City Council - "Can we all just get along?"

Convicted felon Rodney King once remarked “Can we all get just along?” Apparently he never attended a Lake Forest City Council meeting. We’ve been looking at people’s reactions to the recent City Council meetings. Yesterday we looked at the reactions from people who lived outside the City. Today we look at local residents’ comments.

LOCAL RESIDENT – ‘LORD HELP US”

“Is there something in the water the staff gives the Council that has caused these melt downs? First, Robinson goes completely batty about Jim, calling him names that defy believe; then Hamilton decides he is a third world dictator;

And, Voights last night! What a performance. The sham of being tired because he just got back from Hawaii so he wanted to re-arrange (and did) the published agenda. Isn’t that against the Brown Act? :)

It was obvious that he knew a lot of people would leave the room before it came time for the council members comments, so he used that obviously phony excuse to change the rules.

I thought Nancy Cagley gave an excellent speech [during public comment] on the election being over, get on with the business of running the city! Obviously, only a few of us heard that, and apparently no one on the dais!

again, we have a clear violation of the City Ethics rules regarding conduct on the dais.

I really hope the minutes of this meeting are more detailed than they have been in the past. This stuff needs to be documented.

Lord help us!”

LOCAL RESIDENT – “EMBARRASSING”

“First off, we taxpayers pay all Staff members six figures. And they can’t even come up with a GJ [Grand Jury] response? They have to transfer their responsibility to the Council and don’t even give the public advanced notice of the discussion on the GJ response? We did it exactly backwards from the way RSM and LH did it.

And then to add insult to injury, the best our Council could do was parrot RSM’s response? How’s that for a display of leadership. RSM and LH was looking for Lake Forest to lead, not follow!!!

Embarrassing.”

LOCAL RESIDENT – “DISGUSTING”

“Last night was one of the most disgusting City Council meetings that I’ve attended. Last night Scott Voigts went way over the top in misusing his office for personal vendettas and disgraced his office as Mayor. Even the audience was displeased in his rant and he had to speak louder over a negative audience with boos and disappointing words.

I suggest that we get as many people as we can to speak at the open comment section of the next meeting and ask Mayor Voigts to resign from office for his disgraceful actions last night.”

LOCAL RESIDENT – “EYE OPENER”

“What an eye opener! Never have I witnessed such an egotistical group in my entire career, and I have attended many of Council Meetings in many different Cities. Do they forget the residents of Lake Forest elected them? I do hope they move forward and put their own agendas aside… I was embarrassed of the behavior of LK City Council, as a resident”

SUMMARY

In total I received more than 20 e-mails on this subject. Even more people chimed in on Lake Forest Town Square. I hope that this universal condemnation of the poor behavior of my colleagues will convince them to act as adults, stop the bickering, and the partisan politics, and work together cordially to do the best we can for the City. We can argue and disagree, but we shouldn’t be calling each other names, yelling at each other much less our own citizens, dis-respecting speakers and visitors, violating the laws and the rules for governing meetings, and all the other unfortunate actions that took place in the past few weeks.

COMMENTS

It’s been brought to my attention that for some reason the Comments Section for this article is not functioning. I don’t control the Patch or the pages so it is beyond my control. You can go to Lake Forest Town square to discuss the issue if you choose. Check back here and they will probably fix the glitch.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on August 15 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.

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