Here’s what happened Tuesday night
TRANSITIONAL HOUSING
South County Outreach asked to transform their transitional housing units in Lake Forest into affordable housing. Only last week I attended a seminar on homelessness put on by the County and it was clear to me that we needed more transitional housing to deal with the growing homeless problem. Therefore I objected to their request, and was joined by Councilman Hamilton who believed that affordable housing didn’t provide as much benefit to as many people as transitional housing did. The Council unanimously agreed.
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OTOH we all recognized the need for more affordable housing, and Mayor Voigts and I agreed to meet with staff to pursue this goal.
DISTRICT ELECTIONS
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As has been stated previously, we are under threat of a lawsuit unless we transition to district elections. No city that fought this issue won, and many spent millions of dollars as a result. The original decision to go ahead was made by Mayor Pro Tem Basile, Councilman Robinson, and I. Councilman Hamilton wanted to fight it, and Mayor Voigts abstained.
Councilman Robinson and I came up with an idea that represented the best possible approach, and Councilman Robinson introduced it last night. We will put the entire issue on the 2018 ballot for people to decide if they want a Mayor elected city-wide and how many districts they wanted. Meanwhile, to avoid the lawsuit, we will go ahead and create 5 districts with no Mayor elected city-wide. This preserves, to the extent possible, the current condition.
We also decided to accelerate the schedule so that the final decision is made before the Christmas holidays, thus encouraging people to get involved before their attention turns to shopping.
We also considered some additions to the ordinance (e.g., a residence requirement of 180 days).
Meanwhile you can go to the website and start making your own maps. Keep in mind you need to create 5 districts of approximately equal size.
As we move along we may encounter some problems. If we decide to create the ordinance that allows for elections from 5 districts and no city-wide Mayor, and we put on the ballot the choice to change this, people may vote for a city-wide Mayor and 6 districts which will go into effect in 2020. But whatever we do in 2018 and 2020 will make no difference because in 2022 our election will be based on the 2020 census, which will add at least 10,000 more people to the city, making whatever districts we drew up obsolete. As a result, some people will experience changing districts for the next 3 consecutive elections. This will not only be confusing for the voters, it may present problems for the people who are elected one year only to find their district changed the following year, and they may not even live in their district anymore. These problems are unavoidable since (a) we need to move to districts for 2018 and (b) whatever districts we decide upon, they will be changed when the 2020 census provides the basis for re-districting in 2022.
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 mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on Sept 9 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.
