'Meet the Mayor' Event Gets Crashed By Protesters

A number of community activists picketed outside the Applied Medical building—and across the street from the Saddleback Station of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department—in Lake Forest on Wednesday.

The protesters were backers of a recall petition of Mayor Andrew Hamilton and councilmen Dwight Robinson and Scott Voigts. After several instances of Hamilton confronting signature gatherers and trying to sway residents from not signing the petition, the recall supporters took the battle to him at the annual Meet the Mayor event sponsored by the chamber of commerce.

Well-behaved and wearing matching white shirts with red letters that read ”Recall Robinson Voigts Hamilton” on the front and back, protesters were lined along Rancho Road and the inlet that led to Applied Medical; there was no way to miss them if you were headed to shake hands with the mayor.

Inside, not far from the city’s year-old sports park, Hamilton spoke for about 15 minutes but in his formal remarks did not address the protesters or the recall. He did talk about some new businesses coming to Lake Forest, promised a civic center ”coming soon,” and touched on the city’s relatively low unemployment rate (”if you don’t have a job, move to Lake Forest”).

Of course, the idea of building houses for those folks he wants to move to Lake Forest—a lot of them—is one of the things that has people upset with Hamilton, Voigts and Robinson; their campaigns were supported financially by developers who reaped the benefit of rezoning and then granting the projects those developers pursued.

Though the recall started out of frustration from Portola Hills residents upset at the city council majority of Hamilton, Voigts and Robinson failing in October to agendize discussion of Saddleback Ranch Road that endangered that Lake Forest neighborhood, it was clear among protesters that the driving force of the recall has splintered into different avenues.

For Ashley Brown, a resident of almost five years, her motivation (see video interview) stems from the council’s decision to fork over a million dollars to Orange County Animal Control—which has a notoriously high kill rate—instead of partnering with the Mission Viejo shelter or pursuing its own shelter when suggested by members Adam Nick and Jim Gardner.

Andy O’Connor, a teacher who often speaks at council meetings and has been a resident since 1990, is critical of the increased development without accommodating the new students in those houses, other than to add more modular buildings and continue to pack them into schools such as Foothill Ranch Elementary, which has about 1,200 students on a campus that opened with 395, and class sizes hovering at about 29 students instead of the state-mandated 20 for grades 1-3.

But O’Connor also is critical of Voigts and Robinson individually for empty campaign promises.

“(Voigts) says he was going to develop along Alton Parkway, commercial and all that, and that one commercial zone (at Commercentre), they rezoned it for residential, Meritage (Homes),” O’Connor explained. “You put 52 more single family residences in there, those are 3 bedrooms, they’ll have kids, they’re going to have to go to a school. Duh. In your campaign literature you say you’re going to do this, this and this, and you do the exact opposite thing. That’s just blatant.

“Same thing with Robinson, in his 2012 campaign, ‘More schools, lower class sizes.’ … His kid goes to private school so he doesn’t care that my daughter’s up there with 1,200 kids. How do you evacuate that school with 1,200 students? You don’t. … The more Baker Ranch comes this way, it’s not going to work.”

Ken Woolf, a 25-year resident of Lake Forest, says he was never politically motivated, but “the fiasco of Saddleback Ranch Road” got his attention, and he didn’t like what he learned while taking a closer look at the council.

“There’s clear evidence the three targets of the recall are people who have accepted money from the developers and then voted where the money was,” Woolf said. “I’ve actually had a one-on-one discussion with Mayor Hamilton about it … and his view was ‘everybody who contributes to campaigns has an ax to grind, so if you didn’t take the money, only people who were very wealthy and could self-fund their campaigns could get elected.’ It’s just not a position I can accept at all.”

Woolf said he felt the three councilmen were involved in corruption, collusion and cronyism.

• Corruption, he said, because they have “consistently taken money from developers and then voted for those developers’ plans” without, in his opinion, the infrastructure “that can support that kind of growth.”

• Collusion, he said, “because they always vote together on issues.”

• Cronyism, he said, because “they appoint one another to various commissions, they vote for their friends to be on commissions and committees who are not well qualified, and far less qualified, than some of the other candidates.”

The recall of Hamilton, Voigts and Robinson may have begun because of Saddleback Ranch Road, but as evidenced by the people hoping this is the community’s last chance to meet Hamilton as mayor, they are finding plenty of reasons to justify a fresh start.

Photo: Tom Cagley (left) and Bob Holtzclaw hold their signs not far from the entrance of the Meet the Mayor event at Applied Medical.

About the author: Martin Henderson won several Los Angeles and Orange County press club awards while an editor at Patch in 2012-13.