Tuesday night the Council meeting ended before 9 pm which seems like a miracle given the number of times we’ve gone beyond 11 pm. We took action to
- Award the biggest single project ever to a Lake Forest business - $7,610,410 to ARB Structures to design/build the parking structure for the new Civic Center. I’ve been asking us for years to “Put Lake Forest First” in awarding contracts, and this is a big one.
- Approved the Purchasing and Contracting Guidelines, and I got consensus for the City Manager to report back to us how other cities manage to give preferences to the businesses and people in their home cities. If acceptable, we can add this to the guidelines. I hope we can. Keeping the money at home means more revenue for the City, more jobs, more people spending their money in the city, etc..
- Renewed contract with Lake Forest Chamber of Commerce.
- Provide additional money to the VPP Animal Relocation project with the caveats (a) we wanted to be kept updated (with pictures) as to their progress, and (b) the additional funds were the final funds.
- Put cat licensing on a future agenda (Minority consensus provided by Mayor Pro Tem Basile and I)
- Continue to follow events with regard to OC Fire Authority. Reports of their imminent death are apparently exaggerated.
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.
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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 May 27 at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.
