A New Lake Forest - Part 3

This article is the third in a 5-part series. On Monday we looked at the changes made to our City Council meeting. On Tuesday we looked at our major legislative changes and the more business friendly measures we’ve undertaken. Here’s what we’ve covered so far –

• A greeter meets everyone at the door and orients them.
• We show a slide show with information about the City.
• We broadcast live on Facebook
• We re-order the agenda to fit the people present
• A Production Assistant displays relevant agenda reports
• We created a welcome videotape.
• We introduced an 8 pm “necessity break”
• We offer take-aways (e.g. upcoming events, new businesses, pets available )
• New campaign finance legislation
• Creation of an Ethic Committee
• Creation of a Traffic Committee
• Introduction of real term limits
• Aggressively promoting ribbon cuttings
• Creating “block parties” to promote local businesses
• Expanding "Shop and Dine" week to a month-long celebration

Today I want to talk about new ways to reach out to residents and ways to improve our quality of life.

REACHING OUT TO RESIDENTS

We are trying to reach out to more people and to get more people involved in government. Some of the ways we are doing this include –

• Creation of Mayor’s Councils, starting with separate meetings with HOA leaders (March 20) and Business executives (April 25).
• Creation of the Traffic Commission. Officially adopted Feb 20.
• Live-streaming of all major meetings. We did this for our Neighborhood Improvement Project workshops (Click Here) and will continue for new projects as they come up.
• Live streaming with participation. This is a little harder to do, but we are doing it for Council meetings and we did it for the Strategic Planning workshop (Feb 27). Once we are in our new City Hall, we plan to do this for all meetings and seminars. (Click Here). I am hoping we will upgrade to Skype.
• We are busy creating a “Pop-up City Hall” where staff and Council members will be available at community events. Residents will be able to get literature, talk with staff/council, and submit questions/comments. The first one is scheduled for April 14.
• We now have a working model of the new mobile app that will revolutionize communication between the City and residents. I hope to see a beta working version by the summer and roll out before the end of the year.
• We created a "Mayor's Minute" - a weekly videotape broadcast about what's happening in the City as well as upcoming events. The first minute was filmed Feb 21 (Click Here)
• We will add the requirement that Commission members attend at least one city event per month. Believe it or not but most Commission members rarely show up at city events.

Of course I will continue with my quarterly Town Hall meetings (next one May 17), and Mayor Pro Tem Leah Basile and I will continue having office hours. BTW – both Mayor Pro Tem and Col. Cagley have been present at many of our city events. I also want to recognize Parks Commissioners Loretta Herrin and Jim Rosenberg who are stalwarts at meeting the residents at our events.

Management Services (Brett Channing, Jonathan Volke, Skylar Hunter) and Economic Development (Carlo Tomaino, Adrian Grijalva) helped us make this happen. Without their work it would only be ideas.

IMPROVING OUR QUALITY OF LIFE

Beyond the topics already discussed, we are slowly but surely improving the quality of life for residents. Here are some of the ways –

• We offered a seminar on child exploitation and internet safety and due to the success we will be instituting this on a regular basis to supplement our existing Child Safety course. (Click Here)
• The Council voted to proceed with finding a local no-kill alternative to contracting with the County for animal services.
• After much delay, the shade at the dog park was finally built. (Click Here)
• The parking structure on the Civic Center site was finished and we continue on schedule and on budget.
• After running into snags because of the unstable bottom conditions of the Pond, progress on Veterans Park (formerly Village Pond Park) is back of schedule.
• The Neighborhood Improvement Project was completed and plans to improve 10 of our neighbor parks are going before the Parks Commission and eventually to the Council. (Click Here)
• Improvements to the landscape around the Sports Park have been completed and it looks much better.
• We update the calendar on the city's website to have an entire year ahead for better planning and coordination.
• We voted to spend more than $12 million on traffic improvements all over the city (Bake Pkwy, El Toro, Lake Forest Drive, Jeronimo, Muirlands, Rancho, etc).

Tomorrow we’ll talk about ways to improve how government works.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest where he serves as Mayor. 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 Twitter handle is @DrJimGardner. 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 May 17 at 7 pm at the Lake 1 Clubhouse (Ridge Route).