Mayor Voigts Declares a "Spa Day"

Last Tuesday night we were informed that 3 of my Council colleagues were going to be away on the same day – August 18 – when our next meeting was to take place. Instead of scheduling a new date, Mayor Voigts cancelled the meeting, as this would leave only Councilman Nick and me in attendance, thus lacking quorum.

Instead of canceling the meeting, we should re-schedule. There are so many issues that have been side lined, we can hardly afford to take a day off. Here are a few examples –

· Investment Policy – months ago I worked on an ad hoc committee that came up with ways in which we could change our policy and generate tens of thousands of additional income on our savings, which are considerable. But those changes can only be implemented once the Council approves them, and we have been waiting for months to bring this back. Meantime we are losing money every month.

· Sign ordinance – it should be clear to just about everyone that the revised sign ordinance was a complete disaster, and the amount of shenanigans last year achieved an all-time high. We need to change that ordinance now before the political winds begin to blow again.

· Global View – the Council said that we needed to look at the complete picture of what our assets were and what the needs of the City were, so that going forward we were in a good position to make decisions about what projects to undertake. Yet we are getting ready to review plans for the revised Village Pond Park and for the new Civic/Senior Center without the desired prerequisite global planning sessions. We need to do forward planning on a global scale before undertaking new projects lest we make errors that cost us dearly in the long run.

· Village Pond Park – months ago the Council asked for an evaluation of the effectiveness of the new wildlife feeding prohibition ordinance. This was desired prior to looking at any plans to re-model the Park. Yet to date we’ve received nothing about any evaluation. I believe we shouldn’t be investing $1 million or more in a park re-model without a proper evaluation of the effectiveness of the ordinance program. I suggested years ago that a simple ordinance program would solve most of the bird over-population problems without requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in structural changes to the Pond. Let’s get a proper evaluation of the effectiveness of the ordinance program before we spend lots of money on changes that are unnecessary.

· Website Redesign – Months ago we were told that the website was going to be re-designed. As I understood it, there was supposed to be an evaluation, which never happened, and I’ve heard from many people that the new design is worse than the prior one. There are many broken links, the Search function barely works, and items that previously were easy to find are now hidden away. The website is an important way to communicate with our residents and businesses. We need to do a better job. BTW – the one thing we asked for was to open up the website for input into what’s happening broadly within the community and with the volunteer groups. This hasn’t been done yet.

· City Land – Some time ago the Council asked staff to do a better job in improving the physical appearance of city-owned property. The Whispering Hills area and the small site on El Toro are disgraceful, yet to date nothing has been done. We need to have some plans to improve the physical appearance of city-owned property.

These are just a few of the items that have been side lined for months. In the intervening time, new items that deserve staff and Council attention have come up. These include

• · How well are we managing our water consumption?
• · Examining alternatives to the animal care service provided by the County.
• · Putting the final touches on the alcohol sales ordinance.

All these items I am producing “off the top of my head” as I write this column this morning. Given time and my notes I could expand it, but you should get the point.

In addition to these items, there are “closed session” items that are also hang-overs from previous months, and in some cases, years. I believe that taking a day off when we are already struggling to catch up is a poor policy.

I checked with the City Attorney and he assures me that we can schedule a “special” meeting to replace the “spa day”. I’ve asked the City Manager to work with the Council and come up with a day to do this.

The public will be able to attend and comment on the agenda items. The only difference will be that the normal “public comment” period will not be allowed since this is a “special” meeting and comments are restricted to the items that are agendized.

COMMENTS

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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 August 15 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library