City Council Preview - Nov 3

This week’s city council meeting will include several items of interest.

CRITTER CONTROL (Item 7)

Due to the death of Marcia Rudolph, the vacancy on the Vector Control Board is open. Bob Holzclaw was the only person to apply before the deadline, but fearing that no one would apply, the City Clerk extended the deadline and Mayor Voigts submitted his name.

I’m disappointed that Mayor Voigts has not withdrawn his name. When citizens want to get involved in government I think we should encourage them. We members of the City Council have enough on our plates, and citizen involvement should be welcome. A citizen should not have to wrestle with a Council member for a position on Vector Control or any other Board, unless the Council membership is a vital part of the function. I’m sure Bob Holzclaw can do the job without being on the Council.

A few words about Bob. Bob Holzclaw attends more meetings of the Council and our Commissions and Committees than any other person in the City. He is the reason we have an electronic voting board in the Council chambers and the reason we have candidate debates. He’s also the reason we are getting a dog park at Baffin Bay (but that story is too long to tell here – I will tell it at the Council meeting). He’s been working feverishly with Col. Tom Cagley and I trying to get reclaimed water to more parts of the City. I could go on but you get the point. The City would be very fortunate to have Bob Holzclaw represent us in any position, but in the case of the Vector Control Board, he also has extensive experience in this field.

I hope that Mayor Voigts withdraws so that we can unanimously accept Bob’s offer and save Council time for more pressing matters.

SADDLEBACK RANCH ROAD (Item 6)

About 4 weeks ago my colleagues (Voigts, Robinson, and Hamilton) voted to keep Saddleback Ranch Road (SRR) off the city’s agenda. Only two weeks ago Mayor Voigts assured us that everything would be fine and the City Manager spent an inordinate amount of time explaining that everything was fine and even if it wasn’t there was nothing anyone could do about it due to legal issues, problems with the contractors, etc.

By some miracle, we now have SRR on the agenda, and even before it reached the agenda, the City Manager said that some major changes are going to take place, including adding bike lanes and reducing the size of the medians. All of these have legal and financial considerations and will appear at the Nov 17 meeting for finalization according to the staff report, that had to be especially inserted into the agenda after the original agenda, without SRR, had been posted.

What couldn’t be changed, was changed!

What wasn’t supposed to be on the agenda, magically appears!

Don’t get me wrong. Councilman Nick and I were 100% in favor of putting SRR on the agenda and of the changes that are announced. But from the POV of government, I don’t understand how this happened.

• When people started writing letters in August, nothing happened.
• When dozens of people started to speak at City Council meetings, nothing happened.
• When hundreds of people started to show up at City Council and Traffic meetings, nothing happened.
• When my 3 colleagues voted for nothing to happen, nothing happened.
• When 1,000 people signed a petition asking for changes, nothing happened.

How then did this miracle happen?

Apparently all it took was for some advocates to serve my 3 colleagues with recall notices. Within a week of that happening, everything changed.

• Is this now a “government of the recall”?
• Does it take a recall notice for people to be heard?
• Can what can’t be changed, suddenly be changed, and all it takes is a recall notice?

I’ve lamented many times about how poorly our local government can function, as witnessed recently in my article about what does and doesn’t appear on our agenda.

Apparently I missed the point. Apparently recall notices are the best way to get government to act efficiently and to listen to the voice of the people. Who knew?

Kudos to those brave citizens who took the time and energy to instruct me on how to improve the City’s functioning. I owe them a debt.

At the upcoming City Council meeting, let’s not dwell on our victory. Let’s see what else needs to be done up there. Now that the government seems to be working well, let’s discuss the other issues of concern to the residents -

• · Drainage
• · Lighting
• · Use of drinking water in medians
• · Use of medians at all
• · Speeding

I put “speeding” down here because despite what you’ve been led to believe, several independent sources have informed me that the speeding problem was not resolved. The insanity that was forced on the Portola Hills residents through wide medians and narrow lanes with bulb outs and pork chops may not be slowing down the traffic, as it was intended to do. This needs to be discussed.

DOG PARK ORDINANCE (Item 8)

The good news is that we plan to open the small dog park on Baffin Bay by the end of the month. This means that our ordinance about keeping dogs on lease needs to be amended, since the dogs in the dog park will be off leash.

I’m in favor of changing the ordinance just as I was one of the few people who argued for a dog park years ago, when it wasn‘t received so favorably.

But if you read the staff’s report, you’ll find something strange. The park is set to open on November 24 which is pretty much on schedule and what we’ve been expecting for the past several months. But the ordinance to accompany the creation of the park will not go into effect until December 17, 2015.

Why wasn’t this ordinance presented to us in time to open the park with the ordinance in place? Perhaps had the dog owners asked for a recall, the situation would have been handled better! Dog owners take notice!

But don’t worry. A liberal interpretation of the current ordinance will allow owners to unleash their dogs without fear of being arrested. I had worried that I and 9,000 other dog owners would be in trouble, but upon checking with the City Attorney I learned that we will be safe.

ANIMAL CARE (Item 9)

Talking about the efficiency of our government, the animal care issue was allowed to languish for nearly 4 months, and now we’re being told that we are already late to the party. More on that issue tomorrow.

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 on Dec 12 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.