Good News, Bad News - Village Pond Park Report

This week we started a mini-series called “Good News, Bad News” and we looked at senior services, affordable housing, and started to look at Village Pond Park.

You’ll recall from yesterday that the Council passed an ordinance against feeding the wildlife and requiring an education program, signs, enforcement, and a quantitative evaluation. All of this was to be accomplished in the period before the plans for the remodel of the Park were submitted to the Council, in the hopes that the ordinance and program were sufficiently effective to substantially reduce the wildlife problem, thus mitigating many of the structural changes proposed in the park plans. This had the potential to save taxpayers a lot of money.

According to a September 17, 2015 report issued by the Director of Community Services, here is what has been accomplished since the program started on May 1 -

• · City staff (including STARS, code enforcement, and Community Services) visited the park 683 times
• · They distributed a letter to all residences within 500 feet of the park informing them about the program
• · They distributed 207 “educational leaflets” to people in the park.
• · They “educated 670 visitors”
• · After July 1, Code Enforcement staff issued 3 “administrative citations”

As interesting as this is, you’re probably wondering “what did this accomplish?” If you’re big on critical thinking, you may be looking a little deeper, asking as a result of the program –

• · On average, how many people still feed the wildlife? (see the attached picture because it’s obvious that the feeding continues)
• · On average, how many geese are still in the park? (ditto)

Even more importantly, you might be asking –

• · How much cleaner are the walkways?
• · How much cleaner is the pond water?

After all, no one really cares whether 200 or 2000 leaflets were distributed, or how many times the staff visited the pond. What’s important is how effective was the program? We don’t even care how many citations were given out. The real question is “how much less duck and geese shit fill the walkways and the pond?” And from an economic perspective, “Which proposed structural changes to the park are no longer necessary as a result of the effectiveness of the program?”

Nothing in the staff report addresses this issue. In fact, nothing even hints at this. Instead, the report claims that evaluating the results of the effectiveness of the ordinance “would require five years of data collection at a cost of approximately $4,000 per year.” Just how ridiculous is this claim?

First, the time period to evaluate the effectiveness of the ordinance was a very short window, beginning in March 2015 and ending in November or December when the re-modeling begins. “5 years” is just plain wrong because after the park is remodeled, there is no way to separate the effects of the ordinance from the remodeling. The only time to do this was the 8 to 10 months in which the park remained stable and the ordinance was not in effect. The research design would have looked like this –

• · Baseline (March to April)
• · Effects of education (April to June)
• · Effects of enforcement (July to October)

The opportunity to do a nice little study that would have given us some valuable information was completely lost.

Second, the cost estimates are ridiculous. The data we’re interested in could have been collected simultaneously when the staff visited the park. They could have counted the ducks and/or geese and over time we’d know just how many we’re talking about. BTW – the original report on the park also neglected to count the number of ducks and geese.

In addition to counting the ducks and/or geese, the staff could have made a note about how messy the walkways were. No big deal.

Finally, the City could have asked the Lake Forest Community Association to do weekly or bi-weekly water analyses so that we could see whether or not the water was clearing up. This might have cost a few hundred dollars for the tests.

But none of these things were done. We don’t know…

• · How many more or fewer people are feeding the wildlife
• · How many more or fewer ducks or geese are there
• · How much more or less shit fills the walkways
• · How much or less cleaner the water in the pond is

With this data we could have made informed decisions about what else was needed to solve the problem in the park. Without this information, we are completely in the dark. The failure to conduct this research, as requested by the Council, may lead to the City spending thousands of dollars on unnecessary structural changes to correct a problem that no longer exists.

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 Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on Dec 12 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.

2