Saddleback Ranch Road on Agenda for Nov 3

The never ending saga of Saddleback Ranch Rd continues.

In less than two weeks, what was set in concrete is now set free. Dictum from the City Manager and the staff that the process could not be changed has been changed to “What can we do for you?”

In an unprecedented move, the City Manager has placed an item on the agenda even though the majority of the Council told him not to do so. Council members Voigts, Robinson, and Hamilton voted to keep Saddleback Ranch Road off the agenda, and at the last meeting, Voigts and Hamilton assured us that the process should continue without review until complete. No need for an agenda item they said, as Councilman Nick and I had urged.

Look at the coming “Amended Agenda” just posted on the City’s website, and you’ll see that Item 8 has been added under “Discussion/Action Items”. It’s called “Saddleback Ranch Road Street Improvement Project Update” and what it does is to formally notify the Council of what I’ve been printing for the last few days, without some of the more colorful allusions. Namely

• · City staff met with Portola Hills residents on Oct 26
• · They reached consensus to add two 5’ bike lanes and reduce the size of the medians
• · On Oct 27 City staff met with “traffic engineering consultants to go over the proposed changes and directed them to prepare revised plans for further review.”
• · City staff will meet with the PH residents after the plans are finished, and share on the City’ website.
• · City staff hopes to have the revised plans available so that the Council can vote on the changes at the Nov 17 meeting.

This is of course great news, but nothing new. It basically repeats the information I reported on Tuesday (“The City Blinks”) and Wednesday (“SRR Gets Tagged”). Moreover, putting the item on the agenda as an “update” simply does what we intended to do in the first place – namely make a motion to put the item on the agenda for Nov 17.

I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s admonishment from Macbeth “Tis a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing”. We are going to a lot of trouble to put this on the agenda, and to amend the agenda, but in the end we are no better off than we were before these unusual circumstances took place. There is nothing new here, even though it is nice to see it happen.

Only this morning I raised the specter of how we go about setting our agenda, mainly because there are so many important items that are being left off the agenda and lingering in a “never-never-land” from which they seem to emerge, without rhyme or reason, and now we have this example.

Hopefully, now that the item is on the agenda, we can go beyond the two quick fixes that have already been agreed to and talk about some of the other issues that have been raised. These include, among other things, drainage and lighting. We should also be looking for assurances that the changes will not impede people’s ability to evacuate the Hills in time of emergency.

In any event, let’s be happy that the item will appear on the agenda after all. It saves me the time to make the motion I promised to make. And let’s be thankful for those people in the community whose advocacy forced the City to re-think their plan and to go to such unusual lengths. This includes Adam Nick, Grady Glover, Leah Basile, Steve Kuver, Matt Gutierrez, Cathy Jackson, Tracey Tingley, Sue Hill, and the dozens of people who spoke at the Council and TAG meetings, the hundreds of people who showed up at those meetings, and the 1000+ people who signed the petition.

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 Dec 12 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.

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