The New Lake Forest - Administrative Challenges

We’re getting ready for our “strategic planning” session in July. I produced some preliminary data about the City which we can use (Click Here) and we’ve been discussing some of the changes in the City which suggest we are entering a new and exciting era (Click Here). These were

• New City Manager
• New General Plan
• New Civic Center
• New Mobile App
• New Approach to Traffic/Parking
• Better Communication
• Better Animal Care

These changes offer great promise, but along with great promise comes great risk. Today I want to discuss a few of the challenges that confront us if we truly are to become a “New” Lake Forest.

QUALITY CONTROL

We are about to do more in the next 18 months than any previous Council and City staff took on before. We have several public works projects (new Civic Center, upgrade 10 existing parks, completely rehab of Village Pond Park) in various stages of development. To this very ambitious schedule we’ve already approved some 2,000 new homes which will be built over this time period, further exhausting our resources. To add fire to the fuel, we also have a re-consideration of the General Plan. With these many balls up in the air, there are opportunities for problems to emerge. Therefore, we need to reinforce our quality control.

Bear in mind that with much less of our plates, we almost built the dangerous Saddleback Ranch Road, we forgot the put the disabled entrance for Tamarask Park, we miss-bid the street sweeping contract, and we had problems with the bidding process for Village Pond Park. IOW we have problems even when our schedule is not as ambitious it will be.

Improved quality control is a must if we are to succeed. The opportunities are enormous, but the challenges are also great. Looking at the staff, the Commissions, and our contract agencies, we need to develop a new, more effective, and efficient quality control system.

RESEARCH CAPABILITIES

Our ability to adequately address problems and research possible approaches has always been limited, yet many of the things we do require study, analysis, and proper projections.

• What is the current status of our traffic situation, and how will it be impacted by the next 2,000 homes approved and not yet built?
• What is the best use of any piece of land, looked at solely from the revenue and expenses associated with that land?
• If we intend to spend $50,000 on social media advertising, how can the money be best spent? How will we measure the effectiveness of these programs.
• What impact will a new mobile app have on our service delivery? What are the cost implications?
• If we reduce the costs of an unaltered dog license, what impact will that have on our licensing revenue and where else might we discover changes?

These are not merely academic questions. These are real life problems we are faced with and for which we need accurate data to help guide our decisions. But we are woefully inadequate to meet these challenges using our existing resources. OTOH, building these resources is expensive and time-consuming, and contracting for them is cost prohibitive.

The City should be building bridges with the local colleges and universities, providing opportunities for students at all levels to work in various capacities helping us solve these problems. The payroll costs of part-time management of the university projects will more than pay for itself with competent, multi-disciplinary, and independent data collection and analysis.

Next time we’ll look at public safety.

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 on June 10 at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.