Mayor's Message

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Serving as Mayor during this pandemic has been surreal. However, despite the insanity and uncharted waters, our City has had a productive year.

To support our restaurants and essential businesses, we created and delivered "We're Open" banners, provided free permits for outdoor dining, and kept our building counter open to process permits. We assisted residents – young and old – hit hard by COVID-19 by hosting food, hygiene products, school supply, and blood drives while expanding our Park-It-Market and Grab-and-Go lunch programs. Our staff made thousands of wellness checks on homebound seniors and distributed PPE to our frontline workers. We thanked our incredible first responders and frontline personnel with life-size artistic signs and meal programs.

From the beginning, we created safety plans and up-to-the-minute news and information disseminated to help keep residents informed, safe, and healthy.

We also approved several new projects to move ahead, including the Trumark residential and Shea Homes developments, a new grocery store, and Raising Cane's eatery for the Office Max location on Crown Valley Parkway; and the Amazon Distribution center, generating 350 new jobs for our City. For the benefit of our community, we completed the renovations at Craycraft Park and Christopher Park and many other capital improvement projects – including at our newly renamed Oso Creek Golf Course.

In response to the economic impact of COVID-19, we proactively reduced our General Fund operating budget by $4.7 million. Our revenues have fared better than anticipated, and our City will end the year with a $3.5 million budget surplus! Some of that surplus will fund our investment in Public Safety for additional school resource officers and motorcycle traffic enforcement and support our amazing firefighters and first responders.

I worked closely with other mayors throughout the State of California to advocate for our citizens to open up businesses, swimming pools, other recreation facilities, youth sports, and equitable distribution of resources for all cities, not just the 13 biggest ones, from the State.

2020 has been a challenging year. I am grateful for many things (too numerous to list in this article) that our City has accomplished – and for the resilient spirit of our community. It has been an honor to serve as your Mayor during a pandemic. I welcome the opportunity to continue serving the people of Mission Viejo in a leadership role on the City Council.

Please visit www.BrianGoodell.com to learn more.

Paid for by Brian Goodell for Mission Viejo City Council.

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