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Health & Fitness

First Council Meeting. Part 2 (You Pay, We Spend)

Yesterday we looked at the first Council meeting of 2014. The main theme was the difference between Mayor Robinson’s promises and his achievements –

  • He promised to build more schools and lower class size and didn’t.

  • He promised to set up a traffic commission and didn’t.

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  • He promised to be friendly to businesses in Lake Forest yet presided over the biggest drop in spending on our own people and businesses.

  • What else happened at our first Council meeting of 2014?

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    COUNCIL 2, PEOPLE 0

    Last month the Council voted to have taxpayers pay for them to get their own luxurious iPads, and they also offered a set to their Planning Commissioner sycophants. It was thought to be a tax savings program because the money saved by not printing the paper was thought to be greater than the cost of the iPads. Then the Council voted to continue getting paper copies, wiping out any possible savings (BTW - why are the taxpayers paying for expensive iPads when there are equivalent tablets available for much less money which will still do the same job?)

    This month they decided to make their lives even easier, and the lives of the Commission members, by moving to electronic filing of FPPC forms. Taxpayers will spend $10,000 per year for the next three years, and $14,000 per year thereafter, so that FPPC forms can be filed electronically. The City Clerk explained the process, but no one had any cost estimates, so it’s not clear what the savings will be. I know from personal experience that the staff time to receive and stamp FPPC forms is minimal, so it’s hard to believe that manually handling about 100 FPPC forms per year can justify the $10,000 to $14,000 annual costs.

    I may be premature, but there appears to be a disturbing trend for the Council members to be feathering their own nests at the expense of the taxpayers. At this point we probably shouldn’t rush to judgment, but it demands close scrutiny going forward. Bear in mind that several of these Council members (Voigts, Robinson, Nick) describe themselves as fiscally conservative and campaigned on not wasting taxpayer money.

    TAX THE PEOPLE

    If the Council has been busy making their own lives better, they are going to make life worse for a few hundred people in the City. The Council voted to institute restrictive parking with ticketing in two areas. See my previous report for the details. Almost everyone is in favor of having restricted parking for 4 hours per week so that street sweepers can do a better job keeping our streets clean, but many cities do this without adding a ticketing system. Apparently in these cities the people want to keep their City looking good, and comply with the restrictions without having to be ticketed. The Council was asked to have the same high regard for our citizens as these cities have for their citizens, but the Council decided that unless they punish transgressors (that’s you and me), the system will not work. This is even more puzzling, since the areas where the restricted parking will go into effect are areas in which the residents have asked for the restrictions. This seems like a well motivated group of people and it's a shame not to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    At the Council meeting I suggested that they start with posted restrictions only, and IF that didn’t work, they could add the punitive ticketing. But the Council wanted to start out with the “big stick” right away. Apparently they are hoping to pay for their iPads with the revenue from the parking tickets.

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