City Council Preview for June 2

Here’s a preview of what’s coming up at the Council meeting on June 2.

CAMPAIGN SIGNS

A few years ago the Council voted to allow campaign signs on public property and the result, as predicted, was chaos. The season started off with one candidate posting his signs long before the allowed date, and for the next 45 days we saw signs being stolen, signs being placed illegally, signs being destroyed, signs being covered up or knocked over, etc. Signs were even stolen from the City Hall right in front of the Police station. I was falsely accused of stealing signs by another candidate. Local merchants were threatened by Council members to take down signs of candidates they didn’t support. In the middle of the night opposition forces stole a 10x10 foot banner from the Mobile Gas Station on Trabuco. All told it was a sad story and speaks volumes about the ethics of many of the people involved.

Signs have little value. They say nothing about the candidate. They’re visual clutter during the campaign and actual litter at the end of the campaign. Even worse, they are expensive. Candidates spend thousands of dollars for signs, and the need for campaign cash results in candidates accepting money from special interest groups who later appear at City Council meeting requesting favors, contracts, etc.

The Council gets a chance to repeal this ordinance on Tuesday night. When we allowed signs only on private property there were still problems with the signs, but allowing them to be placed on public property magnified the problems. It was a bad decision when it was made. Now we should learn from the lesson.

MEALS ON WHEELS

Unlike the rest of our neighboring cities, Lake Forest does not provide support for the Meals on Wheels program. Hence, dozens of Lake Forest citizens have to be served from Mission Viejo, RSM, and/or Laguna Hills where the cities are kind enough to take care of their own citizens as well as ours.

Age Well Services has submitted a proposal for the City to step up and be more supportive of their program. My original offer was for the Council to donate the “closed session conference room” for use by Age Well so that they had a home base from which to operate in the City. Age Well has expanded their proposal far beyond my original suggestion, and that proposal comes up for review.

LOBBYING

The Mayor asked that we review the $33,600 annual contract for legislative lobbying. The Staff report indicates that our current lobbyist (Emanuel A Jones) has been of service to the City in the past on legislation specific to the City’s needs (e.g., marijuana dispensaries, redevelopment, homeless shelters, affordable housing, land use). We have several other groups that lobby for the City (e.g., League of California Cities, Association of California Cities), however, their mandate is general to the entire State, rather than pressing the needs of an individual City.

The last time this issue came up I questioned whether or not we should be spending the $33,600, but my colleagues assured me that it was a good expense. Let’s see what they say now!

WHISPERING HILLS

The June 10 workshop for Whispering Hills was placed on the back burner by Council consensus for a variety of reasons. Five months ago we held nearly simultaneous planning workshops for Portola Park and for Whispering Hills. Portola Hills came first and went smoothly, but when it came time to discuss goals for Whispering Hills, the uncertainty involved in Portola Park made planning difficult. For example, advocate of Pickleball wanted a site since there are no other public facilities. They offered it as a possibility for Portola Park, but when the Whispering Hills discussion came up, it was difficult to make comments since the outcome of Portola Park had not been decided. IOW – if Pickleball were at Portola Park, there was no need for it to be at Whispering Hills, but if it was not going to be at Portola Park, then it surely should be at Whispering Hills. So went the discussion for almost all the amenities raised in the discussion. It was obvious that two concurrent planning workshops was a poor strategic choice, and therefore final decisions needed to be made for Portola Park before any reasonable discussions could be held with regard to Whispering Hills.

Another reason to defer the Whispering Hills decision was the need for an inventory of all the land available to the City, something that six months ago did not exist. There is only so much City land left and we need to know all the uses to which the land can be put and all the land that is available to be used. That discussion is still active, so moving forward with any City park would be premature. Portola Park, OTOH, is raw land owned by the Baldwin Brothers, and while it will eventually become a City park, it is being developed using their money. So we can proceed with this park, decide what goes there, and then turn our attention to any more parks, including Whispering Hills, with a long term view of what we have and what we need.

CITY BUDGET

The City Budget remains essentially the same. I tried my best to get a 5% cut across the board by some judicious trimming, but no one was interested.

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 mini town meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be August 15 from 2 to 4 pm at the El Toro Public Library.

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