Lake Forest - Commissions or Omissions?

I have been urging the City Council for months to establish commissions or committee to deal with some of the major challenges confronting the City, which neither the Council nor the staff appears to be able to deal with adequately. That got me thinking – “Why does Lake Forest have so few Commissions?” We have a mere 2 commissions. Most cities have substantially more. Fullerton has 6 commissions as well as another 10 “committees”.  Irvine has 4 commissions, with 12 committees. Other cities with 4 or more commissions include Brea, Buena Park, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Los Alamitos, Placentia, San Juan Capistrano, and Yorba Linda

(FWIW - The main difference between a “commission” and a “committee” is whether or not you have to adhere to the Brown Act. Commissions do, committees don’t. This means committees are easier to form, easier to operate, and less expensive to maintain. Sounds like a good case for committees)

In Lake Forest, in addition to our 2 Commissions, we have a Parade Committee, a Teen Committee, and a Senior Advisory Board. With a total of 5 commissions and/or committees, Lake Forest has one of the worst records with regard to community participation among the 34 cities in Orange County.

NO MOTIVATED PEOPLE?

That’s a little disappointing because it certainly doesn’t reflect the level of commitment of the people who live in Lake Forest. Let’s look at some indicators –

·  Our HOAs are filled with volunteers.

·  The Parade Committee has more than 50 people actively involved. 

·  We had a dozen applicants for the vacant Planning Commission seat.

·  The Save Lake Forest movement came out of nowhere and within a week had 50 people going out in the heat of the summer collecting signatures.

So the people of Lake Forest are ready and willing.

NO CHALLENGES?

So if it’s not for the lack of motivated people, maybe it’s because we have so few challenges we don’t need any help. But that doesn’t seem right either. After all, everyone knows our traffic is abysmal. Yet we have no traffic committee. 16 cities (Brea, Buena Park, Cypress, Dana Point, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Irvine, La Palma, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Los Alamitos, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Westminster, Yorba Linda) have traffic committees. Why don’t we?

How about the fact (based on the last two months) that we spend less than 2% of our $35,000,000 annual budget here at home. Why don’t we have a committee to help solve that problem? 13 cities (Brea, Costa Mesa, Dana Point, Fullerton, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Laguna Niguel, Newport Beach, Orange, Placentia, San Clemente, Tustin, Villa Park) have finance/spending committees. Why don’t we?

Other popular committees, used elsewhere, but not here, include animals, military support, the Arts, etc. Don’t we have animal issues we should approach (e.g., Village Pond Park, a dog park, etc.)? Didn't we just try to adopt a Marine Battalion and come up with a major snag that a committee, if we had one, could have helped with?

People are a community’s greatest asset. Most of the other cities in Orange County are making better use of their citizens than we are in Lake Forest.

Next time let’s look at a related issue – why don’t we have a Lake Forest Foundation? And following that I want to take a look at how well the few Commissions we have are actually working.