City Council D4: Tettemer Says Residents Wasteful, Blames Gardner

Mark Tettemer is not championing any real cause in his bid for a seat on the Lake Forest City Council. The two-time former councilman, as well as two-time mayor, is trying to unseat Mayor Jim Gardner in District 4.

Tettemer’s appeal to residents boils down to one issue: remove “dysfunction” from the council.

This “dysfunction,” he says, is rooted in two recall attempts, and this is where Tettemer gets exposed.

Tettemer complains of the $418,000 the recalls cost the city, that it can’t be recovered and could have gone to improve traffic or public safety or parks. For that, he blames Gardner and former councilman Adam Nick. But he never mentions the 8,000-plus residents who agreed with Gardner and Nick.

Nor does Tettemer ever acknowledge the 5 percent of fat that Gardner (and Nick) wanted City administrators to cut from their departments which would have saved the city $2.5 million annually, but they didn’t get support from Dwight Robinson, Scott Voigts and Andrew Hamilton. Tettemer doesn’t acknowledge the $500,000 Gardner saved the city by fighting for a reduction in the scope of the general plan, or the other $500,000 Gardner saved the city by championing a change in the way the city invested its money.

Tettemer can’t see the forest through the trees, and he’s hoping residents will be just as oblivious when they vote at the polls on Nov. 6.

Tettemer doesn’t know what price to place on good government. He’s clearly determined the price is not $418,000.

Yet the recall saved Lake Forest taxpayers $1 million by paying off the Alton Parkway bond , a bond that Tettemer voted for when he was conducting the city’s business from 2005-12. So you might say that Tettemer helped put the city into debt and Gardner helped take the city out of debt. There was no guarantee the prudent decision to pay off the bond would happen if Hamilton hadn’t been recalled because the Council -- with Hamilton -- had made previous dumb decisions, such as wanting to spend $1.5 million on the general plan before Gardner convinced them otherwise. There’s not a competent city council anywhere that wouldn’t trade $418,000 to save $1 million, but that’s what ultimately happened; retired Col. Tom Cagley replaced Hamilton after the January special election and it changed the dynamic of the vote. Cagley was the independent-minded solution that evened the field against the partisan politics of Robinson and Voigts, who have been strongly supported by the OC GOP.

Recall opponents insisted throughout that Cagley would be a puppet of Gardner, yet Cagley voted with Robinson a bit more than he voted with Gardner. There’s no evidence to suggest that Cagley was being controlled by anyone -- and that’s what the people deserved. Unlike Hamilton, who voted with Robinson and Voigts with shocking regularity even to the detriment of the public safety of their constituents (see Saddleback Ranch Road).

The night Cagley was sworn in, Robinson admitted he had made mistakes in prior votes, essentially validating the positions of Gardner and Nick all those times when Robinson sided with Hamilton and Voigts – yet Tettemer sees Gardner and Nick as the problems, as a source of “dysfunction.”

Don’t you think Councilman Robinson’s confession that he screwed up over the previous five years is more indicative of the dysfunction Tettemer should be campaigning against? Tettemer should be working to unseat Robinson, except that he and Robinson are locked at the hip the same way Hamilton and Robinson were locked at the hip. Robinson appointed Tettemer to the Traffic and Parking Commission; before that new commission ever met, Tettemer pulled papers so that he could try to join Robinson on the city council.

Cronyism? Robinson was campaign manager for Voigts in 2010, he ran with Nick in 2012 (Nick eventually turned against Robinson), he brought along Hamilton in 2014, he ran with Francisco Barajas in 2016 even though the three-year resident had never even made a motion or a second during his time on the Parks and Recreation Committee. And now Robinson has his hands all over Tettemer and District 2 candidate Neeki Moatazedi. Robinson has consistently tried to stack the council to give himself and Voigts controlling power.

Again, doesn’t that sound like cronyism? That’s the danger of voting for Tettemer or Moatazedi.

TETTEMER SAYS RESIDENTS ARE FOOLISH

Thousands of people voted for the recall with their signatures to recall Hamilton (and in the first recall attempt, Robinson and Voigt too), clearly establishing that they wanted elected officials who weren’t for sale to developers and other special interests, and they didn’t want elected leaders who believed in group-think. Tettemer’s election cry about the wastefulness of the recall is an affront to everyone who gave their trust – their vote – to Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton and had it thrown back in their face, an affront to every one of more than 8,000 registered and valid voters who believed they deserved good government and that the problem should be corrected immediately.

Tettemer doesn’t believe that. Tettemer says the recalls shouldn’t have happened, that they were dumb, that they were uncalled for -- but what he’s really saying is that everyone who signed their name to take advantage of their right to fix a mistake was flat-out wrong. Of course, Tettemer’s misdirection is that the recalls took place because of Gardner and Nick; he doesn’t want to acknowledge that it took more than 20 percent of registered voters to qualify the recall for the ballot. The recall wouldn’t have gone anywhere if only Gardner and Nick had signed the petition.

The reason Tettemer wants to lay the blame solely on Gardner and Nick, and not the 8,000 residents who supported the recall with their signatures, is because Tettemer doesn’t want to call 8,000 constituents idiots -- even though that’s clearly what he’s thinking. If Gardner and Nick were idiots for their role in the recall, then residents were idiots for supporting it. But now Tettemer wants your vote.

MISPLACED VALUES

Tettemer’s trumpet call is to restore civility to the council, but the incivility he sees is misdirected; by trying to silence Gardner, he’s aligning himself with Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton, who were the cause of the incivility. Tettemer’s campaign rhetoric is that he’s the answer, that the incivility includes “disparaging comments and attacks between Council Members”; maybe Tettemer is forgetting that Robinson referred to his colleagues as morons and imbeciles, and that Robinson and Voigts funded a smear campaign that called residents thugs and pedophiles. Yet Tettemer gladly accepted Robinson’s appointment to the Traffic Commission, gladly accepts Robinson’s endorsement for city council. Anyone who thinks Tettemer and Robinson aren’t a team is naïve, and Robinson’s track record shows that he’s not to be trusted.

Tettemer says that Gardner is “divisive” and that Tettemer’s the answer to the problem. Yet Tettemer wasn’t the answer when he sat on the council and Kathryn McCullough filed a restraining order against Peter Herzog. That’s divisive, but Tettemer wants to rewrite history with a Pollyannic look at the good old days that weren’t nearly as good as he would have you believe. Tettemer himself made his own snide remarks on the council, essentially deriding practically blind Marcia Rudolph for not being able to see something right in front of her.

Let’s face it, Tettemer’s friend Robinson doesn’t like Gardner telling people when Robinson says one thing then votes the other way, or that he made seven campaign promises in 2012 and made no effort to keep any of them. Maybe Tettemer has softened on Voigts, who doesn’t like Gardner pointing out that he’s been lying to residents. The reaction by Robinson and Voigts is human nature and perfectly understandable, but the reaction by Tettemer is outrageous; not once, to my knowledge, has Tettemer ever addressed the lack of accountability, the lack of truth, the lack of honor, surrounding Robinson and the liar Voigts. Tettemer instead has aimed his sights on Gardner as the problem; if Robinson and Voigts don’t want to be called out for dereliction of the public trust, if they don’t want a “divisive” force on the council, maybe they should stop lying to the people who elected them. Maybe they shouldn’t give Gardner something to complain about.

At an Oct. 22 press conference for Moatazedi, Voigts was yelling “Liar, liar” at Moatazedi opponent Sonny Morper during his comments to the media, a remarkable irony of the pot calling the kettle black. Voigts, running unopposed in District 3, handed out flyers at an elementary school to children and told them, “Take that home to your mom and dad” so they could se the message that derided Nick. And yet Tettemer thinks Gardner’s the problem?

If Tettemer wants to create civility on the council, he’s running in the wrong district. He should be running against Voigts or Robinson.

He may be a very nice man and a good neighbor, but Tettemer doesn’t understand this need for Robinson and Voigts to be held accountable. The most valuable thing a resident can give an elected official is their trust, their vote. And when Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton collectively pissed on that trust, people noticed – and Tettemer didn’t. And if he did, he didn’t say anything about it, which makes him complicit or an enabler. Tettemer, who didn’t support the recall, was instead willing to allow Hamilton to continue to govern with impunity and run for reelection with the power of incumbency; after all, another election was only 10 months away according to Tettemer’s own campaign literature.

Yet more than 8,000 residents felt differently.

Residents deserve to know when their elected officials are lying to them, and Tettemer has given no indication he will do anything to protect the public’s right to know. Instead, he wants to label that as “dysfunction.”

Given his track record if elected, Tettemer will rely on his previous experience and keep quiet and keep the electorate in the dark, just as he did for eight years when he was the silent but decisive vote in a majority that included Herzog and Richard Dixon. When the electorate is in the dark, there are a lot fewer problems. Suddenly, that incivility goes away when people don’t know what’s going on and there’s no one (like Gardner or an engaged media) to point it out.

When Tettemer was part of a majority on the city council from 2005-12, he didn’t do anything that moved the needle on transparency or accountability. When Tettemer was in control, there were back room deals being made between corporations and city employees – that’s what led to Nick filing a lawsuit to change the rules (he did not sue the city for money). That happened on Tettemer’s watch. To my knowledge, Tettemer didn’t champion anything in his eight years, he just went along for the ride on the coattails of Herzog and Dixon. Tettemer was the original Andrew Hamilton.

Tettemer has confused accountability with dysfunction, and such a shortcoming has no business on city council.

So, to summarize this article and the one posted on Oct. 23:

Special interests such as the sheriff’s and fire unions are voting with their wallets because Tettemer has shown in the past he’ll give them a free ride when the contracts come up for renewal. Crime was higher on Tettemer’s watch by 31 percent than it is on Gardner’s.

Tettemer thinks the thousands of residents who wanted to be represented in their government were wasteful for wanting to fix the problem immediately instead of letting it fester for another 10 months and then perhaps have to live with it an additional four years if Hamilton successfully leveraged the power of incumbency and the support of special interests, including those who want to build 800 homes on top of about 1,500 still-unbuilt homes from the Tettemer era.

For the last six years, Tettemer has sat on his hands without offering so much as a suggestion or gentle rebuke to hold Robinson, Hamilton or Voigts accountable for their role in creating the toxicity at City Hall and lack of trust in city leaders.

For the last six years, Tettemer has remained silent on important issues.

Like Neeki Moatazedi, everything that comes out of Tettemer’s mouth has one purpose: To get elected. Nixon and Trump both kissed babies; politicians do what they have to do to get elected. Tettemer is no different, and he’ll rewrite history to do it.