A Vision for Lake Forest - More Responsive Government

Yesterday we discussed my vision for Lake Forest, beginning with ways to take advantage of the wealth of our people with their experience, intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm.. Today I want to discuss having a more responsive government.

Too often decisions are being made based on the values and interests of the individual Council members, and do not necessarily reflect what the residents want. The Council needs to have its finger on the pulse of the community.

Here are some suggestions –

WORK WITH THE HOAS

Most of the people who live in Lake Forest live in an HOA. The 20 largest HOAs have more than half the population of the City. Here is a wealth of knowledge waiting to be used by the City. A few years ago Lake 2 President Jim Reichert organized a forum where Board members got together a few times a year to discuss issues of mutual interest, and it was very valuable. I’d like to see that formalized, with quarterly meetings with Board Presidents (or their designees) and City Council and Planning Commission members. These goal setting and feedback sessions would be an excellent source for keeping the Council/Commissions grounded in what’s happening in the community.

DEVELOP FEEDBACK MECHANISMS

It would be relatively easy to set up an online polling system where residents could come and express their opinions. In this way, the actions of the Commissions and the Council can be guided by what the public really want, not what individual Council or Commission members want.

Right now we spend thousands of dollars every 2 years to have a “research” company tell us how great we are and to provide almost no information about where we want to go.

Click Here for my analysis of this approach.

What business ever thrived by taking a look every 2 years at what happened? We need to be proactive. For very little cost the City could be assessing, in real time, people’s thoughts and beliefs about a host of topics.

REGULAR HOURS

One of the things that annoy many people is their inability to actually talk to a council member. Some Council members have been very good about this, but others have been very poor. I’d like to establish regular hours, so that a Council member would be available, for example, Monday afternoons, for people to come by and chat. I know some Council members work full time so this may be an imposition on them, but for people like me who are retired, we would welcome the opportunity.

MORE COMMUNITY FORUMS

Occasionally the City hosts a forum in which community members get to sit down with staff and officials and chat about issues of concern. This year we had a forum about traffic which was very productive in terms of residents communicating their needs and desires (I’m not so sure it was any good in producing any change at the City, but maybe it’s too soon to tell). Several years ago there was a widely attended forum on the need of a local animal shelter, and while that was excellent in showing the Council what people thought, it produced very little results.

Forums are good, but as used by the City they are basically a mechanism, for residents to “blow off steam” and there have been very few examples in which a forum produced cogent results. The City should re-examine the procedures behind the forums and design forums which can be more productive in terms of policy. After all, the Council is there to reflect the needs and desire of the people, and when forums give us a pretty good idea of what kind of a City we want, there should be a mechanism to implement these valuable suggestions.

These are a few of the ideas I would like to implement in 2015.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss ways to improve the planning and decision making process.

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.