What a busy week this has been…
PARADE COMMITTEE
Monday night at 6 pm the Parade Committee met to choose the logo and to welcome 3 new members, including Tim Kolbo and Holly Turner, recent grads from the Leadership Academy. The Committee decided that we wanted more musical groups this year.
PARKS WORKSHOP 1
I jumped from the Parade Committee next door to the 7 pm Parks workshop. Thanks to Jonathan Volke and his staff we live-streamed the workshop. Dozens of people watched from home and they also added comments.
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Lots of ideas were shared with the 30 people in attendance, among them adding a “dog run” to the top of Vintage Park and adding a parking lot to the bottom of Regency Park.
CITY MANAGER PRE-COUNCIL MEETING
Tuesday, an hour before the City Council meeting, the City Manager and I met to discuss the forth-coming meeting, make some minor changes to the agenda, and address any possible needs for data that hadn’t yet been anticipated.
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CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday night we had a long Council session but a very productive one. We put forward campaign contribution limits as well as an Ethics Committee. We also codified the new drone regulations and decided to re-visit the districts. There is a separate article about what happened coming up tomorrow.
In addition to the substantive issues, we had a greeter, showed a 30 minute slide show from 6 pm to 6:30 pm, and live streamed the meeting on the Lake Forest FB page. Apparently we had over 1000 views and one person IM’d with a comment.
RIBBON CUTTING
Wednesday morning, Mayor Pro Tem Leah Basile, Councilman Voigts and I attended a ribbon cutting for Gold and Blue Veterinary Services, a new approach that focuses on wellness instead of disease. As someone with 5 birds, 3 dogs, and a cat, this was very interesting. The new business is on Lake Forest Drive next to the Prominance Hotel.
CITY MANAGER
Later Wednesday I met with the City Manager (Debra Rose) to go over the Council meeting from the previous night and be sure that we capture the essence of the meeting in the staff take-aways. Debra and I set up these meetings to help insure that we stay on track.
AGEWELL
Wednesday afternoon Col. Tom Cagley and I met with staff from AgeWell to come up with a solution to providing meals on wheels to 100 seniors who live in Lake Forest. We came up with some ideas and Tom and I are working on these. More about this in a future article.
PARKS WORKSHOP 2
Wednesday night I attended the 7 pm Parks workshop 2. Thanks to Jonathan Volke and his staff we live-streamed the workshop. Dozens of people watched from home and they also added comments. About a dozen of people were there.
Lots of ideas were shared, among them adding a “dog run” to the bottom of Montbury Park and removing from the “add list” a bathroom and a basketball court for Serrano Park.
ASSOCIATION OF MAYORS
Thursday morning at 7:30 am I went to a meeting in Dana Point with staff members Keith Neves (Asst. City Manager) and Carlo Tomaino (newly appointed Director of Economic Development). We got an update from Supervisor Lisa Bartlett on county wide initiatives and also got some data on the future of retail. The workshop spawned some ideas that I shared with our Chamber of Commerce and hopefully will appear in the near future.
PARKS WORKSHOP 3
Later Thursday night I attended the 7 pm Parks workshop 3. Once again dozens of people watched from home and they also added comments. Less than a dozen of people were there.
Lots of ideas were shared and residents objected strongly to adding a bathroom in their parks..
HOMELESS
Friday morning City Manager Debra Rose and I attended a workshop on homelessness. Council members Voigts and Robinson were also there. This problem has new meaning since the county started evicting over 1,000 homeless people from the river bed in Anaheim. I’ve already seen an increase in our city.
Here in Lake Forest we doubled our Homeless Liaison Officer presence.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
After the homeless workshop, I met with the City Manager (Debra Rose) and Assistant City Manager (Keith Neves) to work on the strategic planning session coming up later this month (Feb 27). We designed a format that we hope will be efficient and effective.
SPECIAL NEEDS DANCE
Saturday night we had a Valentine’s Special Needs Dance. We have these dances quarterly and they are great fun for everyone. Newly appointed City Councilman Tom Cagley stopped by, along with Commissioners Herrin and Rosenberg.
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 twitter handle is @DrJimGardner. 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 Thursday Feb 15 at 7 pm at the Beach and Tennis Club on Ridge Rte.
