Resident Concerns - Part 2

Yesterday we started a series about resident concerns, and we began with the traffic and parking issue and the possibilities of a Traffic and Parking Commission. Today we’ll consider some other issues of importance.

SOBER LIVING HOMES

The City held a meeting recently at Baker Ranch over concerns with sober living homes. From time to time there are similar concerns in other areas, and quite frankly, it’s difficult to know whether people are talking about group homes, sober living homes, boarding homes, AIR BNB, or what.

As a first step I’ve asked the staff to generate a list of all homes in SFR areas that are licensed for other purposes, or used for purposes other than SFR. Once we have the list we can decide whether or not the existence of these homes is associated with problems we need to address.

In the interim, every person has a responsibility to be a good neighbor, and the City has sufficient laws to deal with people who are not good neighbors, whether or not they live in a SFR, a group home, a sober living home, an AIR BNB, or whatever. If your neighbor is disturbing you by creating too much noise, parking inappropriately, living in their garage, etc. you should speak with them directly, and if that doesn’t work, contact your HOA and/or the City and/or the Police.

IRWD – GOOD NEIGHBOR?

The Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD) owns land inside Lake Forest but it seems like the IRWD is a kingdom unto itself. One of our residents has been struggling for months trying to resolve some issues at the Baker Ranch water treatment plant, near Serrano Highlands and Azalea Court. The 100 foot tower stands out and residents have asked IRWD to do something to reduce the visual blight. IRWD claims they needed a 100 foot tower to meet their communication needs. IRWD has made changes at their 3 other locations in the city, but no other location required a 100 foot tower. For some reason IRWD refuses to disguise the tower.

Elsewhere another resident has an ongoing problem with IRWD over the noise produced during construction as well as what she perceives as dangerous environment.

I’ve asked the staff to get involved, and to do what’s necessary to get IRWD to conform to being a good neighbor.

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Many of our residents are upset that the Board of Supervisors (BoS) is putting severe limits on the public’s ability to speak (Click Here). The Board is going to prevent people from speaking on each agenda item, and instead they will limit all public comments to the beginning of the meeting. In one respect this is a good idea. In the past, you had to wait to make public comments about non agenda items. Because the BoS allowed public comment only after the agenda items were finished, someone who wanted to make a general public comment had no way of knowing when they would speak. It could mean waiting for hours. It was a stupid system and inconsiderate, and moving the public comments to the start of the meeting is far superior.

But eliminating public comments on specific agenda items is equally stupid. Comments made at the beginning of the session may be relevant 3 or 4 hours later when the item comes up. These comments (and questions) need to come up in proximity to the agenda item itself, not separated by hours.

To add insult to injury, the new public comment period is for 20 minutes only. At 3 minutes per person, that means an entire meeting of the BoS can receive only 6 or 7 public comments – that’s 6 or 7 comments on general issues and on agenda issues combined. Here in Lake Forest we almost always have more than this for our City Council meetings. The BoS has even more people to be responsible to.

I’m going to ask our Council to recommend to the BoS that they allow public comments on agenda items, and that they keep the change of allowing non agenda public comments at the beginning of the meeting. As citizens of OC our residents often go to the BoS meetings. I’ve been there myself and spoken during public comments several times. We need to protect the rights of our residents.

WIRED CITY

Several people have asked about the "Google Glass" project in Irvine, which was recently cancelled. But the idea sparked the question of what can we do as a City, and I posed that question to the Government Affairs representative for Cox Communications, a company with headquarters right here in Lake Forest. She was interested in some type of cooperative arrangement with their host City, so I am going to ask the Council to open a dialogue with Cox about better ways to link the residents, businesses, and the City.

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 in January at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.