Put Lake Forest First - not Last

For years I have been complaining that the City doesn’t spend enough of its budget here at home – on businesses in Lake Forest and on the people who live in Lake Forest. I coined the term “Put Lake Forest First” and this is now the 10th article with that name.

To bolster my position I started doing studies to determine exactly how much of the approximately $35,000,000 stays in the City each year. My methodology is pretty simple. I look at the official City warrant register and see how many checks are made out to people/businesses with Lake Forest addresses.

Simple doesn’t mean foolproof. This simple methodology has its flaws which have been discussed. But if this methodology has some inherent errors, it has the benefit of being easy to calculate, and over time, the results will show a pattern, regardless of the errors.

In past years, the percent of money spent in our city fluctuated between 2% and 5%, with most figures near the 5% level. With my analysis of spending this month, we hit a new low – 1.8%. In October 2013 the City spent $3,446,199.23 and only  $62,087.79 was spent here.

It’s even worse than that.

Of the $62,087.79 spent on people/businesses in Lake Forest, $58,588.12 or 94% of the subtotal went to one business – Spectrum Care, a landscaping business in Foothill Ranch. That means a mere $3,529.67 went to other people/businesses in Lake Forest. Excluding Spectrum, a mere 1% of the city’s spending was spent in the city.

We are spending more money on businesses in Phoenix, Laguna Beach, Boulder, Pico Rivera, Santa Ana, Rancho Santa Margherita, and National City than we are in our home town. Exclude Spectrum from the record, and we are spending more money in a dozen more cities (e.g., Fullerton, Pasadena, City of Industry, Encinitas, San Juan Capistrano, Ontario, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Laguna Hills) than we spend in our back yard.

Here are some examples of City spending that went to businesses outside the City that might otherwise have gone to businesses or people inside the City –

·  Stanley Hoffman Associates (Los Angeles) – Fiscal study - $3150

·  Animal Pest Management (Chino) – Pest Control - $185

·  Bee Removers (Claremont) – Bee Removal - $145

·  Bismark Oregon (Anaheim) – Artwork - $100

·  California Auto Print (Fullerton) – Business Cards - $50.45

·  Cummins & White (Newport Beach) – Legal Services - $1375

·  Jamey Clark (Laguna Hills) – Plumbing repairs - $2603.92

·  Macias Gini & O’Connell (Sacramento) – Auditing - $383.75

·  Sawako Agravante (Costa Mesa) – Artwork - $1310

·  Studio Two (Laguna Hills) – Printing - $2509.66

·  Woodruff Spradlin & Smart (Costa Mesa) – Legal Services - $2992.50

·  Workshop on Wellness (Ladera Ranch) – CPR - $215.60

Do we have no lawyers, no auditors, no plumbers, no CPR instructors? Do our printers cost too much? Are our artists just not good enough?

We need to “Put Lake Forest First.” Both Councilmen Nick and Robinson have supported this principle in theory and action. Earlier this month, Councilman Robinson helped organize a workshop that was designed to help local businesses and local residents learn how to conduct business with the local, state, and federal governments. At the last Council meeting, Councilman Nick asked his fellow council members to support setting up a new commission with the sole duty of increasing the amount of the City budget that is spent on the City. These are praiseworthy efforts, and they bode well for the future, but with such a poor track record, could we do any worse? Tomorrow I want to offer some specific suggestions on how we can spend more Lake Forest money in our City.