City Council Preview - July 1

This week’s City Council meeting has a lot of distressing items on the agenda. Let’s look at a few –

PUTTING LAKE FOREST LAST

The City is announcing a bunch of contracts. Let’s see how many go to businesses in our City –

• Street Pole Banner Services - $31,401 – Dekra-Lite, SANTA ANA

So the City is spending nearly $1,000,000 at this meeting alone and not a cent is going to a local business. Yet how often have you heard Scott Voigts or Dwight Robinson promise to help our local businesses?

LOBBYING

The two-faced corrupt politicians who run the City studied George Orwell’s “1984” as part of their basic training, and so they seek to distract everyone from the real issues. In this case we have an ordinance against City Council members acting as “professional lobbyists…before other government agencies in Orange County”.  Duh. That’s not our problem! Our problem is that people like Scott Voigts, Dwight Robinson, and Kathy McCullough take tens of thousands of dollars FROM people and businesses lobbying for their special needs, and then they vote to give these people what they paid for. That’s the problem we should be correcting. Don’t worry about our politicians going to another City and lobbying there – let’s worry about who’s coming here and lobbying them.

CLASSIFICATION PLAN FOR CITY EMPLOYEES

Here’s another example of the distorted thinking that goes into the City’s daily operations. The City spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out how much more money to pay themselves. City employees right now enjoy more than generous salaries and compensation packages. What they don’t have is a record of outstanding achievement to go along with those salaries. How many times have we exposed deeply flawed reports from high ranking City employees? How many math errors, conceptual errors, and flaws in research design have we identified inside reports that are being used to shape our lives? How often have we pointed out how much other cities thrive with amenities like senior centers, dog parks, civic centers, local animal shelters, traffic commissions, nonprofit community foundations, etc. and yet our City employees handle none of these things. Instead of worrying about how to pay City employees more money, we should be focused on how to get them to do a better job. Of course there are a few exceptions, as I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, but these few exceptions are no panacea for the lack of competence demonstrated time and again. Where is the plan to improve employee performance?

VOIGTS VOID IS STILL VACANT

None of the dozen plus items left over from the disastrous Mayor ship of Scott Voigts is coming up this week. Apparently Voigts’ BFF and new Mayor Robinson is no more adept at moving an agenda along than Voigts was. Here’s a partial list of important topics that were raised in 2013 and still have not seen the light of day in 2014 –

• Finding a location for a dog park

• Solving the problems at Village Pond Park

• Finding a location for a community garden

• Revising the process by which the City approves the sale of alcohol

• Improving the transparency of government

GOOD NEWS

There is some good news

• The ordinance introduced by Mayor Pro Tem Nick to require a 4/5 vote before you can increase taxes or fees is coming up for a final vote. Thank you Mr. Nick for protecting the taxpayers.

• More traffic signal synchronization work is proceeding, this time on Barranca/Muirlands (FWIW – the City is more than 20 year old and we are still trying to get our traffic lights synchronized – doesn’t that seem strange?)

TOMORROW we'll continue with our "DinnerGate" series about how Councilwoman McCullough spends city money while on trips. 

See you Tuesday night.

PS – Are you participating in the “Make History” contest?

Click here for more information. The deadline is coming up this week.