Our second Town Hall meeting of the year produced some valuable insights.
BETTER COMMUNICATION
Residents asked that the City provide better communications. In particular they wanted a place where they could go and view all the construction projects underway or planned. Where are they? When will they start? When will they finish? I entered “construction projects”, “ongoing construction” and several more terms into the website “search” and found nothing useful.
Next they wondered what the street sweeping days/times were for their neighborhoods. They wanted a place they could go, put in their address and get the info. I entered “street sweeping schedule” into the website “search” and found a 19 page pdf that listed street sweeping by the day of the week. Bad news if your street gets done on Friday between 12 pm and 4 pm – you’d have to search all 19 pages to find out.
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Can you think of other ways the City could better communicate?
I asked the residents if they got the various newsletters that the City put out. For example, we have
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- Monthly eNewsletter (Click here)
- Economic development (Click Here)
Even better, the City has a “Notify Me” webpage where you can customize your contacts with the City. Click Here to go to that page.
NEW PARKING CODE ENFORCEMENT OFFICER
Residents were concerned that the 4 current Community Service Officers (CSO) charged with code enforcement were doing the best job possible and how well the fifth person would do. We talked briefly about the new mobile app and how that should make the job easier for everyone. We also talked about getting the street sweeping enforcement off the ground. This would involve
- Targeting a few problem areas
- Notifying people of the street sweeping schedule (door-step and windscreen)
- Posting temporary signs at strategic places
- Enforcing the ordinance with warnings for first week
- Follow-up with ticketing and possible towing for chronic offenders
People were also concerned that the 72 hours ordinance was not being enforced. This creates a real hardship in some areas.
NAKASE NURSERY
Residents talked about the possible sale of the Nakase nursery. Some were concerned that Toll Brothers (the potential buyers of the property) had promised an elementary school but SVUSD officials indicated they were not interested in a new elementary school in that area. Some also worried that Toll Brothers had said that the residents faced a choice between the property being sold as a commercial or a residential development, which isn’t the case.
Generally speaking residents were opposed to the property being re-zoned for any purpose due to the concerns with traffic and the fact that there are still thousands of more homes in the area which have yet to be built.
Our next Town Hall meeting will be Sept 9 at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.
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 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on Sept. 9 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.
