Dressed to Kill
by Bo Klein

I have been asked my opinion as to why the city is now involved in a lawsuit over the state’s affordable housing program.

First, in my opinion, there’s someone who wants to profit from a lawsuit, namely, the attorney who filed the case. This attorney has been lurking around City Hall for some time, like a buzzard circling a kill. Her clothing even has a dark, tattered look about it in a way I have seen cartoon buzzard characters dressed. At any rate, my understanding of her situation is that she performs challenges in the legal system and gets paid from grant money. Perhaps, if she wins a case, maybe even some cash from a city would be forthcoming, but I haven’t heard of it occurring before.

The second and most likely reason our city is currently jeopardized with a lawsuit is because some city council members personally took it upon themselves to handle the housing issue and, clearly, they are not qualified to do the task. Council Members Trish Kelley, Lance MacLean and Frank Ury deliberately removed the prior planning commission, which was working on a cohesive housing plan, and they scrapped the plan. To replace the plan that the experienced and educated planners had in place, Ury and MacLean planted themselves on a special ad hoc housing committee, which went nowhere but to the current lawsuit in a short time. I suspect they were attempting to wheel and deal the special privileges attached to an affordable housing plan to whichever landlord or developer best suited their own purposes.

It’s amazing how a fine city like Mission Viejo can become a target for predators. But, then again, we seem to have hatched some of them from our own council nest. As a result, our city’s future nest eggs are in jeopardy.