City Council Preview - Sept 20 (Part 2)

Yesterday we discussed some of the items that were omitted from the agenda (Removing Scott Voigts from Vector Control, Censoring Dwight Robinson) and the issue of closed session minutes as well as cancelling council meetings. Today we’ll discuss some of the other items.

SATISFACTION

The City Manager is seeking to spend another $42,040 to get True North Research to tell us how wonderful we are. True North is in the business of telling cities what a wonderful job they do. I never read a True North report for any City that didn’t say that the City who was paying them hadn’t done a marvelous job. Here are a few examples -

"we are in the top 10 percent of any of the cities in California that he has ever surveyed, and in some areas he has never seen numbers this high." DANA POINT

"Aliso Viejo residents are among the most satisfied resident groups that True North has encountered…" ALISO VIEJO

"These are amazing scores, some of the best I’ve ever seen…" LAGUNA NIGUEL

"San Carlos is one of the Top Cities in the State when it comes to satisfaction with City Services and Programs." SAN CARLOS

So when True North tells you that you’re doing an excellent job, you are in the company of a large number of cities. Can we all have the highest numbers they’ve ever seen? Can we all be “among the most satisfied” they survey? Are we all “amazing”? Are we all “one of the top Cities”?

And what do we do with the information, apart from patting ourselves on the back? How often have you ever heard anyone from the Council or from the staff say that we needed to do something different as a result of the Satisfaction survey? Instead the Satisfaction study is used as an excuse for doing nothing. That’s one reason why we have been the City with the least amenities of any city in South Orange County.

Instead of paying True North $42,040 for us to pat ourselves on the back, my suggestion is that we just pat ourselves on the back and save the $42,040.

DEVELOPER AGREEMENTS

The City has 8 active developer agreements. They need to be reviewed yearly. I’ve included whatever information was available from the staff report.

• · BrookCal LF LLC (aka “Brookfield” aka “El Paseo”). - 9 acres, 147 attached multi-family units
• · Trumark Homes (aka “Camden Square” and assigned to Taylor Morrison). 7 acres, 72 SFR
• · Baker Ranch Properties (aka “Parkside” and assigned to Toll Brothers). 30 acres, 250 units
• · Meritage Homes. 5 acres,
• · Irvine Ranch Water District (aka “Serrano Summit”). 608 homes
• · USA Portola Properties LLC (“Portola”).
• · Landsea (southern portion of Portola). 95 acres, 602 “housing units”
• · Madison (aka “Pinnacle”).
• · SBRA/Toll Brothers.

All things considered this is a fairly incomplete report. We have sketchy information about many of the agreements and almost nothing about how they’ve progressed.

PARKSIDE 3RD STORY

I discussed the Parkside project previously. Prime commercial space was rezoned residential. Toll Brothers bought the 30 acre site opposite the Sports Park from Baker Ranch and got approval for 53 SFRs for their “Madison” component, 64 for “Arlington”, and 78 for “Lexington”. Now they want a variance to allow them to add a third story in the Madison project, adding between 578 (Jasper) and 708 (Silverwood) square feet for 38 of the 53 homes. The variance is needed because to add the 3rd story they will have to violate the City’s code for height. The difference is 18 inches, but what’s more important than the height difference is the impact of 38 new bedrooms, or the occupancy equivalent of 11+ more homes.

CIVIC CENTER SCHEMATIC

Finally, after years and years of waiting, we are getting down to the wire. The Civic/Senior center is getting ready to go to bid. One of the last steps is the approval of the schematic design. Click Here to view.

What do you think?

In addition to the schematic design, the City Manager is asking us to add $756,461 to the $2,104,864 we just approved in December for “construction management”. As far as I can see nothing substantially new has happened to justify this enormous (36%) increase in costs. The report claims “The additional scope of services is to prepare, bid, and manage the demolition and rough grading of the Lake Forest Civic Center site, complete installation of the Indian Ocean access road, including coordination of site utility installation…” Weren’t we planning to demolish and rough grade the area before? Weren’t we planning to have access through Indian Ocean? Weren’t we planning on having electricity? What happened? Why are we spending 36% more to cover items that should have been covered first? The only thing that changed was the idea of having a second story to the parking structure. Surely this can’t cost $756,461 to manage?

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 November at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.