Town Hall Meeting has Broad Concerns

We held our 5th Town Hall meeting on Saturday at the El Toro library. Most of the meeting was spent discussing animal care alternatives to the County shelter. The Lake Forest City Council recently asked staff to work with other cities (e.g., Laguna Hills, RSM, SJC) to explore ways to improve the service, including the possibilities of a jointly owned/managed animal shelter in South County. I have been busy getting together some numbers and here is what I found so far

ANIMAL CARE

Looking at the profile for 4 cities, in 2014 the County took in 1,123 live animals - 45% dogs, 22% cats, and 33% other. The most common “other” were small animals (possums, raccoons, rodents, skunks) that were 43% of the total, followed by birds (28%) and waterfowl (13%).

The County charged our citizens collectively almost $1,000,000 for services, over $800,000 going for licenses. In addition, the County collected more than $500,000 from the Cities’ general funds to cover their costs. That’s over $1,400 per animal which is more than twice the national average (according to Shelter Planners of America and the Humane Society of America).

In addition to sheltering, the biggest service performed by the county was looking for stray animals (30%) and following up on wild animal reports (11%), animal bite investigations (14%) and dead animal pickup (10%).

The group discussed alternate models for sheltering and service. There were some very valuable discussions here. Stay tuned for this one.

WHISPERING HILLS WORKSHOP

There was universal agreement that the recent Whispering Hills workshop was a waste of time and money, and that very little presented at the workshop could be used going forward. Participants were particularly upset at the lack of attention to the traffic and parking problem, and the failure to provide useful information about how well these amenities functioned where they are used in other cities. One person noted that the Arena Soccer venue in Mission Viejo was open air and had large stadium lights, a fact previously not disclosed and one that might disturb the people who live nearby on the bluff overlooking the area. On the other hand, he thought that the arena produced quite a profit for the YMCA, giving rise to the question as to why a City would build a business enterprise. Someone else noted that we needed to know what impact the drought was having on water use in community gardens. Given the new reality, this kind of homework needed to be done, but wasn’t. These kinds of details would have been very useful at the recent workshop, but they were completely missing.

The group also stressed the need for a global view of our assets and our needs before being able to make an effective decision on any one parcel. I will follow-up with Community Services.

COST SAVINGS

It was recommended that the City pursue as much as possible the idea of cost savings in the $15,000,000+ police budget. People singled out the use of a highly paid Sergeant who stands idly in the back at all the Council meetings. It was mentioned that at other City Council meetings where a Chief of Police is in attendance, additional law enforcement personnel was not needed. No one in the meeting can recall any time that the Sergeant actually did anything, and even if having a law enforcement staff member was felt necessary, having one of the highest paid individuals is probably not the best way to spend City dollars. I will follow-up with the Police Department.

SERRANO SCHOOL TRAFFIC

Concern was expressed that the City was not doing what it could to reduce the problems around Serrano School. Apparently one of the participants had sent a detailed report and made several recommendations which were not being followed, and the problem remained. I will follow-up with Public Works.

COMMENTS

It came to my attention that at times the COMMENTS section of the Patch doesn’t work. I have no control over this. I can neither enable or disable the Comments section nor can I delete or edit other people’s work. If you encounter this problem, please notify the Patch. If you want to discuss the issues raised in these articles you’re welcome to join more than 300 of us at Lake Forest Town Square, or you can e-mail me individually, come to my office hours, or attend my Town hall meetings.

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 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on December 15 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.

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