Has the Lake Forest City Council Become a "House of Clowns"?

Yesterday we looked at all the ways in which the City Council of Lake Forest has been transformed into a Nest of Vipers under Scott Voigts. In the history of the City there have never been more scandalous cases of corruption, inappropriate behavior, and cronyism and even as I write this column there are more examples on the horizon. Resignations and 4,000 people signing petitions against the Voigts’ gang have followed.

Yet even while we must recognize the unseemly side of politics under Voigts and his apostles, they have often given us a laugh from their sheer stupidity, lack of decorum, and outrageous conduct. So here’s the case for the City Council being subtitled the “House of Clowns”

INABILITY TO GET THINGS DONE

Last year, under then Mayor Voigts, meetings went on forever, yet they achieved very little, and in fact, more than a dozen important issues were postponed or continued. By the middle of 2014, under Voigts’ BFF Dwight Robinson, only a few of those dozen plus issues had been discussed, and more issues had been added to the postponed/continued pile.

Just this week Robinson opened up an agenda item for public comment, then got sidetracked by the rambling comments of Mrs. McCullough. Pretty soon Robinson forgot he had opened a public meeting, ignored the agenda item, and got caught up in a discussion of conflict of interest. To continue the obvious violation of the Brown Act, they spend the next 20 minutes discussing the new issue, and then postponed the agenda item under consideration. FWIW - this particular agenda item has been stalled at the City Hall for more than a year, and once more got postponed.

INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

Notwithstanding the incompetence of Voigts and Robinson to run meetings effectively and efficiently, McCullough would have to be the chief clown. More than anyone else she is responsible for postponing issues because, in her own words “I donn unerstan”. In addition to her lack of understanding, McCullough uses an inordinate amount of Council time reveling in the past, talking to the audience, and chastising anyone who differs from her. One memorable moment she spent 3 minutes telling everyone how brief she would be, followed by a 5-minute monologue. Another time she and Mayor Pro Tem Nick got into a shouting match telling each other to “shut up”. But the sine qua non of memorable moments came when she shouted down the OC D.A. who had made an appearance at the Council when they were discussing a ban on sex offenders in parks. It was a low point in decorum for the city, but made the highlight reel for followers of the House of Clowns.

CITY ATTORNEY

Part of the fun on Tuesday nights’ in-house comedy show is seeing what the City Attorney will say. One memorable night when Peter Herzog, himself a lawyer, was discussing the irregularities in the Brookfield/Trumark transactions, Herzog turned to Smith and said “You’re a liar!” Smith went on to mumble about something completely irrelevant to Herzog’s point, and unfortunately, the Voigts gang chose to go with Smith’s interpretation. Smith, by the way, works for BB&K, a law firm in Irvine whose main claim to fame is that they advised the City of Bell during their scandalous misuse of public funds. BB&K was subsequently let go and the new Council is suing them.

POOR STAFF REPORTS

Hardly a month goes by when the City staff do not produce a report that wouldn’t make it past a high school senior class in civics, yet the Council, some of whom are obviously reading challenged, are lavish in their praise of how good these reports are. Here are some examples of deeply flawed City reports –

• A study of the effectiveness of having a Traffic Commission failed to provide any data about effectiveness, and offered as a dependent variable “staff time” without distinguishing between the time of a Secretary and the time of a Department Head.
• A plan to reduce the problem of waterfowl over-population at Village Pond Park failed to talk about measures to prohibit feeding the ducks/geese, and offered several suggestions that will improve the quality of life for our feathered friends, rather than discouraging them.
• A secret study done for Council members and not intended for public release (which was a violation of the Brown Act) of murder rates in Orange County cities offered trendlines on graphs where no trendlines could possibly be drawn. Conclusions were then drawn from the invalid trendlines.

Making decisions based on bad data is a perilous undertaking, but one which this Council embraces.

VIPERS OR CLOWNS

Regardless of what the most appropriate epithet is for the City Council, it’s obvious that the Voigts gang needs to be rounded up and put away where they can do no more harm. We can start by removing them from office. Eight people are running, in addition to 3 incumbents. One of the challengers (Andrew Hamilton) is a junior member of the Voigts gang, but any one of the other 4 non-incumbents would make a better selection than any of the incumbents.

Next week we’ll start our analysis of the candidates.

ABOUT JIM GARDNER

Dr. Jim Gardner is running for City Council in Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook. Or you can read one of the 1,500+ articles he’s written for The Patch in the past few years. Click on his name underneath the title of the article and that will take you to his bio page where his previous articles can be accessed.