Lake Forest City Council Recap for March 5

Spending three hours at the Lake Forest City Council meeting last night was more entertaining than a comparable time spent watching the boob tube. Participants at the meeting were treated to drama, crime, comedy, religion, history, martial arts, finance and wildlife, and there was even the obligatory “cliff hanger” and “coming attractions” to end the evening. Let’s spin the dial and see what happened.

Finance

The city is doing very well financially, and we raised our estimates for revenues.

Wildlife

The City will spend $30,000 to study Village Pond Park and see if there are changes that should be made to the Park. But apparently the City is not willing to enforce its regulation that people do not feed the birds. Overfeeding of the ducks and geese is a major problem as two citizens attested, one of whom brought pictures of his home, car, and street inundated with bird waste. This overfeeding results in sick birds (remember the botulism epidemic 2 years ago?), overpopulation, and excess waste. The city could stop these problems tomorrow by simply enforcing  its regulations. But, for reasons known only to City management, they refuse to do so, and instead will spend $30,000 for some consulting company (who probably don’t live in Lake Forest) to tell them to do what they should be doing already.

Crime

Contrary to past reports, the City apparently has not refused to install a light at the corner of El Rond and Ridge Route where Police report that criminals congregate at night. According to the City Manager, they haven’t approved it. It’s still under study. Meanwhile, the area continues to be plagued with crime, a lot of which goes unreported.

Religion

There was a lot of debate about the invocation, with Mayor Voigts advocating heavily for it, supported by his good friend (and minister’s son) Dwight Robinson. But 3 speakers gave good reasons why the City shouldn’t proceed, and Peter Herzog had on hand 2 e-mail messages that also opposed the invocation. As far as I could tell, there were about a dozen good reasons not to proceed, and no one, not even the Mayor, offered an affirmative reason. The only vague reason to proceed was that it’s done in other places.

Peter Herzog was opposed, largely because he was worried about using staff time for what our City attorney offered was a laborious process to proceed in a manner that would not invite lawsuits. Adam Nick was opposed from a constitutional perspective. Having grown up in  Iran he was all too aware of the problems of mixing church and state, and didn’t want to see it happen here.

It was left to Kathryn McCullough, a licensed and ordained minister, to cast the deciding vote, which wasn’t ever cast. Instead, McCullough asked that the whole matter be re-thought and brought back to the council at a later date.

(FWIW – I came into the meeting vaguely in favor of an invocation. But after listening to the 3 speakers I was convinced it’s not a good idea. If this interests you, I suggest you watch the video of the meeting at the City’s website. I thought the presentations were excellent)

Martial Arts

It was during the 30 minute long discussion on the invocation that we had a sparring session between Peter Herzog and Adam Nick. It went for two rounds.

Round 1: Peter Herzog led with a right cross, claiming that he was prepared to support the invocation until he read one of the e-mail messages, and this changed his mind so entirely that he was now opposed. Adam Nick came in slugging with a body blow. He said “A mind that can be changed by a single paragraph is probably not a sound mind.”

Round 2: Peter Herzog recovered. “I listen to the public” he proudly proclaimed, noting that all 5 public comments were opposed. Nick came back. He pointed out that Herzog only listens to the public when it serves him. Otherwise, he doesn’t listen to the public at all. Nick went on to talk about the public hearing for granting of a liquor license where the public was opposed but Herzog, then Mayor, steam rolled it through. Herzog countered that Nick couldn’t bring that subject up, since it was under litigation. The fighters called for the referee (City Attorney) who sent them back to their respective corners.

(Hint to Adam Nick: next time you want to give examples of Herzog’s non-responsiveness to public opinion, you could use the examples of an animal shelter or the medical marijuana dispensaries without getting into trouble with the ref).

Coming Attractions

It looks like the City has been busy as a bee getting ready for transparency. According to the City Manager by July almost anything you ever wanted to know about the city will be online, going back as far as 1991. Among the long list of features enumerated by Debra Rose, there were two notable exclusions – FPPC filings and City compensation data. Dwight Robinson and Adam Nick strongly urged the staff to give these two areas “priority”. Nick went on to point out that the Grand Jury report on the city’s previous effort at transparency showed that we did poorly compared to our neighbors (see my article for more info), and urged the City to do a better job. “I want triple A” he said.

Boy. What a night. I can hardly wait for the next meeting.