City Council Preview for Nov 18 - Village Pond Park

The upcoming City Council agenda is chock full of interesting and potentially controversial issues. You should go to the City’s website and look at the whole agenda. In this article I begin with Village Pond Park and on Monday we’ll look at some other issues.

VILLAGE POND PARK

Apparently the City staff believes that past performance is not a valid indicator of future performance. They recommend awarding a 3-year $210,630 contract to the same landscape to provide “final design services” for Village Pond Park (VPP). This company, you may recall, is the company that produced the recent report on VPP, which contained few measures to address the main problem, namely the over-population of waterfowl. Indeed, some of their suggestions will only exacerbate the problem. In addition, they did not fulfill the requirements of their original contract by providing 3 workshops.

The original plan will produce an attractive park, to which everyone agreed. But there was little in the plan that convinced me that they understood or addressed the problem.

City staff are nonetheless recommending that they get the new contract, despite their performance in the past and the fact that they are not the low bidder (the competing firm is $2000 lower).

Meanwhile, the City has gone for more than a year without introducing the feeding prohibition that is one of the mainstays of any solution to the problem of waterfowl over-population. Shortly after their last decision to postpone any action, I sent them a copy of a draft ordinance that would address this problem. Here it is –

WILDLIFE FEEDING PROHIBITION ORDINANCE

This chapter is intended to prohibit the feeding of unconfined wildlife in any public park, public right of way, open space, or on any property owned or operated by the City of Lake Forest (hereafter property) that has been determined to be “overpopulated” by the Director of Community Services (DCS) and/or his designee.

Any citizen may bring to the attention of the DCS that a property is “overpopulated” based on the number and/or density of wildlife and/or the presence of wildlife waste.

The DCS shall investigate the property, and if warranted, the DCS shall call for a hearing before the Parks and Recreation Commission (PRC) within 30 days.

Notice shall be given to the public at least 14 days in advance of the hearing, by being placed on the City’s website, placed at the site on a sign no less than 2’ by 3’ in size, and in writing or by e-mail or phone call to all residents and homeowners within 1000’ of the property.

At the hearing, the PRC will hear testimony. If the PRC decides that the property is overpopulated, notice of the prohibition of feeding wildlife shall be posted on the City’s website and conspicuously at the property, as well as in the local newspaper.

Enforcement shall begin 2 weeks after notification.

The property shall require an annual hearing to determine whether or not the conditions persist. However, at the discretion of the DCS, a hearing may be held earlier by the PRC to determine whether or not the prohibition remains in force.

A hearing to decide to remove a prohibition will follow the same procedures as a hearing to determine whether the property is overpopulated, and efforts to notify the public that the prohibition has been lifted will parallel those which notified the public that the prohibition was in place, except that in place of a sign(s) the sign(s) will be removed.

Perhaps they should take the first step, institute the ordinance, and see what happens. We’ll have a much better idea of the extent of the problem with an ordinance in place, and this may significantly impact how we go about resolving the remaining problem.

PS - If you’d like to offer modifications to this draft ordinance, feel free to log on to Facebook and go to Lake Forest Town Square where you can make constructive changes.