Lake Forest City Council Recall Has Begun

A committee of concerned citizens in Lake Forest received official petitions on December 22, 2015 to begin the recall process against three incumbent members of the City Council. The three Councilmembers are: Mayor Andrew Hamilton, Mayor Pro Tem Scott Voigts and Councilman Dwight Robinson.

The main reasons in the petition to recall them are:
• Corruption – taking money from special interests
• Cronyism – appointing their campaign contributors instead of the best qualified people
• Collusion – creating a voting bloc to stifle progress

The straw that broke the camel’s back and started the recall was a major design failure on Saddleback Ranch Road in Portola Hills. The bad road design made this road very dangerous to pedestrians and commuters (a change order to correct the errors will cost an additional $70,000). The recall is about more than the botched road project, it is also the fact that the City Council majority simply did not want to listen to citizens’ legitimate safety concerns.

Other factors bringing about the recall include:
• The heavy handed manner the Council majority holds control over all issues. The three targeted council members vote as a bloc:  all are for an agenda item, or all are against an agenda item.
• The three have refused to provide space for Meals on Wheels to operate in the city, which forces Mission Viejo to provide that service to Lake Forest residents.
• The Council has promised for years to fix a health and safety issue at Village Pond Park, yet the Council majority continue to kick that can down the road.
• The three have accepted large sums of money from developers, and the pay back has been to rezone commercial space to residential, resulting in more than 5,000 homes being added to the city in an extremely short time. However, these developers have been excused from providing school sites, fire departments or affordable housing, among other infrastructure needs.
• The Council majority appoints people to committees that are not qualified, actually stating in one instance that an individual was appointed because: “She is my best friend.”

The petitions went live just a few days before Christmas, so the effort did not gain traction until after the holiday season. However, the committee members are working daily to garner the necessary signatures to put the issue on a ballot. They have until April 20th to get a minimum of 8,500 signatures but their goal is to get at least 10,000, to have a buffer against signatures that are not valid, or duplicates. Signatures are being gathered door-to-door and at major retail locations.

If you are interested in supporting this effort contact:
LakeForestRecall@hotmail.com
Visit the web site: http://citizenstoendcorruptioninlakeforest.org