Meet the Candidates - Part 3 (The Candidate Statements)

We’ve been taking a preliminary look at the candidates for City Council. In our first two articles we looked at the new candidates, including Leah Basile, Farh Semnani, and Francisco Barajas. Today we’ll focus on the candidate statements, going alphabetically.

Francisco Barajas (Click here to see his full statement) is tickled pink to live in Lake Forest and to be associated with the Gang of 3. He wants to work for public safety, reducing traffic congestion, and “balanced solutions”.

Leah Basile (Click Here) wants government to work for the people, not the special interests. Basile has the longest list of priorities - improve traffic congestion, finish civic/senior center, create local “no kill” animal shelter, improve the way our government works, and help local businesses and expand our economy.

Basile also offers some information about her background – She has a BA in Organizational Leadership and worked for Fortune 500 companies in sales and administration. She’s also a Lake Forest small business owner.

Adam Nick (Click here) urges voters to “Elect your representative based on voting records and facts.” He points out that he saves taxpayers thousands of dollars by not taking a salary, medical and retirement benefits. He also points out that he has a 100% attendance record, which far exceeds Councilman Robinson (or any of his Gang of 3). Nick lists some of his achievements which have also helped taxpayers – cutting City Council members’ reimbursable personal expenses, requiring a “super majority” before taxes can be raised, and ending each year with a budget surplus.

Nick has a long list of “common sense initiatives” he championed that were defeated by Robinson and his Gang of 3. Most of these initiatives related to honesty (code of ethics, banning Council members from taking corporate money, requiring Council members to disclose their financial ties to City contractors and lobbyists) and better government (Traffic Commission, resident election of Mayor, real term limits).

Dwight Robinson (Click here to see his statement) stresses the achievements which took place in the past 4 years when he and Adam Nick were on the Council. Among them - a high cash reserve, paying off our City pension liabilities (initiated by Adam Nick and Andy Hamilton), and the opening of the Sports Park. FWIW – I was there too for most of them.

Some of Robinson’s claims are misleading. He implies that he employs 100 people “in town” but in fact his company is based in Long Beach. He brags about opening the Dog Park but in fact he did nothing to help in this effort which is largely due to Bob Holtzclaw and I. He claims that we are one of the “safest cities” when in fact we are less safe than any of our neighbors. He claims that he will work for eliminating Mello-Roos when in fact the City has no control over Mello-Roos. He tries to take credit for the Sports Park when in fact everything needed to open the Park was achieved by previous Councils (Herzog, McCullough, Dixon, Rudolph, Tettemer).

It’s disappointing to see so many misrepresentations in Robinson’s brief statement. Disappointing, but not unexpected. The last time he ran Robinson did the same thing, promising among other things, to reduce class sizes, something over which the Council has no control.

For an independent and more in-depth analysis of Robinson’s ballot statement, Click Here.

FWIW – Robinson directs people to his 2012 website when he ran for City Council. Apparently it’s not worthwhile for him to update it fully, although if you look closely you’ll see that he has edited it in some places and once again the updates are misleading.

Farh Semnani (Click Here) spends half of his statement telling us about himself. That’s probably a good thing because most people will have no idea who he is. The one issue he speaks to is the need to have “an expert eye to carefully evaluate new developments…” but with 5,000 homes already on tap, it may be locking the barn after the horse is long gone.

Please go to the links and read these statements for yourselves.

Tomorrow I’ll sum up my impressions as the election season begins.

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.