Looking Back - Part 3

We’ve been looking at what the city accomplished in 2017. On Monday I covered the normal things city government does and concluded –

“We’re not particularly doing a better job, but we are handling more issues and addressing more problems, while additional stresses were placed on the staff.”

On Tuesday I looked at our poor record of initiating new activities, including

• District elections process that used outdated software, less than optimally responsive consultants, and ended up giving us districts that split up several communities of interest.
• A strategic planning process that was a complete waste of time and money.
• A trial project to let the county provide additional staffing for animal care, that yielded 1 extra dog license and 10 citations for an investment of $18,000 over 3 months!
• Adding traffic as a major concern of the Planning Commission, that after 6 months has yielded nothing of note.
• An accident data base that continues to be promised but never delivered.
• A plan to deal with parking problems in the city that is never delivered despite requests from the Police for an additional $150,000.

SOME SUCCESSES

While the lack of ability to develop adequate and cost effective initiatives is certainly depressing, not everything attempted has failed. Here are some examples of new initiatives that succeeded –

• The “Shop and dine” mobile app was introduced in September. It took way too long to develop but it is out and it is useful, though we haven’t yet seen any data on how well it is being used and it hasn't been updated as of now.
• We re-named Village Pond Park as Veterans Park, organized a committee, and designed a good memorial space so that we can honor our veterans.
• We got two local pet rescue and adoption groups off the ground, though much of this they did by themselves.
• We introduced the transitory housing ordinance and actually have been effective reducing the number of violators. It took a lot of pressure to make it work, but at least it's working.

It’s not much, but it is positive, and it was over-and-above the ordinary activities of government.

Our few successes with new projects pale in comparison with the failures, but we have to consider that most city governments, and this one in particular, have been wedded to the philosophy “stay the course” and “everything is OK, don’t mess with it.” For decades they have been content with this role and the Councils that were elected praised them for it. For decades, while everyone else around us had their own city hall, their own senior center, dog parks, local no-kill animal shelters, meals on wheels programs, non-profit community foundations, etc. we had none of these things.

It’s only recently that the City Council has been asking for a higher level of performance from staff, not only in the quality but also in the quantity of what they are doing. As you can imagine, this is a great challenge and no one can expect miracles in the first year. The Council and the staff will have to iron out the wrinkles.

I raised this issue at the Council meeting last Tuesday night and I asked my colleagues to convene a special closed meeting to discuss our performance. I got unanimous agreement. Next week we will meet and address these problems and try to come up with a solution.

We set ourselves a very ambitious agenda and if we don’t get a handle on what we’re doing wrong and why, 2018 could be disappointing. I think we can succeed.

Tomorrow I’ll reflect on my own achievements.

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. Follow him on Twitter @DrJimGardner. 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 mini town meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be Thursday Feb 15 at 7 pm at the Beach and Tennis Club.