined as mandatory. THEN create a monolithic box store for visitor’s cars with the additional 200 parking spaces at that same location. THEN don’t bother with in-depth studies or analyses that controvert the existing confirmation bias.  Put us in hock, fund the project and THEN find the money. Put in abeyance deficiencies until it’s too late---THEN let another subsequent Council and City Manager, another generation of residents deal with them years down the road.

Keep drinking that City Hall Kool-Aid, put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and THEN don’t bother with the exigent pleas, the outcry. Don’t “Be here now” just “Be there THEN.”

It’s like taking this City’s biggest final exam (gamble) ever and THEN doing the homework. Entirely disregard potentially adverse site conditions and THEN decide how to fund without open public approval, behind closed doors. If the public complains, THEN invoke and hide behind Brown Act privileges.

Proponent allegations that those of us demanding a public vote wish to either stultify or turn back the clock are amusing. No one expects us to remain stagnant. That’s a straw man ruse and sophistry at its worst.

Like Ronald Reagan said: “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Next up: Why the VEP site remediation could cost us a bundle.

Previous articles in this series:

Laguna Beach Village Entrance Project: Why FEMA Won't Bail Us Out This Time

Why Is the Proposed Village Entrance Project Site Physically and Fiscally Risky?

Village Entrance Project: Unresolved Water Quality and Soil Remediation Issues From 12 Years Ago Linger

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