The Road Ahead - Part 2

A few weeks ago I wrote about New Directions for the City and highlighted the immediate challenges ahead (Click Here). Today I want to continue with some equally important issues confronting us as a city, especially in light of our ability to appoint a new City Manager.

Last time I identified 4 major challenges

1. Selecting a new City Manager
2. Keeping our existing capital improvement programs on schedule
3. Insuring that we will not exceed our budget once the new capital programs are in place.
4. Doing a better job on traffic congestion and parking availability

EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS

It’s now a well-established joke to say “Don’t worry. The Government is here.” Governments are not known for their quality work or their timeliness. Look at our own recent past –

• · We re-modeled Tamarisk Park and forgot to put in the disabled access, causing not merely delays and inconvenience, but additional dollars.
• · We almost built a road (Saddleback Ranch Rd) that surely would have injured pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers, then finally, got it right, causing much emotional distress, delays, and additional dollars.
• · We are two years behind on the renovation of Village Pond Park causing emotional distress and unhealthy conditions for visitors and children in a nearby school.
• · The change in our PCN (alcohol licensing) policy took more than two years to develop and then implement, causing delays to businesses looking to move forward.

I could go on, but you get the point. Not everything we do is so filled with these types of foibles, but surely we need to do a better job. There are two kinds of problems here - the mistakes we make (effectiveness) and the time lag (efficiency).

Considering this problem in the light of selecting a new City Manager, one of the qualities we need to look for in him/her is the ability to engage large projects effectively and efficiently. We are entering a time when we never had so many large projects in front of us, so the need is even greater than before.

RETAIL REVITALIZATION

I’ve written recently about the revolution among our neighbors in developing large scale retail projects that make their cities a destination (Click Here). Our neighbors on all sides are engaged in massive projects to improve the nature of their major shopping areas, while we are doing just about nothing. Their progress will draw sales and jobs away from our City. When you consider that sales tax is our second biggest source of revenue, this is not a small concern.

We need to bring together a team to explore creating a new retail area that will be a unique destination, and we need to do this in such a way that it doesn’t cannibalize our existing retail businesses.

Meanwhile we need to develop better indices of our success in the retail area and see how we compare to other cities. As I drive around I see more vacant storefronts in Lake Forest than in our neighboring cities, and I hear this from many others as well.

Considering the problem of retail revitalization in the light of selecting a new City Manager, one of the qualities we need to look for in him/her is the ability to create and manage such an enterprise. I was impressed by the enthusiasm and abilities of the new City Manager at Aliso Viejo who has taken on this task for their city. Not all people will have this skill, and for some cities it may not be significant. But given what is happening all around us, we need to get going in this direction.

QUALITY WORK

I’ve been critical from time to time about the quality of the reports we get from staff. Though there has been an improvement in the last year, we are still far from what I consider an excellent level. Our decisions on the City Council depend on the information we get from staff. If we get inadequate, incomplete, or faulty information, our decisions will suffer, not only in financial respects, but in regards to our quality of life.

We will only get consistently high quality work from our staff if the new City Manager makes this a goal. The City Manager does not necessarily need to have these abilities, but someone in the hierarchy needs to be responsible for quality assurance. Almost every industry I am aware of has quality assurance built in and we need to do this too.

STAGE OF LIFE

Cities have a life sequence just like people and businesses do. Some of it derives from the stages of life of the people who live in that City, and some comes from the infrastructure and financial abilities of the City. To make matters even more complicated, the stage of life of a City is partially determined by external forces as well.

Broadly speaking, the stages of life for a City (just as life itself) start with birth, early growth, sustained growth, maturity, and decline. Cities then experience revitalization, though some do in fact experience death.

For each stage, resources are utilized differently and a different style of leadership is needed. We need to identify where we are as a City and where we are going. To do this, we need to consider our demographics, our economic base, our infrastructure, and our place within our neighbors, sandwiched as we are between Irvine and Mission Viejo.

• · Can we become a bustling business or social hub for South Orange County?
• · Are we to become primarily a suburban home for workers in the greater OC area?
• · Can we become a destination for people seeking the best in sports, entertainment, dining, or ????
• · Shall we focus on being primarily a self-contained unit that provides sufficient housing, jobs, and quality environment to serve our own needs?

These are some important issues to grapple with so that our decisions can be made in the proper context. Take, for example, the Sports Park. Shall we create policies that maximize the use of the Park for residents, or shall we create a premiere destination for sports team from all over Orange County? Part of the answer to that question can be determined by our goal as enunciated above. Consider the new civic center. Are we creating a performing arts center that will draw people from all over, or is it to be a center to meet the needs of our 80,000 residents?

Instead of moving forward with no guiding vision, we need to create a vision for the next 20 years that will help us in our deliberations today. Returning once more to the opportunity to appoint a new City Manager, we are looking for someone with the talents and experience to help us achieve that vision.

You can continue this discussion on Lake Forest Town Square. Let me know what other issues concern you.

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.