City Proposes to Waste $1,000,000

We have a very ambitious agenda for the City Council Tuesday night. In fact I think it’s too ambitious. I’m not sure you can schedule so many important topics on a single night and then expect us to make the best decisions possible. What concerns me most is the thought of wasting $1,000,000 of taxpayer money.

The City’s General Plan is woefully outdated, but then again, most of the city is already fully developed. Do we need to spend $1,359,117.36 when 90% or more of the data is going to remain exactly the same? My colleagues thought so, and hence we are going to do it.

WHY A NEW GENERAL PLAN ISN'T NEEDED

I argued at the time that (a) we needed to focus on those select areas of the City which needed our attention (e.g., economically under-performing, blighted, high crime, etc) instead of looking at the entire city. I also argued (b) that the Council had systematically ignored the General Plan for years, so that the need to have a General Plan was mute, especially when the price tag is $1.3 million. All a developer needed was $25,000 to $50,000 and the Council speedily and without hesitation saw that it was possible, indeed desirable, to deviate dramatically from the General Plan. I was also opposed (c) to spending money on studies which were already in our vault.

To rub salt into the wounds, the company chosen plans to spend 4 years on this project. Honestly, we don’t need to spend 4 years and $1.3 million doing something that doesn’t need to be done on something we aren’t going to pay attention to anyway. We could more profitably take 6 months and see where we have problems and come up with solutions to the areas where we have problems. This is not only what we should be doing now, but probably a model for our future general planning efforts. The time for the “General Plan” model is long since gone, not only because of where we are as a city, but also in terms of how rapidly the world is changing.

25 years ago, faced with an area that was mostly vacant, in an era of relatively stable economic trends, having a grandiose “General Plan” was the right thing to do. Now that we are almost wholly built out and major changes to the economy come in years not centuries, the “General Plan” should be relegated to the museum along with horse shoe factories.

BENEFITS CLAIMED

Staff claims the benefits of this over-priced and overly long process are

• “…plan for future change” (Aren’t we doing that all the time? Isn’t that why we have 2 year and 5 year plans? Isn’t it obvious by now that 20 year plans are obsolete?)
• “…engage the entire community in a conversation about the future of the city…” (Isn’t that what we are supposed to be doing with our strategic planning sessions and our budget sessions?)
• “…important background studies that assist in understanding the current state of the City and how it will change in the future.” Yes we need to study where we are now and project to the future. I’ve been asking for this for years and getting little support. But the price tag for doing this right is nowhere near $1.3 million and the idea it would take 4 years is just plain silly.
• “studies examining demographics, market trends, fiscal analysis, infrastructure needs, mobility, and environmental sustainability…” Yes. We need these. In fact we have most of these already done and sitting there waiting for someone to pay attention to them. If no one uses these now, will spending $1.3 million extra result in people actually reading them and using them?
• “…examines key areas of the City that are poised for additional development or redevelopment. Aging commercial centers and underutilized land…” Yes. This is vitally needed. But imagine taking 4 years to do this and spending $1.3 million? Get in your car and drive around the city and you can spot 90% (or maybe more) of what we will pay $1.3 million for someone to identify for us. Is that how we should be spending taxpayer money and spending our time?
• “…streamline public projects, infrastructure projects, and development projects…” Duh. Who doesn’t want to streamline this process? Do we need a study to get this done? If we do, maybe we have the wrong staff in place. I expect streamlining to be a continuing process implemented by staff. And in fact we have been doing this, in a limited way and with a lot of pushing by me. The revision of our alcohol licensing process and our permit parking process are two recent examples. I think we have this ability. If the Council and the City Manager encourage it, we don’t need a report telling us what to do.

Staff received 10 proposals. AECOM was the low bidder and also had very high technical and quality scores.

PROPOSED PROCESS

Part of the process they propose includes –

• A General Plan Advisory Committee of 10-20 people appointed by the City Council (based on their campaign contributions. BTW - it’s not too late to make out your checks).
• “…platform for online engagement activities”. I guess when you spend $1.3 million these are the kinds of words you use to describe surveys.
• “20 stakeholder interviews” (with just about everybody you can list in a proposal like this.)
• “citywide public workshops, six pop-up events at community events…” and a whole bunch of other stuff that justifies spending $1.3 million.

This is a joke and it’s being done at taxpayer expense. A big expense. In addition to using money that could be used for better purposes, this 4-year $1.3 million juggernaut may distract us from the work that needs to be done.

WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING

At the expense of repeating myself, here is what we should be doing

• Create an ad hoc committee (2 Council, 2 Planning, 2 Parks, 2 Business, 2 HOA, 2 Religious) and assign one half-time staff member.
• Bring together our vast numbers of studies on population, demographics, traffic, economics, and crime and apply these to the city land use grid. If anything is missing, fill in the blanks.
• Using common sense and these studies, identify those areas of the city that are (a) performing well, (b) need some minor changes, (c) need some major changes that can be implemented over time, and (d) need our attention right away.
• Conduct stakeholder meetings and develop plans for area specific solutions. Where possible, develop public/private partnerships as appropriate.
• Make the changes.

This process should take no more than 6 months and cost no more than $250,000. At the end of it we'll have some concrete plans as to how to improve areas of our City. Imbeded in these plans may be some land use changes necessary to address the problems. Now compare this approach with what the staff propose. We'll spend 4 years, spend $1.3 million, and what we'll have at the end of the day will be a multi-colored map to hang on the wall.

Hmmmm.

Tomorrow I’ll deal with an equally important issue – an ordinance to better define the fabric of our neighborhoods.

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 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on June 10 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.