City Council Candidate Statements - Hamilton

We’re looking at Candidate statements this week, beginning with the people with the longest tenure. So far we covered McCullough, Voigts, and Bass. Today we’ll highlight Andrew Hamilton –

Hamilton has been on the Planning Commission for the past 18 + months, and he’s been a major part of why the Planning Commission has done such a terrible job in that time. Click here for that story. But putting aside his performance on the Planning Commission for a moment, let’s look at his candidate statement –

To start with, Hamilton has the fewest ideas of any of the candidate statements we’ve looked at to date.

Hamilton promises – “As more homes are built, I will implement traffic alleviation measures”

Is he crazy? More Homes?!!

We already have 5,000 new homes being added to a City that already suffers from the worst traffic congestion in South Orange County. Now he’s planning to add even more homes? Bear in mind, Hamilton pushed heavily for the Brookfield and Trumark homes to be built, despite opposition from nearly every resident in the City and despite the recommendation of the City staff.

Notice that Hamilton gives you no idea of what “traffic alleviation measures” he will implement. That’s because he has no idea. As Chairman of the Planning Commission he was asked to set up a Traffic Committee to advise the Commission. He refused to do it.

Hamilton says – “Lake Forest does not have any term limits, and the current term limit initiative is an important first step”

How dumb is that?

The term limit initiative means that if elected, Hamilton could serve for 24 of the next 26 years. Does that sound like a limit? The President of the United States is limited to 8 years, but apparently Hamilton believes he is entitled to more than 3 times that limit.

Hamilton’s third and final promise is “I will also fight to make Lake Forest a safer city.”

Apparently in this case Hamilton has decided not to follow the path of his mentor Scott Voigts. Voigts would rather lie to us about how safe we are, than try to make the City a safer place. Hamilton is to be commended for recognizing the fact that in Lake Forest our crime rate is significantly higher than most of our neighbors, and the next Council should spend our resources to decrease our crime rate.

Hamilton informs us in his statement that he’s a CPA. We already have two CPAs on the Council (Nick and Bass), so the idea of a third CPA seems very self-defeating.

BOTTOM LINE – Hamilton is Voigts’ boy. With Robinson in office for two more years, electing Hamilton and Voigts would give the city a new “Gang of 3” that would bring unprecedented corruption and incompetence into a City that has had enough of this already.

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.