Health & Fitness
Planning Commissioners Say - "We Don't Plan!" (Part 1)
The meeting of the Planning Commission for Jan 23 has been cancelled. It turns out that the recently reconstituted Planning Commission cancels meetings regularly, and this is now the fifth time in less than a year that a meeting has been cancelled. That means more than 20% of their meetings have been cancelled because they thought they had nothing to do.
Having "nothing to do" is the theme of recent comments by Commissioners Fuentes and Hamilton. Both remarked from the dais that the Planning Commission could not do anything other than deal with the items put before them by staff. They ascribed their beliefs to something they were told, but neither one of them did anything to verify whether or not the information they received was accurate.
The idea that a “Planning Commission” would not do any “planning” was so incredible to me that I did their homework for them. I consulted the (always helpful) City Clerk and dug into City documents and State documents to see what the governing rules were for a Planning Commission to do some actual planning.
Find out what's happening in Lake Forestwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Before I reveal the results, we might ask the prior question – “Is there any planning to be done in Lake Forest?” (At this point you’re either smiling or holding your sides that are about to split from laughter). Almost everyone in the City knows that we need a lot of planning. Traffic is a problem everywhere, and about to get much much worse in Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills. But apart from traffic, there are many other planning issues facing the City. Here are a few off the top of my head –
What’s to become of Whispering Hills? Here are 6 acres in the middle of the city that sit like a scar across the landscape. The Community Garden people have been eyeing this area, as have some dog park advocates. Could this area be better put to commercial use, or sold?
Find out what's happening in Lake Forestwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
What’s to become of the 10 acres next to the railroad tracts along El Toro Rd? You probably didn’t even know this was City property.
What kinds of incentives can we offer to fill the many vacant storefronts that litter our City? Other cities seem to be coming out of the recession faster than we are, which is why our anticipated future sales tax revenue is among the lowest of our neighbors and less than half of the County in general.
Where are we going to fit the 6,000 new school children that come with the 4,500 new homes being built, most of them in Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills?
I could go on, but you should get the point. Planning is essential if we are to maintain a good quality of life.
Returning to the issue at hand (i.e., the assertion of PC members Fuentes and Hamilton that their hands are tied and they are restricted from doing anything proactive) I went through the relevant City and State authorities, and tomorrow we’ll see whether or not the Planning Commission is allowed to do any planning, or whether they are merely slaves to the whims of the City Council.
(BTW – in case you’ve forgotten, one of the chief reasons given by the ruling Gang of 3 (Voigts, Robinson, and Nick) for their choices in selecting Planning Commissioners was that these people (Fuentes, Brower, and Hamilton) were similar in philosophy to them and they wanted the PC to be an “extension” of their own beliefs. They deliberately overlooked more experienced and more qualified applicants to put their sycophants into office. It didn’t hurt, of course, that some of them had campaigned to put Voigts and Robinson into office, or that they gave considerable sums of money to support their campaigns. In any event, we’ve noted that in 2013 the City Council had a very poor record of achievement, and at one point I was tempted to call them “the do nothing” Council. So it’s not surprising that if a Council that achieves very little chooses Commissioners who are extensions of themselves, the Commissioners will balk at doing very much.)
