City Council Candidate Preview: Mark Tettemer

There are six candidates lined up to replace Andrew Hamilton on City Council should voters in Lake Forest choose to recall him on Jan. 2, 2018. The primary reasons for the recall of Hamilton are his commitment to development in Lake Forest, his commitment to the high-kill Orange County animal shelter that locked the City into a 10-year contract that will cost millions extra, his decision to ignore the dangers of Saddleback Ranch Road until he faced a recall, and several instances of unethical and just plain rude behavior.
Candidates vying for the available council seat are Tom Cagley (click here), David Glick (click here), Neeki Moatazedi (click here), Mark Tettemer, Frank Wagoner and Stan Yombo.

Fourth in the series: Mark Tettemer

Tettemer has been on the Council before. He is the only candidate with that specific experience. He also has a proven track record, for better or worse. Taking a look at that record, anyone unhappy with Hamilton would probably be unhappy with Tettemer.

There are some who think of Tettemer as part of the original “Gang of 3,” with Richard Dixon and Peter Herzog. The City is 26 years old, but only now is building a civic center – finally bringing it in line with every other City in Orange County. Currently, Lake Forest spends about $1 million annually to rent the building it uses to house City police services, the administration of City government, and the general purpose room that doubles as City Council chambers on the first and third Tuesdays of each month; when Tettemer was in office, the rent was about $1.5 million.

Those bothered by the City's traffic and parking issues can't lay the entire blame on Hamilton and the other two members of his particular Gang of 3, Dwight Robinson and Scott Voigts. They contributed unabashedly to the problem, but the problem developed on Tettemer's watch.

Developers have played a huge role in Lake Forest politics, and Tettemer was an integral part of that culture.

Campaign Contributions

Like Hamilton, Tettemer was largely funded by special interests during his eight years in office from 2005-12.

If Tettemer (or Hamilton, for that matter) weren't protected legally as elected officials, they might easily be considered corrupt. Developers paying money to election campaigns to earn favor from politicians is protected by law (written by politicians to protect themselves), but if developers or other special interests paid money to business leaders or unelected City officials or employees to get what they want, it would be labeled corruption. Yet City Councilmen -- the ones who make the big decisions -- are in the business of running the City. What’s legal and ethical are two different things.

So how much money was directed to electing Tettemer and keeping him in office? Not as much as Hamilton, but plenty nevertheless: more than $20,000 in more than 39 separate “campaign donations,” much of it from the building industry.

Tettemer had a major role in the City building more than 4,000 homes among the 5,000 deemed acceptable by the OSA, which included guidelines to prohibit the buildout from impacting traffic, schools and infrastructure. Yet today, traffic is worse than it’s ever been, and class sizes are anything but optimal; Saddleback Valley Unified School District officially designated Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills elementary schools as overcrowded, a situation parents have known to exist for years. To date, about 4,800 homes have been approved, but more than 1,000 have yet to be built.

Tettemer wasn’t just responsible for approving a lot of homes. Tettemer's Council approved a $100 million expansion of the Musick Jail that abuts Bake Parkway, less than 700 feet from Lake Forest residential tracts. Tettemer did so knowing the intent was for the jail to house maximum security inmates; Councilman Jim Gardner, then intervening as a private citizen, was part of the effort responsible for the County relenting and limiting prisoners to minimum security classification.

During Tettemer’s time on the Council, his employer, Irvine Ranch Water District, profited millions of dollars by selling land to the City in deals Tettemer approved, yet some of the land was found to be unusable. Whether good deals or bad, Tettemer didn’t recuse himself even though he worked for an employer with a vested interest in the transaction.

Candidate Statement

Tettemer is one of three candidates (Cagley and Moatazedi the other two) who provided Candidate Statements to the city clerk. He indicates he will be able to “step right in and hit the ground running,” and there's no doubt he understands the process. But since leaving office in 2012, he didn't start attending City Council meetings until weeks before the recall signature gathering process ended. He has not indicated during those meetings his stance on any issue during the public comments. Although he claims in his Candidate Statement an involvement in many activities, they are typical of anyone who has raised a family in the same city for 20 years; none of those activities appear to be current.

His Candidate Statement fails to provide any vision for what he would like to accomplish if given a third term in office. Nor does it include his role in helping the City grow in population, school overcrowding, or his decision in favor of Musick Jail expansion within two football fields of city residences. These are not the things Tettemer will voluntarily tell you.

Tettemer counts among the accomplishments the completion of Alton Parkway, the widening and beautification of El Toro Road, the acquisition of six parks and construction of the sports park, which broke ground shortly before he left office.

Yet in eight years, the City had no City Hall, performing arts center, senior center, community center, dog park, or nonprofit community foundation. Some of those amenities, standard in most cities, were even opposed by Tettemer.

Not providing those things, while adding thousands of homes, did help Lake Forest amass more than $100 million in its coffers, from which the City paid for its Sports Park and will fund the new civic center complex that recently broke ground. But the City is now 26 years old and a generation of residents did without.

Who Will He Work For?

Perhaps the biggest concern about Tettemer is the same concern about Hamilton; will he work for residents first, or will he cater to the OC GOP, the OC Board of Supervisors, and special interests who want to make money in Lake Forest?

In 2015, Tettemer was named to the Orange County Waste Management Commission by the County Board of Supervisors, nominated by Lisa Bartlett. Keep in mind that Bartlett, and the board of supervisors, have been very protective of their own; they opposed the recall of Voigts even though he has been a proven liar while in Council Chambers, and supervisors supported Robinson last November even though he had failed to bring even one of his campaign promises before the Council in his four years as an elected official. For currying favor with the county’s top republicans, Robinson was named to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Though not suggesting Tettemer wasn’t qualified for the position in waste management, Tettemer is playing ball with the same people trying to protect Hamilton, Robinson and Voigts despite a legacy of lies and deceit.

Tettemer was a planning commissioner before be became a councilman. His given reason for not pursuing a third term in 2012 was to pursue a degree in public administration. In 2016, Tettemer ran for the SVUSD board but was defeated.

Tettemer may be more mature than Hamilton, but there are many similarities – catering to developers and a proven track record of building more homes – that replacing Hamilton with Tettemer doesn’t seem to be much of a replacement at all.

Next: Frank Wagoner

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About the Author: Martin Henderson won several Los Angeles and Orange County press club awards while an editor at Patch in 2012-13.