City Council Laundry List

Last week I bemoaned the fact that Mayor Scott Voigts chose to cancel our next City Council meeting instead of re-scheduling the time. It seems that Mayor Voigts and Councilmen Hamilton and Robinson are all going to be out of town at the same time, thus lacking a quorum for the August 18 meeting. But instead of finding a date when at least one of them was going to be in town, the Mayor cancelled the meeting all together. I pointed out a few of the agenda items that were sitting on the back burner, waiting to be addressed, and canceling a meeting only means falling even further behind.

At the time I listed a few of the items that have been delayed, and now with some time to reflect, I can add to that list, although I can’t guarantee I didn’t miss something. So here are examples of items that should already have been discussed by the Council. You won’t believe how long this list is! The items are listed (more or less) in chronological order -

1. Civic/Senior Center – the conceptual plans for the Civic/Senior Center go back a long time, but since this is a new Council, and some time has passed since the plans were drawn up, those plans should be re-examined. Although we’ve been informed about the progress of the permits which are being held up by a review from the Army Core of Engineers, there has been no effort to determine whether or not the plans are appropriate given all the other changes in the City since the plans were first drawn up. For example, it has been pointed out that we are building a senior center in an area where there are far fewer seniors, compared to other areas where the City does have land and in which a large core of seniors live. In a City where traffic is a major issue, building a senior center close to where the seniors live is a good idea and one that lessens traffic overall. The City has been planning to get proposals for construction and management, but it seems to me that this is premature, and there should be a public meeting to once more examine the conceptual plans before proceeding. See Item 7 below which relates directly to this issue.

2. Website Redesign – In October 2014 we were informed that the website was going to be re-designed. As I understood it, there was supposed to be an evaluation, which never happened to my knowledge. I’ve heard from many people that the new design is worse than the prior one. There are many broken links, the Search function barely works, and items that previously were easy to find are now hidden away. The website is an important way to communicate with our residents and businesses. We need to discuss the website and do a better job. BTW – the one thing that the Council asked to be done (May 19, 2015) was to open up the website for input into what’s happening broadly within the community and with the volunteer groups. This hasn’t been done yet so the Council should probably get an update.

3. Alton Sign – In January this year a resident of Foothill Ranch complained that the sign used on one of their parks didn’t match the signage used throughout the area. I finally got the issue before the Council and it was last discussed on May 1, 2015 and set for a discussion of signage in general.

4. Hotel Roundtable – On Feb 5, 2015 we held a very successful Hotel Roundtable at the City Hall, and everyone agreed that the City and the Hotel operators could benefit from a semi-annual meeting, instead of an annual meeting. Here we are more than 6 months later and no word about the next Roundtable. In addition, we mentioned that other industries might find this approach useful, but nothing on that front either.

5. Village Pond Park – On March 3, 2015 the Council asked for an evaluation of the effectiveness of the new wildlife feeding prohibition ordinance. This was desired prior to looking at any plans to re-model the Park. IMO we shouldn’t be investing $1 million or more in a park re-model without a proper evaluation of the effectiveness of the ordinance program. I suggested years ago that a simple ordinance program would solve most of the bird over-population problems without requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in structural changes to the Pond. Let’s get a proper evaluation of the effectiveness of the ordinance program before we spend lots of money on changes that may be unnecessary.

6. Investment Policy – On March 17 the Council approved an ad hoc committee that very soon after came up with ways in which we could change our policy and generate tens of thousands of additional income on our savings, which are considerable. But those changes can only be implemented once the Council approves them, and we have been waiting for months to review this. Meantime we are losing money every month. Let’s get this one on the agenda and into action.

7. Global View – At several points, including the preliminary budget discussions in March 2015, the Council agreed that we needed to look at the complete picture of what our assets were and what the needs of the City were, so that going forward we were in a good position to make decisions about what projects to undertake. Yet we are getting ready to review plans for the revised Village Pond Park and for the new Civic/Senior Center without the desired prerequisite global planning sessions. We need to do forward planning on a global scale before undertaking new projects lest we make errors that cost us dearly in the long run.

8. Art in the City – Fostering art from local artists was endorsed on March 31, 2015 and, among other things, the staff was asked about using the City Hall and the Sports Park to display artwork. In the meantime, we have had 3 different art shows at the Modjeska Playhouse, but nothing from the City yet.

9. Parking Permits – On April 7 we got consensus to ask the City Attorney to write a report about the ability of the City to inspect garages in areas where people are requesting parking permits.

10. Sports Park – While the Sports Park is a major achievement, it became obvious early on that we needed to re-think its use. On April 7, 2015 Mayor Voigts asked that a discussion of this be initiated and the City Manager said that it was already in motion. But it hasn’t yet gotten to the Council.

11. Access to City Attorney – During budget discussions, on May 12, 2015, the Council asked the staff to prepare a report on how Council members were using the City Attorney to answer individual questions. I am probably the biggest user of the City Attorney’s time, and I like to think that is why we’ve gone so long without being sued and without suing anyone. We’re still waiting for this report.

12. Sign ordinance – it should be clear to just about everyone that the revised sign ordinance was a complete disaster, and the amount of shenanigans last year achieved an all-time high. It even spilled over this year into acrimonious arguments between council members and even intruded itself into a request for a license to sell alcohol. We need to change that ordinance now before the political winds begin to blow again. We almost had a chance to do it on June 2, 2015, but it was continued.

13. City Land Cleanup – On June 2, 1015 the Council asked the staff to do a better job improving the physical appearance of city-owned property. The Whispering Hills area and the small site on El Toro are disgraceful, yet to date nothing has been done. We need to have some plans to improve the physical appearance of city-owned property.

14. Parade budget review - Worried that the expenses for the annual 4th of July parade may have gotten out of hand, and with no one to give us any idea of the costs, the Council on July 7, 2015 asked the staff to give us a report. We are still waiting. There’s no urgency here since the Parade Committee won’t meet for a few months.

15. PACE programs – PACE is a program that allows companies to sell renewable energy programs within the City, and a review of these programs was deferred on July 7, 2015 until the Council had time to go over material submitted from the Public. We were supposed to return to the issue in 2 weeks, which was more than a month ago. Meanwhile two different programs have had to delay their launch.

So that’s my list. That’s more than a dozen issues that are sitting on the back burner, some for more than a year and some for only a few weeks. We shouldn’t be cancelling a meeting when there are so many issues that are waiting. Some of them already have reports prepared and are just waiting for a time. Let’s make the time and get these issues addressed.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about why this matters and how this impacts our lives.

COMMENTS

It came to my attention that at times the COMMENTS section of the Patch doesn’t work. I have no control over this. I can neither enable nor disable the Comments section nor can I delete or edit other people’s work. If you encounter this problem, please notify the Patch. If you want to discuss the issues raised in these articles you’re welcome to join more than 300 of us at Lake Forest Town Square, or you can e-mail me individually, come to my office hours, or attend my Town hall meetings.

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 town hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on August 15 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library

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