Election 2016. The Other Guys

We’ve been discussing the upcoming City Council elections in Lake Forest. To date we looked at the two incumbents (Click Here) and the two non-incumbents who have a track record (Click Here). There are two more guys on the ballot – Fahr Semnani and Frank Wagoner. To my knowledge

• · Neither are involved in City committees or groups.
• · Neither are involved in their local HOAs.
• · Neither are involved in Kiwanis, the Chamber of Commerce, or similar groups in the City.
• · Until they filed to run for City Council, neither had been to a City Council meeting.
• · Since filing, neither has spoken at a City Council meeting

One of them didn’t even bother to file a ballot statement (Wagoner), and the other one has been putting up signs illegally (Semnani).

It’s not much to recommend either one of them.

Since they filed to be on the ballot, there have been several contentious issues at the Council meetings. For example –

August 16

• o The Capital Improvement Projects Budget
• o Crime Prevention
• o The overflow Parking Problem

Sept. 6

• o The CDBG Grant Review
• o Permit to sell beer and wine
• o Village Pond Park

Sept. 20

• o Satisfaction Study
• o Review of Development agreements
• o Increased housing in Parkside
• o Civic Center design

Oct. 4

• o OC Treasurer report
• o Vector Control representative
• o Censure for Dwight Robinson for lying on his ballot statement

These are pretty important topics for the City. City Council candidate Leah Basile found time to come to the meetings and even spoke. But neither of these two guys spoke, and I’m not sure if one of them (Wagoner) even showed up at all. FWIW – candidate Francisco “The Empty Chair” Barajas didn’t show up either, but we’re used to Barajas not showing up. He doesn’t even show up for his Parks Commission meetings an d rarely contributes.

If you’re not interested in what goes on in the City, why on Earth would you want to be on the City Council? If you have nothing to say about these contentious issues, how can you be expected to perform adequately once you’re on the Council?

Bottom line – neither one of these people has earned your vote, either by what they did before deciding to run, or what they’ve done since they decided to run. On the one hand you have a person who is completely uninvolved (Wagoner), and on the other hand you have a person (Semnani) who is relatively uninvolved and whose only action to date is to be illegally posting signs.

Next time I’ll sum up.

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 is not up for election in 2016.

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.