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Health & Fitness

Lake Forest 2014 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It’s more than 6 months into the new year so we’re looking at what’s been accomplished. Last time we found

  • Business as usual happened as usual.

  • Only 3 of the dozen plus Voigts Void issues surfaced in 2014. Two of the excellent ideas (a traffic commission and a nonprofit foundation) were defeated and the third (more efficient meetings) was inadequately resolved (i.e., they dealt with it, but didn’t solve it).

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  • Among the positive achievements, we loosened up our regulations on business and campaign signs, made it more difficult to raise our taxes and fees, and voted to stiffen the council’s expense policies.

  • Among the negatives, the Council spent our tax money making their life easier, voted the biggest fee increase in City history, and defeated several sunshine ordinances that would have made government more honest and transparent.

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    HEROES AND VILLAINS

    Even the most cursory reading of the past 6 months will show that there have been heroes and villains. Here’s my list of the “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”

     

    ADAM NICK  

    The hardest working person on the Council has been Mayor Pro Tem Adam Nick, who fought for honesty and transparency, even though his efforts were often singular and ultimately defeated. Nonetheless he managed to get the Council to revisit the travel expense policies that were subject to abuse (see my article on McCullough’s “DinnerGate”), put lobbying by Council members in the spotlight, and helped loosen the restrictive campaign sign ordinances.

     

    SCOTT VOIGTS

    Voigts has been working just as hard, only his work has been for himself. He fought hard to defeat the campaign finance reform measures, didn’t want the Council to prevent lobbying by council members, and was adamant that he didn’t want anyone to know how much money he pocketed before he voted to give the people who gave him the money what they wanted. Voigts also is parading around town telling people he is the “Mayor of Lake Forest”.

     

    DWIGHT ROBINSON

    Mayor Robinson has been a big disappointment. He’s failed to move meetings along and there have been times, like the most recent meeting, when he’s let the meeting drone on forever, bogged down in substitute motions, amendments, clarifications, and requests for the attorney’s opinion. He’s also been unable to handle the spats that periodically break out, although truth be told he has done a better job than Voigts did (Note to Robinson – being better than the worst Mayor in the City’s history is not a distinction to wear proudly). He’s also been unable to control the ramblings of Councilwoman McCullough, who can turn a 3 minute comment into a 10 minute soliloquy.

     

    WORST SINGLE MOMENT

    There were so many bad moments this year it’s hard to pick any one of them. Here’s a sample –

    • Scott Voigts pretending he’s the “Mayor of Lake Forest” while he solicits funds for his campaign.

    • Kathryn McCullough falsely calling a member of the public a “liar” and then offering no evidence for her assertions.

    • McCullough and Nick quarreling over who should interrupt whom.

    • Jolene Fuentes asking the Planning Commission to set a guideline that allowed her to do the math more easily.

  • Jolene Fuentes angrily called her fellow Commissioners “anti-business”.

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    WORST PERFORMANCE

    The City Manager, Bob Dunek, has “authored” several more inept and incompetent reports that bear directly on the well-being of the community, including the traffic commission report and his “murder report” in which despite his errors in math and graphing, showed that over the past 10 years Lake Forest had the 4th highest murder rate among all 12 cities in South Orange County.

     

    BEST PERFORMANCE

    In the past I’ve been pretty harsh on the Planning Commission, but their recent review of the alcohol licensing laws was truly inspirational. Leaving Fuentes out, the other 4 Commissioners did Yeoman’s work on this issue, but the standout had to be newcomer Tom Ludden who discovered that the applicant had a poor record with the State’s regulatory agency.

    (Question – why didn’t the well paid City staff discover this?)

     

    BIGGEST LIAR

    Only in Lake Forest could there be an award for “biggest liar” because only in Lake Forest do we have Scott Voigts and Kathy McCullough. On balance, Voigts and McCullough are probably tied for most lies in the past 4 years, but in the past 6 months, McCullough is the clear winner with the revelations surrounding DinnerGate. Voigts is the obvious runner-up, with his recent claim to being the current “Mayor of Lake Forest”

     

    MOST BROKEN PROMISES

    Dwight Robinson, who earned the epithet “Mayor Two-Face”, wins the award for most broken promises in 2014. Here are his promises and what he actually did, organized by date -

    • January 7, 2014. Promised to “use his business experience to oppose wasteful city spending.” Then he went ahead and voted for the City to spend $14K per year so that Council and Commissioner members could file their FPPC forms electronically.

  • January 21, 2014. Promised to “…eliminate backroom deals…” then accepted money from mobile home management and then voted to deny mobile home residents extra protection. Also he took money from CR&R and voted them a lucrative City contract in March 2014.

  • April 1, 2014. Promised to “…ensure that the public’s voice is heard” then voted against the Traffic Commission and the nonprofit Community Foundation.

  • May 6, 2014. Promised to “Promote Open Government. Implement a city “Sunshine Law” to make city government more transparent…” then voted against campaign finance limits and disclosing campaign contributions prior to voting on special interest legislation.

  • June 3, 2014. Promised to “Stop incumbent Councilmembers from billing Lake Forest taxpayers for personal expenses” but he’s been voting “yes” for all the personal expenses that McCullough bills taxpayers for, and when this was revealed, Robinson said and did nothing.

  • June 17, 2014. Promised to “Support Competitive Bidding” then voted for the City’s most expensive contract without a bid, one of several contracts without competitive bidding that Robinson has voted for.

  • July 1, 2014. Promised to “…make Lake Forest friendlier to businesses, creating more jobs” then voted to replace a Lake Forest company who had a contract for newsletter printing, eliminating the single largest local business recipient of City money.

  • Robinson, or should I say “Mayor Two-Face” apparently has no dignity. There is nothing he won’t promise, and once he promises, almost nothing he’ll actually do.

     

    COMING ATTRACTIONS

    Tomorrow we’ll discuss the up-coming Planning Commission meeting and on Thursday we’ll conclude our 6 month review and look forward. On Friday we’ll resume our “DinnerGate” investigation.

    Next week we’ll preview the 2014 election.

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