City Council Candidate Statements - Bass

We’re looking at Candidate statements this week, beginning with the people with the longest tenure. So far we covered McCullough and Voigts, and the only real question is which one of them is the bigger liar.

Next in line is Dave Bass, the man who filled the vacancy created when Peter Herzog resigned.

When Bass first appeared on the scene in late 2013, he hadn’t been to a City Council meeting in years, hadn’t participated in city related activities, and had no goals for his tenure on the Council. He promised in writing not to run for election if he was appointed, and said his only reason for wanting to fill the seat was to save the City the costs of an election.

Apparently things have changed. Bass is not only running, he now has a few goals. Here they are –

· “synchronize all traffic signals to reduce travel times”

Yet why did Bass vote to extend the time for completion of the project?

It’s a noble goal, one that the City hasn’t achieved in more than a decade, even while many other cities are fully synchronized.

· “maintain a low crime rate”

That’s nearly an impossible task, since our crime rate is much higher than almost all of our neighbors.

In a recent discussion at the Council I pointed out the facts that our crime rate was relatively much higher than most of our neighbors, and our murder rate in the past few years was the highest among our neighbors. Bass’ response was that he felt safe walking his street at night. Here’s a man making decisions that impact the lives of 80,000 people and he ignores the data in front of him and instead wants to make public policy based on his personal feelings walking his neighborhood.

· “…make sure school impact paid by developers are spent on schools in Lake Forest.”

Once more a noble goal, but SVUSD has the discretion to spend the dollars.

Bass would be better off advocating for new schools or new classrooms, or running for the SVUSD Board. He might consider Lake Forest creating its own independent school district which Mayor Pro Tem Nick has advocated.

· “…enhance recreation programs to maximize the use of the new ports park.”

Again, a good goal, but the plain fact is that our Recreation Department is already doing an excellent job.

Bass is so out of touch with what is happening in the City his high priority goals are almost meaningless. There are lots of things we’re not doing well. Why concentrate on enhancing something that is already pretty darn good?

· “…increase business networking opportunities…”

Bass seems to be selecting goals from the book of “Already Doing It”.

Jessica Gonzalez and her people in Economic Development, with the help of our busy Chamber of Commerce, do an excellent job of business networking. If Bass were more involved in the City he’d know that. Of course there’s nothing wrong with taking a good thing and making it even better, but with so many areas of the City that need attention, why is Bass focusing on areas that are already functioning well?

· “push for the City to build its own modest offices including a dedicated senior center.”

The City is already pushing for their own modest offices.

Once again Bass is picking the wrong areas to focus his energies. But his idea of having our own senior center is an important and neglected issue. Kudos to him for advancing this idea (something I have been pushing for since 2008).

· “…approve conservative budgets that are balanced without increasing taxes…”

So why does he vote for fee increases?

Once more Bass dips into the book of “Already Doing it” while simultaneously borrowing from the Voigts/Robinson book of “We can’t do it but we’ll make a promise because it sounds good” The City has a balanced budget and the city has very little ability to “increase taxes”. However, the City does have the power to increase fees, and Bass has been a consistent voter for fee increases. He just voted to increase fees for the use of the Sports Park (Aug 5, 2014) and he voted for one of the biggest fee increase in the history of the City when trash hauling fees went up nearly 50% for small business and multi-family housing (March 4, 2014). He voted for giving fines to people who park their cars on street sweeping days, without trying to solve the problem with public education (Jan 7, 2014).

BOTTOM LINE – Bass is obviously brighter than McCullough or Voigts, but his 10+ months in office have given us virtually nothing. When you look at the topics he chooses to highlight as his goals for the next 4 years, they are pretty pathetic. Some of them are already being carried out and don’t need his attention (e.g., balanced budget, building our own city hall, business networking, recreation programs). Others are outside the Council’s purview so why bother to mention them (increase taxes, school spending)? But most disturbing, he seems to have been infected by the “say this/do the opposite” disease prevalent with Voigts and Robinson, so he is promising things he already has shown he’s against (conservative principles, synchronize traffic lights quickly).

ABOUT JIM GARDNER

Dr. Jim Gardner is running for City Council in Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook. Or you can read one of the 1,000+ articles he’s written for The Patch in the past few years. Click on his name underneath the title of the article and that will take you to his bio page where his previous articles can be accessed