Council Says "NO" to Community Foundation

This Friday morning the City Council celebrated the achievements of volunteers in making Lake Forest a better place to live with the 2014 “Leadership Breakfast”. Ironically, at the Council meeting Tuesday night the Council voted 4 to 1 against greater volunteer participation by refusing to let the staff explore the possibilities of activating the long dormant Lake Forest Community Foundation (LFCF). This isn’t the first time the Council has rejected the idea of more volunteers participating in the life of the City. Only a few meetings past, they rejected the idea of a citizen-based Traffic Commission.

Tuesday night it was apparent that most of the Council members’ minds had been made up before the meeting began. Mayor Robinson, in his concluding remarks admitted the same, just in case anyone doubted it. As incredible as it may seem, Lake Forest’s City Council refused to get more information to help them decide whether or not to activate the dormant Lake Forest Community Foundation (LFCF), a nonprofit group that could work with individuals and small nonprofits to make the City a better place to live, especially for the less fortunate. Apparently it made no difference that almost every other City in Orange County has a functioning Foundation, or that each year millions of dollars are raised by these foundations to support worthy causes.

Mrs. McCullough led the attack. She indicated that she knew everything there was to know about nonprofits and foundations and in her accumulated wisdom, activating a nonprofit would only spell doom for the City. She reasoned that if the federal government discovered something amiss in one of the nonprofits that were helped by the Foundation, the City itself would be at risk. Her thinking in this case was as clouded as it is in most cases, because a Lake Forest Community Foundation need not be operated by the City at all. In fact, many cities operate their Foundations outside the formal City structure, so her comments made no sense. Indeed, they made even less sense when you realize that McCullough just voted spending nearly $60,000 of City money on a group of nonprofits including Irvine’s Family Forward, Irvine’s South County Outreach, Camino Health Center in San Juan Capistrano, Age Well Senior Services in Laguna Woods, and Laguna Beach Community Clinic. Here we have exactly the case McCullough fears – a City directly supporting nonprofits, yet she had no hesitations supporting this action. A nonprofit LFCF that operated independently of the City would have far less exposure for the City than the exposure she just voted for.

Councilman Voigts came next. He was opposed to spending money on people in need. He believed they should organize and raise their own money in order to achieve their objectives. If government steps in and helps them, he feels we weaken their resolve. Voigts, in case you didn’t know, is confined to a wheelchair as a result of a construction accident, and he recently voted to spend $175,000 of taxpayer money to improve the City streets for people in wheelchairs. Apparently the idea of spending government money on people with needs works perfectly well when the needs are his, but when they apply to hungry children or homeless people, he has second thoughts.

Mayor Robinson believes it’s “Socialism” to take money from the rich and give it to the poor. In case you needed reminding, Robinson recently took thousands of dollars from rich developers and gave it to himself to help him get elected. Apparently this wasn’t “Socialism”. In any event, a LFCF need not be doling out City money, but could rather be a conduit for any socially minded person to have a place to go to support worthy causes. Think of it as a “United Way” for Lake Forest and you get the idea. Robinson’s “Socialism” is a straw man constructed to make for a good sound bite, but having no substance.

The only voice of reason and compassion was that of Councilman Nick, who argued that it was premature to kill the idea based on so many unknowns, and who wanted the staff to survey cities that have Foundations and report back their findings. With knowledge in hand, the Council could make an “informed decision”, he pleaded to deaf ears.

McCullough replied “I don’t need to think about it” and along with the other 3 Council members, they voted down the LFCF.

As already noted, the vote against the LFCF was not an isolated event. The previous vote against the Traffic Commission showed a similar reluctance by the Council to share their powers with a broader audience. Indeed, under Mayor Robinson there have been numerous occasions in which any type of public input has been discouraged, not merely power sharing. For example, on March 18, 2014 when Councilman Nick asked for the Council to conduct a straw vote of the residents from Ridge Route who took the time to come to the Council meeting to talk about permit parking, Robinson refused to allow it.  On March 3, 2014 when Nick argued that more time was needed to hear from the public about the new trash hauler contract, Robinson voted against it (never mentioning that his campaign committee had taken money from CC&R, the new trash company for whom he voted). On Jan 21 2014 when a room full of mobile home residents asked him for protection against the sale of the mobile home parks by the owners, he listened to their pleas and then voted against them (never mentioning that his campaign committee had taken money from El Toro Mobile Estates, the management company who represented the park owners who were opposed to more protection for the residents).

Honoring the volunteers who make Lake Forest a better place to live with a breakfast is a good thing to do, but if the Council really wanted to honor the people, they would do more to involve more people in the business of the City. Lake Forest has a multitude of bright, energetic and dedicated people, many of whom could contribute enormously to making the City a better place to live, and who don’t need a breakfast to do it.