Neeki Media, Part 4: Joining a Team of 'Bad Actors'

Author's note: Neeki Moatazedi is running against Sonny Morper to represent District 2 on the Lake Forest City Council. Moatazedi is a three-year resident and project manager for Southern California Gas Company; Morper is a retired educator who has lived in Lake Forest for 40 years.

Neeki Moatazedi doesn’t like bad actors, but she has surrounded herself with those very people. Moatazedi used the opportunity of her Oct. 22 press conference to have her own film crew on hand so that it could film a video on her behalf. Twice she makes references to “bad actors” and how they’ve torn the city of Lake Forest apart. It's a reference to Mayor Jim Gardner and former councilman Adam Nick, who didn't sit on their hands but tried to find solutions for the residents.

• Part 1: Something for Everyone
• Part 2: Inconsistencies, Hypocrisy and Lies
• Part 3: Convenient Solutions, Inconvenient Cronies
• Part 4: Joining a Team of 'Bad Actors'

But if anyone knows the players and the history of Lake Forest over the past few years, they’ll know that Moatazedi has aligned herself with her own cast of bad actors, and both had starring roles in her video.

Scott Voigts, perhaps the worst liar in the history of Lake Forest government, talked about how the council has changed since he was elected in 2010.

“The council didn’t always get along, but the fact is the council always honored other council members on the dais, but here it’s personal destruction, anarchy and lies,” Voigts said.

Voigts hasn't come close to honoring or respecting other council members. He's been guilty of playing politics on the dais for political gain and doing schoolboy antics that show his extraordinary level of immaturity; that he doesn't see it only illustrates the level of narcissism that he possesses.

There was the night in 2015 when Mayor Voigts moved the council comments -- the comments that council members direct to the city with the hindsight of having just made whatever decisions they’ve made -- to the beginning of the meeting so that he could blast Councilman Adam Nick before the room cleared out.

Voigts called on Nick to resign because he couldn’t be trusted; his exact words were: “We have endured his doublespeak fantasies long enough. He refuses to speak the truth. He refuses to uphold the integrity of the office. I call on him to resign his position.”

A couple of minutes later, Nick explained that Voigts wore a wire at least twice to try to get a confession from him that he stole some campaign signs. “I never wore a wire,” Voigts said. It was a lie.

Although Voigts admitted more than a year later to Voice of OC or some such website that it was a lie, Voigts never acknowledged it directly to the people of Lake Forest until earlier this year when discussion of a possible censure came up. Voigts said in the council meeting that he lied because of an ongoing investigation -- which was a lie. Four days earlier, the Orange County District Attorney dropped charges against Nick for stealing campaign signs. There was no active investigation when Voigts lied about the wire, but Voigts realized he was missing out on his chance to put the nails to Nick. So he played politics -- anarchy, if you will -- and changed the order of the meeting to get his message across.

Or what about the night that current Mayor Jim Gardner received a certificate for being on the Parade Committee or something like that. Voigts defaced the certificate. After coming back from a break, Nick called out Voigts for doing it. Voigts denied it publicly in the council meeting. "I didn't do it," he said. He lied. He acknowledged privately to Gardner that he did it and apologized, but to this day, Voigts never acknowledged it before the people he lied to, the residents of Lake Forest. For all they know, Voigts never did do it because Voigts told them during the meeting he didn't do it.

Or what about the time that Voigts, while doubling as the city’s representative on the Vector Control Board, did not go to a Parent Teacher Organization meeting when there was a mysterious rash going around at local schools. Nick and Gardner attended the meeting and spent the night leaning against the back wall as they listened to details. A TV crew eventually found them and asked Nick for a sound bite. At the subsequent council meeting, Voigts said flat-out that Nick had “hijacked the meeting.” Also, Voigts explained that he wasn't at the meeting because the school district had asked council members not to attend. City manager Bob Dunek disputed the latter, and it was apparent to everyone in attendance at the PTO meeting that Nick had clearly not hijacked anything. Voigts lied. Twice.

Or what about earlier this year when I challenged Voigts’ qualifications for a second term on the Vector Control and pointed out that he had gone the last seven months without giving a report to the people even though there were several relevant issues such as a disaster response plan and a Grand Jury report? Voigts response, rather than owning it, was to call me “a paid hack” as if that would somehow alter the truth that he was derelict in his duty. "I've never been derelict at anything in my life," Voigts said. At a subsequent meeting, in exchange for tabling discussion of his censure, Voigts agreed to provide a statement of retraction, which the council agreed to by a 5-0 vote. That was nine months ago and Voigts has still not provided the retraction. So yes, it’s anarchy, all right. And lies. But he’s the one who’s guilty, who has acted with impunity, and it is Voigts -- running unopposed in District 3 -- who is standing by Moatazedi because he wants her to join him on the council.

Yet Moatazedi calls herself the “truth and transparency” candidate and wants to get rid of the “bad actors.” She couldn't even get rid of bad actor Voigts for her video.

And what of Robinson?

“Our city needs consensus builders right now,” Robinson says in the video. “We’ve had a lot of polarization. We need someone who is going to focus on the issues and make a thoughtful decision each and every time for the residents of Lake Forest.”

That would be novel, but Robinson has failed in that respect. He made seven verifiable written campaign promises in 2012 and didn’t bring any of them to the council for consideration; basically, he lied to get elected. Real thoughtful.

Then Robinson contributed to a smear campaign that even he acknowledged was “over the top” but only after he gained full benefit of it to defeat Adam Nick by 99 votes in 2016. Real thoughtful.

Robinson did any number of things that showed he was not making thoughtful decisions for the benefit of the residents of Lake Forest. Among them:

• He locked the city into a 10-year agreement with the high-kill animal shelter and a $600,000 buy-in to build a facility Lake Forest had no equity in. Real thoughtful.
• He refused to let Meals on Wheels use an empty room at City Hall. Real thoughtful.
• He voted against City staff recommendation to put houses within a few hundred yards of Musick Jail. Real thoughtful.
• He voted to appoint less qualified candidates to commissions and committees. Real thoughtful.
• He voted against requiring council members to disclose private meetings they have with current and potential city vendors. Real thoughtful.
• He voted for “term limits” that allowed a candidate to serve 24 out of 26 years consecutively. Real thoughtful.
• He voted against government transparency. Real thoughtful.
• He voted against fixing Saddleback Ranch Road when it created a clearly dangerous situation -- up until he was faced with a recall notice. Real thoughtful.
• He voted against paying off the city's unfunded pension liability the first time he had the opportunity. Real thoughtful.

Does any of this matter to Moatazedi, who should be asking herself why this wasn’t disclosed to her before Robinson and Voigts became her right and left arm? If she had been engaged in the city prior to wanting to run for its highest office -- no Parade Committee, no Planning Commission, no civic involvement whatsoever -- she might have known that she is the one consorting with “bad actors.”

Speaking of bad actors, Moatazedi’s own comments illustrate just how little insight she has when coupled with the appearance of her co-stars, whose arrogant decision-making created the polarization Robinson wants to end with her election.

“I want our community to get back to its good wholesome self,” Moatazedi says. “In the last few years, we’ve been dragged through multiple recalls, we’ve had a lot of negativity here, and that has to do with a few bad actors and a lot of cronyism and I want to change that up and shake things up and didn’t want that to continue on because citizens of Lake Forest deserve better.”

Because the citizens of Lake Forest deserve better is exactly why there were recalls. And Moatazedi -- and Mark Tettemer, who’s trying to unseat Jim Garder in District 4 -- fail to realize that the special election that took place on Jan. 2 wasn’t the result of a few “bad actors”; there were 9,155 registered voters who signed petitions to recall Hamilton because they wanted representative government, not the group-think of “consensus builders” Hamilton, Robinson and Voigts. Among bad actors in Lake Forest, that’s literally a cast of thousands. As for cronyism, Moatazedi clearly hasn't connected the dots yet.

“We really need to stand up against these bad actors and say enough is enough,” Moatazedi says in her video.

There are at least 9,155 residents who might think that Moatazedi doesn’t know the good actors from the bad.

Moatazedi is an extension of the Republican party just as Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton were.
The city doesn’t need council members who will agree with each other, it needs council members who will independently make decisions that are not predictable. Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton were predictable. Does anyone think Moatazedi will stand up to Robinson in front of a room full of people and tell him he’s wrong -- and then prove it?

Me either.