Is the City Council "Waiting for Godot"

The Council meeting last Tuesday night had some good news and some bad news. The good news was that the meeting was relatively short because there were very few “discussion” items on the agenda, and those were handled quickly. The bad news was that there were very few discussion items on the agenda, yet we have an enormous backlog of important issues that are not being discussed.

Even more annoying, we had on the agenda an item suggested by Andrew Hamilton that was a discussion of what we might do if a Senate bill that was defeated in 2015 re-appeared in 2016. Imagine that! We have more than a dozen major issues that we aren’t discussing, yet somehow a discussion of what we might do if something happened in a years’ time, occupied our agenda.

Before we go into detail about the long list of items waiting to be discussed, I want to look at what we have done. Here is a partial list of projects completed during my term of office, beginning in December 2014. They are listed in order of when they were first started, some of which originated in 2013.

PROJECTS COMPLETED

ALCOHOL LICENSES (April 2, 2013 - Sept 15, 2015)

• o It took 29 months for this issue to finally be concluded. In the interim, lots of staff time and energy as well as Commission and Council time was needlessly used up. Moreover, business owners who wanted to receive a license to sell alcohol had to circumnavigate unchartered waters with no sure outcome, using up their time, energy, and money.

VILLAGE POND PARK WILDLIFE FEEDING (Nov 19, 2013 - March 3, 2015

• o It took 15. 5 months for this ordinance to be enacted. Meanwhile, the Pond got dirtier and dirtier and $1 million dollars’ worth of plans were being drawn up to solve a problem that possibly didn’t need solving beyond the ordinance.

INVESTMENT POLICY (March 17, 2015 - Sept 1, 2015)

• o It took 6.5 months to get this approved and every month we delayed we lost money.

TRAFFIC ADVISORY GROUP (April 7, 2015 - Aug 4, 2015)

• o It took 4 months for this group to be formed.

CAMPAIGN SIGN ORDINANCE (April 7, 2015 - Sept 15, 2015)

• o It took 5.5 months to get this unlawful ordinance repealed.

SIGNS FOR PARKS (May 12, 2015 - Oct 6, 2015

• o It took 4.5 months for this issue to be discussed.

Of course these were not the only projects to be completed. Unlike these projects, most projects were completed within a few months, although most of these projects were relatively minor. For example –

· ANNUAL REPORTS FROM COMMISSIONS (Feb 3, 2015 – March 31, 2015)

· REDUCTION IN PLANNING COMMISSION MEETINGS (Feb 17, 2015 – April 7, 2015)

· HISTORIC PHOTO DISPLAY IN CITY HALL (May 19, 2015 – July 7, 2015)

From my perspective it looks as if we are taking far too long to deal with some important issues, and the delays have been costly.

PROJECTS STILL UNDERWAY

When I joined the Council in December 2014 there were more than a dozen items on the “waiting list”. Today there are still more than a dozen items. Here is a partial list.

1. · Evaluation of Village Pond Park Wildlife Ordinance
2. · Impact of Council Consensus
3. · Analysis of City’s Assets and Needs
4. · Supporting the Arts
5. · Legal Issues Inspecting Garages
6. · Use of City Attorney time
7. · Plans for City’s 25th Anniversary
8. · Making City Website more Community Oriented
9. · Improving City Property
10. · Parade Costs
11. · Alternatives to County Animal Care
12. · Police “Cost Savings” Programs
13. · Re-analysis of Cost Sharing with SVUSD
14. · Review and approval of PACE Programs
15. · CDBG analysis

Tomorrow I’ll discuss each of these in detail.

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 December 12 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.

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