Lake Forest City Council Review - Sept 6

This week’s City Council meeting went well over 4 hours, and we even had to cancel the last item and hold it over. For the past 3 meetings we barely had enough on the agenda to warrant a meeting. Now the agenda was chocka block with time consuming items, including a lengthy (and excellent) presentation from the Boys and Girls Club, the awards and parade member recognition for July 4 Parade, a discussion of Village Pond Park (finally!), and a discussion about granting a beer/wine license for 99 Cents Stores in FHR. Someone needs to do a better job with scheduling. As the night progressed, some of my colleagues started getting cranky and some starting saying and doing very strange things. This isn’t the first time everyone has suffered because of bad scheduling. It’s the Mayor’s job to handle this, and it’s not being handled well.

Anyhow, here’s what happened…

The Boys and Girls Club gave an excellent presentation about what they’ve been doing for the past 3 years, and asked for the City’s help in providing some space where they can work out of as they grow their program from 60 to 100 kids and beyond. I got consensus to put this on a future agenda so that we can move forward and formalize some sort of arrangement.

The Kiwanis Tour del Toro is interested in doing another event this year, and I got consensus for this to be on a future agenda.

Several residents complained about Councilman Voigts’ performance as the City Rep for Vector Control: specifically his absences (2 of 9 meetings) and leaving meetings early (5 of 9 meetings). I got consensus to raise the issue of his appointment at a future meeting.

The PCN to sell alcohol and wine was approved by a 3:2 vote. The Council members who accept lobbyist money voted for the PCN and the two Council members who don’t take lobbyist money voted against. My reasons for voting against it related to an investigation I did 2 years ago at a Garden Grove 99 Cents store and again last month at a Huntington Beach store. In both cases, contrary to what the 99 Cents Store lobbyist was telling us (a) I was allowed to purchase a single beer even though we were told the policy would be not to sell single beers, (b) single beers were available on the shelves even though we were told the policy would be not to have them stocked on the shelves as single beers, (c) I was not asked for ID even though we were told the policy was to ask everyone to produce an ID, and (d) beer was stacked in large quantities next to the checkout even though we were told that all beer and wine would be stored in the back. This seemingly flagrant violation of policy worried me.

In addition, there were already 7 stores in an area licensed for 2, so why would we put in even more stores when Social Science research tells us there is a high positive correlation between the number of outlets selling alcohol and violent crime.

The law allows us some latitude if we believe the offering is of such a quality or variety that it warrants addition. So I checked on the major wines being sold and checked their quality ratings at every wine rating website. All but one of the wines was not even rated. The one wine that was rated received an 84. In the wine world, that’s equivalent to a D. I checked the websites of the producers and not a single wine had ever received an award. So our residents weren’t being offered good quality. My wife sampled some of the wines and she assured me they weren’t better than “Two Buck Chuck”, which sells for less than the $2.99 price for the 99 Cents Stores wines.

The variety of the wines being offered is also not unusual. They offered Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet, and something simply called “White Wine”. All of this is available at 7 nearby stores.

The store is also right next to WalMart, which has a bigger selection of food as well as beer and wine, and the prices are comparable.

There was nothing in what the store was offering that qualified to make an exception. Moreover, the City has a cap on how many of these licenses we can allow, and we are getting pretty close to be at the maximum. Once we reach this point, any new business that might want to come to Lake Forest would think twice because they wouldn’t be able to sell beer and wine. So desirable stores like Trader Joes or Mother’s Market or Whole Foods might be shut out because we have used up our licenses.

Like everyone else, I don’t want government interfering in people’s lives and businesses. But there are areas where we are required to do so, and the sale of beer and wine is one of them, largely because of the association of alcohol with crime and with DUIs.

More than a dozen people were there to talk about Village Pond Park. Unfortunately the City Attorney advised me to leave the room so I wasn't present for the discussion. The City Attorney and the FPPC believe that I have a conflict of interest because I am a member of the HOA that is responsible for the water quality in the Pond.

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.