Council Does Nothing Again - Part 1

Tuesday night the Council voted to postpone any action on 2 of the 3 items that were on the agenda for “discussion/action”. Only a few weeks earlier they voted to postpone any actions on the ordinance to prohibit feeding wildlife, and now again they decided to postpone any action. Doing nothing comes easily to this Council. Even a casual look at the minutes for the past year reveals how little they’ve accomplished. Here’s a brief review –

UNKEPT PROMISES

·  Despite campaign promises and the fact that traffic is problem #1 for most people in Lake Forest, the Council continues to refuse to appoint a Traffic Commission or Committee. And they do this with the knowledge that many other cities find value in having a group of citizens help solve local traffic issues.

·  Despite campaign promises to spend more of the city’s $35,000,000 annual budget on people and businesses in the City, this Council has presided over the greatest decrease in local spending since I’ve been looking at the problem. We now spend less than 2% of our budget in our City, down from 5% only a year ago. Yet the Council still refuses to do anything about this, including appointing a committee to help divert more of our funds to our own people. Instead they deny that the problem exists and instead talk about all the “grand openings” they attend, with nary a mention of all the vacant storefronts that litter the city. 

·  Having allowed the County to increase the size of Musick Jail, and to alter the population to now include dangerous felons, with plans to go ahead and introduce maximum security felons, the Council has done nothing to protect the citizens from the inevitable escapes, which have already occurred. Must someone be seriously injured before this Council does anything?

·  Despite promises to finally give our City a dog park, something which nearly all our neighbors enjoy, we are no closer now to a dog park than we were when the promises were made.

·  In the long list of “things we don’t have that everyone else has”, we are no closer to a senior center or a civic center than we were at the start of the year, or at the start of the decade, for that matter.

I could go on, but it gets a little depressing to recall all the unkept promises.

ENDLESS REVIEWS

One of the reasons this Council has been so ineffective is that they can’t seem to make up their minds. Month after month they find themselves discussing the same agenda items. How many times must we consider the feeding ordinance? How many times must we listen to the dangers of using technology from the dais? How many times must they review the proposed changes in signage? How many times did we have to discuss the invocation? Barely a meeting goes by when some item hasn’t been postponed or continued. Previous Councils who were slow to act, at least could make decisions more easily than this group.

WASTE OF RESOURCES

Needless to say, not only is this counterproductive to doing a good job, and wasteful of resources, it is inconsiderate for the people who show up to comment on specific issues, only to spend hours waiting for their turn, and then learn that it is going to be postponed.

REPORTS NOT IN

Several times the reason for postponing a session is that requested reports are not in. That’s why Mayor Pro Tem McCullough requested a delay in the notification vote. That’s why the first waterfowl feeding ordinance was postponed. But why on Earth are we putting items on the agenda unless all the relevant paperwork is in?

MEMBERS MISSING

Another reason given to postpone meetings is that one of the Council members isn’t present. Duh! Isn’t that why we have a quorum? Life doesn’t have to stop just because a Council member can’t make it. And if it’s soooo important that every Council member has to be there, why haven’t we done anything about teleconferencing? The Brown Act specifically allows us to use teleconferencing so that Council members can participate even if they can’t attend. Why haven’t we done anything about this?

Bottom line – there is no excuse for postponing agenda items due to incomplete reports or to non-attendance by Council members, yet this is the pattern this Council has set.

Tomorrow we’ll continue our analysis of what’s gone wrong and why it’s gone wrong, and maybe a few ideas about how the Council can do a better job in the future.