The 'Do Nothing City Council' - Consequences

We’ve been looking at the “do nothing” City Council here in Lake Forest. Initially we looked at their lack of achievements (Click Here) and then their relative lack of participation in the life of the City (Click Here). Following that we explored some of the reasons why a “do nothing” Council exists, not only from the structural and historical perspective, but also from an analysis of the personal dynamics of the Council members. (Click Here)

So what’s wrong with a “do nothing” City Council? My wife says, “If they’re doing nothing, at least they’re doing nothing wrong.” She reflects the long-standing belief that government causes more problems than it solves and caused Ronald Reagan to quip – “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

I’m going to look at how the City was functioning a while ago since it’s why I got involved in the City in the first place. My wife and I moved here in 2004 having lived in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. We were reasonably happy with city services in both those cities so never got involved in city government or city council meetings, though I did serve one term on the bicycle trails committee for Newport.

It didn’t take long for me to be disappointed.

• Senior Center - Newport and Costa Mesa had great senior centers. In Lake Forest we had a multi-purpose room used a few hours a day, 5 days a week. In fact, every other city we knew of had a dedicated senior center and some cities had multiple senior centers. Only Lake Forest had no senior center.
• Local Animal Shelter - Newport and Costa Mesa had their own local animal shelter. Lake Forest used the County. In those days the County shelter was notorious and being investigated by the OC Grand Jury. It had one of the highest kill rates in the U.S. Lake Forest city staff had no idea about anything to do with our pets. They only knew that we had a contract with the County. Even then, most cities in OC had their own local animal shelter or partnered with another city.
• Dog Park - Newport and Costa Mesa had their own dog parks. Lake Forest had none. Thankfully some of our neighboring cities (Irvine, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel) did have dog parks.
• Information – Newport and Costa Mesa city staff had a pretty good handle on everything going on in their respective cities. In Lake Forest staff knew very little about the city. I asked about how many businesses there were, what property the city owed, how many Lake Forest animals were at the County shelter, was the demographics in the city changing, etc. No one knew anything. It’s partly because almost no one on the senior staff lived in the city, whereas in Newport and Costa Mesa lots of senior staff were locals. It was also the pervasive atmosphere that the City’s business belonged to the staff and the Council and citizens were simply something you had to deal with.

I got recruited to help bring a dog park to the city and started going to city council meetings. Now I got a second doze of disappointment –

• Attitude - citizens in Lake Forest were treated shabbily, much less amiably than we were treated in Newport and Costa Mesa, and also less amiably than others were treated in Aliso Viejo, Mission Viejo, and Rancho. The only other city where I saw residents treated with equal contempt was Irvine.
• Council behavior – I’d never seen such a dysfunctional group of people sitting on a Council, and I’d been to Council meetings at about a dozen cities. In those days, one of the Council women had a restraining order on one of the men, and the 3 men and the 2 women were constantly at war with each other, using the dais as a battleground with snide comments. One of the worst incidents was when the Mayor made fun of the visual impairment of one of the women.
• Institutional Lying – In those days the City Manager and every one of the Council members used to say that Lake Forest was “one of the safest cities in the U.S.” It was a blatant lie taken from a study of only a few hundred of the 22,000 cities in the U.S., and took advantage of a statistical flaw in the study. What was incredible to me was that while then Mayor Tettemer was repeating this lie, the official Police data showed that we had the worst crime rate among the 9 cities in South Orange County (see document attached to this article). How could we be one of the safest cities in the U.S. and still be #9 out of 9 among our own neighbors. It’s not the only lie they used but this article is already so long I’ve leave it here.

This is what you get when you have a Do Nothing Council (DNC).

• We had a city with the fewest amenities of any of our neighbors.
• All the leadership came from the City Manager so the Council was uninvolved in what was really happening and easily tricked into feeding off what the staff gave them.
• As a result, Council spent their time at County and State meetings, spending very little time in the city. No one thought to provide office hours, have town meetings, set up advisory committees, etc. etc.
• Staff lived elsewhere and had little knowledge or interest in what happened in the city, and that was reflected in how they did their jobs.

How do these factors directly impact our lives?

Having fewer amenities means that our quality of life is decreased, or, to maintain that quality, we have to work harder (e.g., go to a neighboring city for the amenity). But having fewer amenities is not lost on the people who are buying homes. Ten years ago homes in Lake Forest were selling for less than many of our neighbors. Nowadays our prices are much higher on a comparative basis.

A DNC (Do Nothing Council) sits back and lets other cities gain the best stores and restaurants. All around us other cities have really high class restaurants, great stores like Mothers and Trader Joes, etc. Lake Forest, instead, has a boatload of 99 Cent Stores, Massage Parlors, and other low-rent establishments. The lack of high class retail businesses not only impacts our quality of life, it depresses our home prices.

SUMMARY

Having a Do Nothing Council, as we do now and as we had for many years, depresses our quality of life and disadvantages our City when compared to other cities. It negatively impacts our property values and makes us less attractive to potential buyers. In this day-and-age, a Do Nothing Council is a liability.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner was on the Lake Forest City Council from 2014 to 2018 and Mayor in 2018. Under his leadership the City became the first debt free city in the U.S. with a population over 25,000 people and the first city to live broadcast City Council meetings that allowed residents to participate online (Click Here). Dr. Gardner 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