Is Lake Forest Going Back to the Future?

In the popular film “Back to the Future Part 2”, Biff Tannen goes to the future and gets a copy of a sports almanac and returns to the past. With that knowledge, Biff becomes very wealthy and transforms beautiful Hill Valley into a wretched place. When Marty McFly returns, he finds his home town completely changed.

Are we at such a turning point?

The Gang of 3 (Robinson-Voigts-Hamilton) recently approved selling more alcohol in the City, in an area already saturated with more than 3 times the state-recommended maximum. They just added the equivalent of 11 homes to the 200 homes that they recently added, to the nearly 600 that they approved to the 4,000 that are already approved. We are stalled in traffic and Councilman Robinson says, boldly, that he will continue to approve more and more homes despite the lack of new roads, new schools, new libraries, or any new infrastructure. When asked how we’ll get the electricity and the water to support these new homes, Robinson shrugs.

Meanwhile Robinson and his “Gang” fill their campaign coffers with more than $200,000 from developers, builders, and companies doing business with the City. The people who give money to the Gang don’t live here, so they don’t care about our quality of life. One of the Gang’s biggest contributors said exactly that to me, saying that if this was his City he would fight to stop the development, but since Lake Forest wasn’t “his” City, he was simply trying to make a buck! And with this City Council, Lake Forest was an easy place for him to make a buck.

We now have

• · Off-track betting
• · more stores selling beer and wine than almost any of our neighbors
• · a higher crime rate than any of our neighbors
• · more concerns about traffic congestion

…and yet the Gang of 3 are voting for more beer and wine being sold, more homes being built, etc.

Put aside the bad public policy, look at who they are.

DWIGHT ROBINSON

• · broke every campaign promise he made in 2012 before he was elected. In fact he often did the opposite of what he promised to do (Click Here).
• · lied about public policy decisions (Click Here) and slandered two of his colleagues on the Council (Click Here and Here).
• · His 2016 ballot statement contained outright lies (Click Here).
• · Now he’s running with special interest money again funding his campaign (Click Here).

SCOTT VOIGTS

• · lies so often it takes several articles to chronicle them all (Click Here).
• · put himself on Vector Control so he could collect $100 per meeting, then shows up for roll call and leaves. (Click Here).
• · As our Vector Control representative he doesn’t even show up at Lake Forest Elementary where they were experiencing a major breakout of rashes, and then condemned Adam Nick and I for attending (Click Here).

ANDY HAMILTON

• · goes around secretly taking videotapes of women showing their crotch areas and then posting them on Facebook.
• · so unable to control a meeting that he often places the residents in “time out” (Click Here).
• · As Mayor he rarely attends ribbon cuttings, open houses, or City events (Click Here and Here).
• · He’s been called “The Worst Mayor in Lake Forest history” (Click Here and Here).

Is this what our City has come to? Are we on the way to a new Hill Valley with a Biff Tannen museum?

Unhappy with their 3-2 control over the Council, the Gang seeks to add a fourth conspirator. They hand-picked Barajas (Click Here) and put him on the Parks Commission 18 months ago. He had no qualifications and was chosen over two much better qualified people, but Barajas had an advantage - he worked on the Gang’s 2014 election campaign and they hadn’t.

What has he done since being appointed?

• · He missed more meetings than the rest of the Commissioners combined.
• · He missed more meetings than anyone on the Council or on any Commission.
• · He’s never made a single motion.
• · He’s missed almost every City event since being appointed.

He will make a fine addition to the “Gang of 3”, but is this how we want our City represented?

Voting takes place one week from now. You’re voting on our future.

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 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.