City Council Preview - April 4

Here’s what’s coming up Tuesday night

OC ANIMAL SHELTER (Item #9)

The new Director of Community Resources (Dylan Wight) who oversees the shelter operations, will appear at the Council meeting Tuesday night and talk about future plans. Here are some issues I plan to raise -

• After all the extensive criticisms of the agency for the poor training, supervision, and management, what steps are being taken to remedy these deficiencies and what are the cost implications to the City as a result of these improvements?
• Having discovered the many instances in which staff mis-reported data such as euthanasia rates and licensing rates, what steps will be taken to insure going forward that such errors do not occur again.
• Research data clearly and unmistakenly shows that the larger an agency gets, the higher are the rates of admission and the higher are the rates of euthanasia. With a new shelter built to accommodate 20,000+ pets per year, shouldn’t we be looking to build satellite agencies that keep the admissions under 10,000 per year?
• Lake Forest plans to have our own rescue center. We would like to route Lake Forest owners who plan to surrender or euthanize their pets through this group, as a way of reducing shelter admissions, lowering euthanasia rates, and increasing adoptions as well as lowering the costs to the City. Will it be possible to do this?
• Will it be possible for all stray animals picked up inside Lake Forest to be held at the rescue center for a period of time to make it easier on Lake Forest owners to re-claim their pets?
• Given the fact the five OC Grand Jury reports pointed out the lack of humane care and conditions at the county animal shelter, it is apparent that transparency and oversight by taxpayers is lacking. What are your plans to include participation of knowledgeable members of the public in the monthly meetings between the City Managers Association Animal Care Committee and county animal shelter representatives?

In addition to the talk by Mr. Wright, the Council will discuss our recent request for personalized data. The shelter data we are asking for will include

• Intake (stray, surrender, owner request euthanasia)
• Outcome (adopted, lost, killed, died, transferred to another agency, rescue group)

The Animal Control data will include

• Agency Assistance
• Business License Actions
• Compliance Check
• Cruelty Investigations
• Dead Animal Pick-Up
• Investigations
• Rescue
• Stray Animal Pick-Up
• Transfers
• Returned to Wild
• Barking Dog Investigations
• Canvassing Actions

On a Quarterly basis we will also get “Animal Charge Days”

Sample reports are on the city’s website (Click here)

This is a big step forward in understanding what is happening. But understanding what is happening is not sufficient if we are not prepared to do something about it.

VOIGT’S CONFLICT OF INTEREST (Item #10)

The Council asked our law firm to investigate any conflicts of interest for Mayor Voigts who now works for the Mayor of Irvine, Don Wagner. Wagner, it turns out, in addition to being Mayor of Irvine, joined the same law firm we use (BB&K). As a result, the City asked a San Diego law firm to study the issue.

(With Lake Forest Mayor working for Irvine’s Mayor, and Irvine’s Mayor working for Lake Forest’s law firm, the opportunities for mischief are enormous)

Unfortunately the question answered in the lawyers’ brief was not the question I posed, which was far broader. Instead the question answered referred to the very narrow question –

“Under California law may the Mayor of the City of Lake Forest serve in public office while working simultaneously as the executive assistant to the Mayor of the City of Irvine?”

According to the lawyers, the law allows Voigts to hold elected office while working for someone in a neighboring city. This we already knew. We wanted more about the moral and ethical issues involved, but (upon reflection) asking a lawyer for this input wasn’t the brightest idea. However, that being said, the brief says -

“Despite the fact that legally, Mayor Voigts’ employment with the City of Irvine is unlikely to lead to any financial conflict of interest, there may be issues that arise where the Mayor may decide to recuse himself due to a perceived conflict of interest for non-financial reasons. …A decision to recuse is always the responsibility of the public official, and even the appearance of impropriety for a decision that would affect a public official’s personal or pecuniary interests may be cause for recusal. However, these matters must be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Those issues should be discussed with legal counsel and the City Manager as they arise.” (bold added)

So we are left with relying upon Mayor Voigts' moral and ethical compass to guide him.

Tomorrow we’ll look at two more issues.

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 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be in May.