City Council Review - Part 2

Last time I talked about the Brown Act and false claims made by Mayor Tettemer that the Brown Act restricted his ability to comment. The Brown Act does not restrict any Council member from responding to questions from residents, and the silence that you hear from Tettemer, Voigts, Robinson, and Moatazedi is self-imposed.

Why?

When I was on the Council I responded to every question that was relevant and had an underlying concern in which the City had a legitimate stake, although I didn’t respond to abusive or rhetorical comments. Often my response was to ask a staff member to follow-up or to have the resident leave contact information so that I could pursue the issue. (Then Mayor ProTem) Leah Basile also followed this process and still does. But the silence from the existing dais is deafening. It speaks volumes.

At last week’s meeting, Scott Voigts was asked to list some of his achievements over the past 8+ years. Apparently someone was upset that I didn’t name him when I gave my concluding remarks on Dec 4 listing 50+ achievements during my 4 years, so they gave him the opportunity to “toot his own horn”. Voigts was silent. I could see his eyes roll up as he desperately tried to think of a single thing he could list as an achievement of his, but alas, the well was dry – which is why I didn’t mention him in my list of people who contributed to the 50+ achievements we accomplished.

(Note – even Andrew Hamilton, when asked to list his achievements, was able to muster a few weak examples, two of which weren’t accurate and one which was so minor you would have thought he was embarrassed to list it. But Voigts couldn’t even match Hamilton and Voigts had 8+ years compared to Hamilton’s 3 years)

Even more memorable was the public comment by long-time resident and frequent City Council attendee Andy O’Connor. O’Connor came to ask Moatazedi where she got her information about the City. O’Connor rattled off a long list of erroneous writings by her as well as some notable omissions. For example –

• She listed Lake Forest as the headquarters of companies that no longer are headquartered here.
• She misrepresented Eagle Community Credit Union using an old description of the company that has since expanded their reach.
• Her list of companies she highlighted didn’t have some of the major sales tax generators and job creators in the City (e.g., Loan Depot, Invensys Spectrum Brands)

He even criticized here for her grammar and sentence structure. I expected some kind of response. If nothing else, she could have said “Thank you for your information. It’s different from what I have and I’ll investigate and correct any problems if they exist. As a representative of the City it's important that I have the right information and communicate it accurately.”

But, once again, silence.

Of course the supreme example of not knowing anything about the City but wanting to be on the City Council comes from Scott Voigts in 2010 who wanted to know why he was mailing flyers to Foothill Ranch since it wasn’t part of Lake Forest!

The point is, the people who sit on the City Council are there to represent the residents and businesses. They should respond to pertinent questions and they should know what they are talking about before they make comments about our businesses.

(FWIW - Lots of people still talk to me or e-mail about problems they are having, and I refer them to their district Council member. Sometimes their district is District 4 and I refer them to Mark Tettemer. From the feedback I am getting, Tettemer is batting 0 in even responding to their concerns, much less helping them.)

So far this new Council is doing a poor job in responding to people and in representing the City. But responding to resident requests and accurately representing the City are only two elements that go into doing a good job. Soon I’ll report on what they achieved in their first 60 days. I intended to do a review of their first 30 days, but they did nothing in their first 30 days so that article was extremely brief.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is a former City Council member and Mayor. He is one of the organizing members of Lake Forest Community Action Network. 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