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Health & Fitness

City Council Preview for April 2

What's on tap for the City Council meeting?

 

Prior to the regular meeting Tuesday night, the City will recognize the recent graduates of the “emergency preparedness academy”. I took the course several years ago when it was first offered and I can whole heartedly recommend that you enroll. For more info, click here

Classes start in January but there is a waiting list so the sooner you get on the list, the better.

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There are three items of interest on the regular calendar.

Last month Mayor Voigts asked that the council consider getting some professional help for two seemingly disparate areas – legislative advocacy and grant writing.

Find out what's happening in Lake Forestwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Legislative Advocacy

Because the City is impacted by regional, state, and federal legislation, it seems important for us to keep abreast of pending legislation, and even more important to advocate when appropriate. Right now the City has a fairly low key approach, with some updates that come near the end of each meeting under the heading “Legislative and Regulatory Matters”.

FWIW – the City’s ability to keep track of legislation seems to be extremely poor. In the “City Council Agenda Preview” the staff talk about 3 bills – SB 386 (sex offenders), AB 265 (dog park liability), and AB 810 (public safety data sharing). But the written summary from City Manager Dunek only talks about 2 of these bills (AB 810 and AB 265), and the “2013-14 Legislative Tracking Summary” spreadsheet that accompanies his letter lists 3 bills – AB 5 (homelessness), SB 1 (Sustainable communities), and SB 33 (Infrastructure finance) - that aren’t listed or discussed in any of the other publications. So what is it? 2 bills? 3? or 6? I think it’s 6, which means that all three summaries of pending legislative action are deficient. Clearly the City needs to do a better job of tracking before we worry about spending money for advocating.

Moreover, as far as I can tell, the City has no way of knowing whether or not our support has made any difference in the past. So before we spend a lot of money in this area, an assessment of our goals and objectives might be in order, and a dramatic improvement in our tracking is called for.

Grant Writing

With regard to grant writing, there is a clear need for the City to use whatever resources we can to get more funds to support City programs. This was one of the topics raised at the recent “strategic planning workshop” and is certainly worthwhile. But I don’t see how tying this together with legislative advocacy makes any sense. I’d like to suggest that grant writing and alternative fund raising opportunities (a nonprofit foundation, partnerships with businesses, etc.) is such an important issue that we mobilize a task force consisting of members of the Planning and the Parks/Recreation Commissions along with the Chamber of Commerce, and come up with a long term comprehensive approach to the issue.

Housing Report

The federal government requires that the city, to obtain funds, perform an annual assessment of housing. As far as I can tell, for 2012 this is what we accomplished –
• 7 homeowners assisted with “first time buyers” program
• 229 residents received Section 8 assistance
• 23 new “above moderate income” multifamily units added (but no units in the categories “very low”, “low”, or “moderate”)
• 6 rehabilitated units - 2 “very low income” and 4 “low income”

Since 2006 the total number of units built under this program is 49, with 47 of them falling into the “above moderate income” category. The city built 2 out of 15 of the units projected to be built in the lower income categories.

All things considered, this isn’t an impressive list of achievements, especially with regard to the spirit of diversity in the federal programs. In addition, the report given to the council is clearly lacking in detail. For example, the report says that 229 residents received Section 8 assistance. Is that more or less than last year? Is it a continuation of a trend, or the start of a counter trend? What does 229 Section 8 recipients mean in the context of a city like Lake Forest? Should we be doing more? or less?

The same questions remain unanswered with regard to the other data in the report (e.g., rehabilitated units, new units). Mere numbers without intelligent analysis are worthless. How can we expect our Council to make good decision when they are given poor reports from staff?

Transparency

In his never ending quest for transparency, Councilman Nick has asked the council to review our policies vis-à-vis “variances”. Variances are those things that let an individual/business do something out of the ordinary and outside the existing legal structure. According to the City’s attorney the term “ordinarily applies to land use decisions related to unique physical characteristics of property,” but Mr. Nick has something much broader in mind, including any actions by the City that permit anyone to do anything out of the ordinary that otherwise should be reviewed by the public and not left to the sole discretion of City employees.

Until we learn more about what Mr. Nick has in mind, we can’t really offer any opinion, except to say that, in general, transparency and public review are good things, and unless there is a compelling reason not to go in that direction, governments should be open and invite public discourse. Thank you Mr. Nick for keeping this vital issue in front of us even if the rest of the council hasn’t come aboard yet.

That’s about it folks. The only other item of interest is that this will be the first meeting of the council since Peter Herzog was convicted of a DUI. The details of that arrest can be viewed elsewhere. Perhaps he will use the comment portion of the meeting to apologize to the citizens for disgracing himself and the city. Perhaps he will use the opportunity to announce his resignation. Recently he said that no council person should serve more than 8 years. He’s served nearly 20 years, so his “prime time” has clearly come and gone. By his own standards it’s time for him to call it a day. Given his conviction for a DUI and his reckless disregard for the safety of people in our City, this is all the more reason for his departure.

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