Meet the Candidates

On Saturday we held our quarterly Town Hall meeting at the Foothill Ranch Library from 2 pm to 4 pm. Since this is the start of election season, I invited all the “new” candidates for City Council to come by and spend time with us. Councilmen Nick and Robinson were not invited because I wanted to focus to be on the new people, and residents have had sufficient exposure to the sitting Council members.

Leah Basile confirmed a few days early. Francisco Barajas informed me on Friday that he’d be on vacation. Farh Semnani e-mailed the morning of the event and showed up, and I never heard from Frank Wagoner. At the meeting, Leah and Farh were present (see picture). Also present was Bob Ferguson who had planned to run but didn’t get his signatures in on time.

Nearly two dozen residents attended. The talk and Q&A sessions went on for 95 minutes.

LEAH BASILE

Leah is probably well known to most of us. She is the person most responsible for getting the dangers in Saddleback Ranch Rd straightened out. In the past 9 months she has been a frequent speaker at City Council meetings and also wrote a number of articles on the Patch. Leah is currently President of the Portola Hills 2 HOA and has served on the Board for 6 years. She is a 15 year resident of Lake Forest where she lives with her husband and 2 young boys.

FARH SEMNANI

Farh is also a resident of Portola Hills and has lived in the City for 14 years, along with his wife and two young boys. Farh has a background in commercial real estate. Until now he has not been active in City affairs, although it was obvious from his comments that he is familiar with what’s happening in the City.

COMMON THEMES

Leah and Farh agreed on a host of issues.

· Too much development is impacting our quality of our life, and should be managed better.

· City council members should not be accepting money from companies that do business with the City. This leads to corruption. They both favored an ordinance to this effect.

· Cronyism in appointing residents to City Commissions should not be allowed. We should be putting the most qualified people in positions. When unqualified people sit on Commission we get bad decisions, that often have to be appealed and overturned.

· We should elect the Mayor separately, rather than have the Council appoint from among themselves. This is done by other cities (e.g., Irvine, Anaheim, Orange, Santa Ana, Westminster). Having the Mayor elected would avoid the abuses when a Gang of 3 keeps the position for their own. When the old Gang of 3 ruled (Dixon, Herzog, Tettemer), they allowed the minority members (McCullough and Rudolph) to be Mayor only 3 times in 20+ years. The new Gang of 3 has kept the Mayorship for the past 4 years.

· Our school system needs improvement, though there is little the City can do about this.

· The City management has been reactive. They both favored a more proactive style that set long term goals.

· The County animal shelter is a disgraceful center and a waste of taxpayer money. If possible, the contract with the County should be cancelled.

· City council members should focus on the whole City, and not special interests or competing interests (e.g., Robinson’s work on AQMD, Voigts’ job working for Assemblyman Don Wagner). They should not ignore certain areas of the City.

There were some differences –

· Leah was against accepting money from special interests while Farh said he wouldn’t seek it, but wouldn’t turn it down if given.

· Leah was in favor of election by districts, while Farh believes Lake Forest is not large enough to be divided into districts

· Leah felt more strongly that our efforts to strengthen and attract business were lacking, while Farh felt more strongly that our physical appearance (roadways, streetscapes) should be improved to have the same prestige as Irvine and Mission Viejo.

· Leah was more critical of the Planning Commission while Farh was equally critical of some decision making but didn’t speak specifically about the Planning Commission.

· Leah was more critical of the job being done by the City Manager while Farh didn’t speak specifically about his performance although he was critical of the City’s performance in several aspects.

Everyone thought the informal setting was a great way to get to know the new candidates.

Tomorrow I’ll follow up with some impressions.

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.