City Council Preview - June 19 (Part 2)

Yesterday we discussed the issues coming to the November ballot. Here are some of the other issues coming up Tuesday night -

VETERANS PARK (Items 25 and 26)

With the anticipated reopening of Veterans Park, staff is recommending utilizing existing Community Services staff and Code Enforcement officers to monitor the facility for an initial period to determine if feeding of wildlife becomes problematic. Staff estimates that the cost of a code enforcement officer would be $65 per hour.

An alternative, a supplement, or an additional step would be a camera system, which staff estimates will cost $42,000 for two cameras. The cameras would be used to (a) identify the cars that show up with trunks full of duck food and (b) discourage vandalism in the Veterans Memorial area.

(I’m not sure that staff estimates are accurate. $65 per hour seems excessive for a code enforcement officer, especially since I am sitting on a proposal that offers a similar service at $40 per hour. And $21,000 for a camera seems equally excessive, especially since I just installed a system in my home with 3 cameras for less than $500.)

Other possibilities, not discussed by staff include –

• Raising the fine to $100 (the original fee proposed)
• Making the park “no fishing”

Apart from the operational aspects discussed, there is also a change order requiring the City to spend up to nearly $600,000 additionally to cover the unanticipated costs of completely rehabilitating the pond lining and the pond walls. This unanticipated repair and rehabilitation added 148 days to the project.

I have some recent photos of the park accompanying this article.

STRATEGIC BUSINESS PLAN

We spent a lot of time on the strategic business plan and the final version comes before us now for approval. The plan involves spending more than $61,000,000 in the next 5 years, most of which goes toward the new Civic Center, the Park Improvement projects ($13,500,000), street maintenance ($20,582,000), and payoff of the bond debt ($7,193,700).

PS - Don't forget that you can log on to Facebook Live and participate in our City Council meetings

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest where he serves as Mayor. 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 Twitter handle is @DrJimGardner. 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 Aug 16 at 7 pm at the Lake 1 Clubhouse (Ridge Route).