My Comments to Council Member Gardner today's article

Council Member Gardner,

While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I must say what you often do here is a display of poor leadership. A leader unites, not divides.

There is nothing wrong with promoting your chosen candidates, but it shouldn’t be at the cost of offending and belittling a true independent candidate like myself, who genuinely wants to steer our city to a new direction that we desperately need.

Your accusation about my signs – Prior to putting up my signs last week, no other candidate had signs up despite the allowed date Sept 8. Shortly after, almost all of my signs mysteriously disappeared. My signs were not placed illegally as you’ve asserted and publicized here and on a Facebook page.

I spoke with the City several times, before and after putting up my signs and followed their instructions precisely. There is not a single home in the City where I’ve placed signs without the owner’s permission. It is possible a sign or two may have been placed on HOA property unintentionally, as it is quite difficult to know what belongs to whom. However, that does not mean you have the right to publicly label me as a sign offender!

City Council meetings – I’m very knowledgeable on ALL the issues you’ve outlined. I have attended all recent meetings, as you see me there every time. I know plenty about the issues not only by attending meetings, but also by meeting directly with City officials. I’m also attending 8 weeks Leadership Academy Curriculum which provides an overview of City operations and departments which you are aware. Prior to that, I would always keep myself abreast of City progress; that is why I finally decided to run for the Council. There are over 40,000 registered voters in Lake Forest. If people don’t speak or come to the meetings, that doesn’t mean they’re not interested.

To my knowledge, you ran four times until finally getting elected, and your previous involvement was being a part of the 4th of July Parade Commission.

I had a town hall meeting last week. You didn’t even bother to come and learn about me, yet chose to merely write your biased opinion and suppress my candidacy here on Patch to promote your own candidates. This is not a fair practice at all, in fact it’s unethical. It reminds me of when you invited me to your town hall meeting a couple of months ago without informing you’d be publishing your opinion of me on an online forum. You know hardly anything about my qualifications and have not spoken to me directly either yet allow yourself to publicly judge me. I know fully well of how you think the timing of your comments may work to your advantage a couple days before our candidate forum. Of course I’m aware that you’re playing with people’s psychology and carrying on the mindless tradition of typical dirty politics.

Let me make myself clear here: I have absolutely no affiliation or relationship with any of the Council members.

I clearly see you’re trying to form a “gang” of your own. I feel your part in Patch here is often unconstructive and in the long term, damaging for the future of Lake Forest, which I care most about. Let me remind you that your role is to serve the City, and not self-appointing yourself as a full-time biased political commentator. Other than your articles related to Council agenda items (which are also self-promoting), somehow you are under the impression that people are bound to your opinions.

Clearly you have a lot of time on your hands to write so frequently. Instead, I wish you’d consider spending some of it to City-related projects. In the interest of time, I won’t be engaging much here as it is unproductive. Let’s leave it to the people to decide.