Is Scott Voigts Stretching the Truth? (Again)

Scott Voigts is up to his old tricks again. Earlier this year we reported that he broke almost every promise he made in 2010, and we showed his campaign literature and one-by-one went through his promises and compared them to what he actually did. Not only did he not fulfill almost all of his promises, he actually did the reverse of what he promised to do on about half of them.

Apparently he’s learned not to make any more promises, so this time he is simply making false claims. In an earlier article I detailed how often Voigts lies, and his current campaign gives us more examples of this penchant to stretch the truth beyond recognition. Here’s a sample –

ARE WE SAFE?

Voigts says “The first job of local government is keeping our community safe”.

How safe are we since Voigts took office? Here are some notable events –

• · The vital Neighborhood Watch coordinator position was allowed to go unfilled for more than a year.
• · Murders in Lake Forest from 2011 to 2013 were so common we exceeded the combined total for every city under the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in South County. IOW - We had more murders than 9 other neighboring cities combined.
• · In 2014, so far, we have even more rapes, robberies, and stolen vehicles than in 2013.
• · The cost of Public Safety rose more than $500,000 with not a single extra officer on the street.

Does that sound like he’s done a good job?

Voigts points out that “Over the past four years our crime rate has stayed among the lowest in the state.” That’s true, because the state’s crime rate is heavily weighed by the high crime in cities like Oakland and Los Angeles. If you compare us to our neighbors, however, we have one of the highest crime rates in South Orange County. Even much larger cities (e.g., Irvine, Mission Viejo) have lower crime rates. But Voigts is happy that our crime rate is below that of Oakland and South Central Los Angeles.

ARE WE OPEN FOR BUSINESS?

Voigts says “Lake Forest is open for business.”

Is he kidding? If you drive around Lake Forest you see more vacant storefronts than any neighboring City. Some centers (e.g., Muirlands and Lake Forest Drive, El Toro Rd. and Montbury) have more than half their stores vacant. It looks like a major recession.

One of the reasons for the vacant storefronts is that our City spends less than 2% of our $35,000,000 annual budget in our city, on people and/or businesses. When Voigts joined the Council we were spending 5%. Now we are at an all time low, and every time I raise this issue, Voigts claims that everything is OK. But anyone who drives around can see that our City is still in the midst of a major recession. Recent projections from UCLA and Chapman say that our tax revenue growth will only be half of the rest of Orange County. Does that sound like we’re “open for business”?

IS OUR QUALITY OF LIFE BETTER?

Voigts claims he is “improving our quality of life”.

He cites the new sports park which is about to open, but he doesn’t tell you that he had virtually nothing to do with this great addition to the City. Thank Richard Dixon, Marcia Rudolph, Peter Herzog, and Mark Tettemer for the sports park – they were on the Council when the funds were raised and the plans were made. Voigts is merely sitting in the seat when it opens.

While the sports park is a great addition, what about other aspects of our quality of life.

• · Traffic is worse than ever.
• · Seniors still don’t have the center they were promised more than a decade ago.
• · Crime is at an unacceptable level.
• · We have so many DUIs from the growth in stores selling beer and wine that we are one of the most dangerous cities in South Orange County from that perspective.
• · We continue to contract with one of the oldest animal shelters in the U.S. with a kill rate nearly 50%, and we’re required to travel a long way in the event our pets are picked up.

Meanwhile, almost every one of our neighboring cities has a senior center, a civic center, a local animal shelter, a non-profit community center, etc.

In fact, among our neighbors in recent years, Lake Forest has the lowest level of satisfaction with our quality of life.

Lake Forest is a good place to live, but there is nothing that Voigts has done to contribute to this. Notice that his advertisement doesn’t mention any of his achievements, because he has few if any to brag about.

About Jim Gardner

Dr. Jim Gardner is the editor of CITY WATCH on The Patch and a contributing editor to OC Politics and Voice of OC. He is running for City Council in Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook.