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Health & Fitness

Strategic Planning for Lake Forest

Here's a summary of the recent Strategic Planning session held by 14 members of the council and the commissions

 

The City held a joint session of the council and both commissions to do some strategic planning for the next 5 years. Billed as a “workshop”, it consisted of a 40 minute opening monologue by City Manager Dunek in which he read from the 100+ page report that had already been distributed to the members. Midway through his monologue, he noted that half of the people were beginning to doze off, so he asked that the air conditioning be turned up to revive his fading audience.

Once he finished, Dunek turned it over to Mayor Voigts, and for the next 2 hours, various council and commission members offered their views of what was needed to make our City better. Everyone, that is, except newly appointed Planning Commissioner Brower who was the only person who missed the meeting. 

The two topics that received the most support were the need to make the city “greener” and the need for an off leash area for dog owners. On the green issue, Commissioners Hughes, Herrin, and Zechmeister offered the following suggestions

• Convert street and park lighting to LED to save money (Hughes)
• Use solar energy on buildings, parks, projects, etc. (Zechmeister)
• Use green products in all city projects (Herrin)
• Need to be more water wise (Herrin)
• Need to do a better job encouraging recycling (Herrin)

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On the off leash area for dog owners, Parks and Recreation Chairperson Loretta Herrin was very enthusiastic and Vice Chairperson Jim Rosenberg said they’d put the staff on a “whip-cracking schedule” to report back to the Commission by the middle of April.

The next two topics to receive the most attention were parking and creating partnerships. Planning Commission Chairperson Tim Hughes said that “the parking element is badly outdated” and Commissioner Verplancke noted that all the extra cars on the street, that should be in garages and/or driveways, meant that we had more crime, dirtier streets, and water pollution from urban runoff. No one had a good idea of how to deal with this problem, but everyone agreed it needed addressing.

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In terms of creating partnerships, Mayor Voigts was particularly interested in getting sponsors for the sports park. Commissioner Herrin is looking for sponsors for the coming dog park, and Commissioner Rosenberg offered the idea of getting more grants and setting up a nonprofit foundation to represent the City. If you haven’t already figured it out, Parks Commissioner Rosenberg was the clear leader (IMHO) in offering good ideas.

Coming next in the list of issues offered by the group were cleaning up Village Pond Park (VPP), getting better financial tools to assist in the planning process, and taking advantage of social networks to create a more engaged population.

On VPP Councilwoman McCullough said “You don’t want to drive past there in the summertime with your windows down”, referring to the bird excrement that piles up on the lawns because people overfeed the birds. Councilman Herzog wanted VPP “put on the front burner”.

Getting better financial tools was a concern of Commissioners Hughes and Hamilton. Taking advantage of Facebook and Twitter to engage our citizens was a priority for Commissioner Rosenberg, and Commissioner Herrin was interested in better communication between the City and local neighborhoods. BTW – talking about an engaged citizenry, there were less than a handful of citizens in the audience, and only one of them spoke.

Other issues discussed included crime, programming for seniors, the vacant ramp at the end of Ridge Route, planned improvements to Regency Park, and the continued failure of the Eastern part of the city (Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills) to integrate with the Western half.

On the crime front, Councilman Nick was extremely concerned that our City ranks 8th out of 10 compared to our neighbors with regard to high crime rates, and more concerned since nearly 40% of our budget goes to Police services. He wondered if other cities with better records also paid as much as we do. Council members Robinson and Herzog were not as concerned with the crime issue, saying that despite what the data show, they felt the city was safe.

All told, it was an interesting meeting and one that showed that among our council and commission members we have an impressive breadth and depth of talent. But what didn’t come out of this meeting were any concrete plans as to how to achieve some of the notable goals and objectives that were raised. I think one reason for this was the structure of the meeting, and I hope that future meetings can be designed more to achieve solutions than merely to identify problems.

 

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