Candidate Forum Available to View

The Cox Candidate Forum for City Council will be aired on Channel 3 at the following times –

• · Oct 23 - 6:00 pm
• · Oct 27 – 8:30 pm
• · Nov 3 – 5:00 pm

If these days/times aren’t convenient, you can order it ON DEMAND.

Here are some random observations, noted in chronological order in which they appear –

· Neither Kathryn McCullough nor Scott Voigts bothered to show up, so don‘t look for them. Voigts has made a habit of not showing up. He’s missed more council meetings than all other Council members combined. Just a week ago, Voigts and Bass missed the Executive session of the Council meeting in order to attend a Republican Party event, and this caused the meeting to be cancelled.

· Dave Bass (17:51) keeps saying he’s concerned that the developer fees that went to Saddleback Unified School District (SVUSD) aren’t being spent in our City, but he didn’t bother to show up at the SVUSD Candidate Forum where the Board members were discussing the future of SVUSD. Hmm. If bass were concerned about the future of the schools you’d think he’d attend this important event.

· The #1 issue Andrew Hamilton can come up with is cellphone ordinances. This is apparently an obsession of his, and ranks higher on his agenda than crime, schools, traffic, water, or anything else. Hamilton also is concerned with getting new schools, yet he too was missing from the SVUSD forum.

· Dave Bass says he’s opposed to a “Traffic Commission” but he is in favor of a “Traffic Task Force” (23:40). Hmm. It sounds like Bass is trying to say one thing and do another. Recall that Dwight Robinson earned the epithet “Mayor Two-Faced” because, among other things, he promised a Traffic Commission and then voted 3 times against it.

· Andrew Hamilton says he’s in favor of a Traffic Commission, but when I asked him specifically to create a Traffic Committee for the Planning Commission, he refused to do it. Hmm. How can he be in favor of something he already refused to create? Is Hamilton following in the footsteps of his mentor Scott Voigts who has set a record for lying while in office.

· Andrew Hamilton says we’re “not on the hook for those Police pensions” (33:10) but for a CPA that statement seems terribly naïve. The Police pensions help determine the cost of Police services which is why we are spending nearly $500,000 more for the exact same services this year.

· Dave Bass now says he’s in favor of a maximum of 2 or 3 terms (42:00), yet he authored the City’s argument to allow a Council member to serve 24 of the next 26 years! Hmm. If you recall, Bass wrote on his application to be appointed to the Council that he wouldn’t run for office, and now he’s running for office. Then he authored the ordinance to allow him to serve 24 of 26 years and now he says he’s in favor of 8 or 12 years only.

Next time we’ll go issue by issues and see who’s saying what, bearing in mind that whatever Bass or Hamilton are saying right now is probably not what he’ll say next time

(PS - if it looks like I’m picking on Hamilton and Bass, it wasn’t intended. The other candidates were pretty straight forward and apart from an occasional error or two, I thought they did a great job, all of them.)

About Jim Gardner

Dr. Jim Gardner is the editor of CITY WATCH on The Patch and a contributing editor to OC Politics and Voice of OC. He is running for City Council in Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook 14033 8Le