Council Preview - Rethinking Government

Earlier this month I offered some legislative goals for 2016 as part of my series on my first year in office. These included

• · Getting the Senior and Civic Center project off the ground
• · Creating an alternative to the high-kill Orange County shelter
• · Getting reclaimed water into more parts of the City
• · Getting the Village Pond Park re-model started
• · Spending more of City’s budget on local people and businesses
• · Doing a better job dealing with the increase in crime

In order to achieve any of these goals, the Council itself has to do a better job, and after much complaining and pointing out the many problems we’ve had, I got support from my colleagues to look at the process, and that’s on the agenda for this coming Tuesday. This is such an important issue I want to spend some time on it here in the hopes that if we can improve the way we do business, achieving the goals and objectives set forth above will be much easier.

Let’s begin with a discussion of the problems we’ve encountered –

Voigts Void

The current list of issues waiting to be discussed contains more than a dozen items. Called “The Voigts Void” since the problem emerged during Scott Voigts’ 2014 turn as Mayor, it has only grown ever since. Some of these items have financial consequences for the City and some relate to our quality of life. Some important issues (e.g., licensing of stores that want to sell alcohol, problems at Village Pond Park) have taken years to resolve. We need to do a better job getting things done.

Meeting Length

Meetings tend to be short or very very long. The problem with short meetings is that you’ve missed the opportunity to get more issues resolved. The problem with very very long meetings is that as the meeting drones on, judgment gets more and more impaired. In 2015 we’ve had the longest meetings ever in the history of the City.

Cancelled meetings

As far as I can recall, 2015 was the first time a Council cancelled a meeting. Scott Voigts, then Mayor, cancelled a meeting because his colleagues, Robinson and Hamilton, were going to be out of town. That should never happen. We are doing so little now we can‘t afford to cancel any meetings. When I was in Mexico during a subsequent meeting I demonstrated that meetings could be held using Skype so we should never cancel a meeting again.

Inaccurate information

Several times during discussions we’ve turned to our staff for information, and they either don’t have the information or we were given incorrect information. The most egregious example of this was the recent request for a proposal that would cost the City less than $10,000. The Council was told, incorrectly, that it would require 3 bids before such a proposal could be initiated, and as a result, with no time to initiate the process, the request for the proposal was dropped. Or with regards to Saddleback Ranch Rd, when staff was asked how many accidents happened on this road to justify the City spending over $1,000,000 to slow down the traffic and reduce accidents, no one knew if there had been any accidents on the road. Most of the time staff have the answers, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that for any item that is already on the agenda, we get accurate answers to any important question, every time. Otherwise we can’t be expected to make good or timely decisions.

Incomplete Reports

In the past our City has produced some of the most pathetic reports I’ve ever seen. These reports wouldn’t have received a passing grade in an introductory college course. I’m happy to say that in 2015 there was an observable increase in the quality of the reports from staff, and in some cases the reports were excellent. But there are still some lapses where there shouldn’t be. The problem with incomplete reports (as well as inadequate reports) is that they interfere with decision making and can lead to postponements, or even worse, bad decisions.

No or inadequate follow-up

As a Council we have no idea what’s been done, what’s on tap, and what’s coming up. Imagine trying to run a business like that. When we set goals, there is rarely any type of follow-up. It may take a week (very rare), a month (more common), several months (even more common) and sometimes years (unfortunately not rare enough) for an issue to come back to us. Whether or not it comes back quickly seems to be left to the vagaries of the system and not any relationship to the importance of the task at hand.

No Sense of Mission

Items appear on the agenda without seeming rhyme or reason, Sometimes an item can get approved at the Commission level and the very next day it appears on the Council agenda. Other times, it can take months for a similar item to appear. There needs to be some priority set when items are scheduled.

Mission Incomplete

Sometimes we ask for one thing and we get another, or we don’t get it at all. The most egregious example of this was when we asked to get bids for street sweeping weekly for half the year and every other week for the other half of the year, and instead we got bids for weekly all year or every other week all year. Or when we asked for a quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of the wildlife ordinance, and got nothing. No one person is responsible for this, but the system itself is not responsive to the goals set by the Council, and this probably relates to the problem of inadequate follow-up.

Conduct Unbecoming

Quite frankly, some of my colleagues have created an atmosphere in the Council chambers which is not conducive to getting work done. Residents have been verbally abused, yelled at, and threatened. They’ve been told not to laugh, not to applaud, and even not to speak. Meanwhile, Council members have bickered at each other and called each other names. Roberts Rules of Order have been violated regularly and it appears to many of us that the Brown Act has been violated on more than one occasion.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss some ways in which we can address some of these problems.

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 on Jan 30 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.

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