Mission Viejo Politics and Government – 2006 Year in Review, Part 1
by Dale Tyler

Mission Viejo is a beautiful city with well-maintained parks and public spaces. We have a very fancy library and city hall that are fine places to visit and work. City employees do their best to help residents and operate the city in an efficient manner. However, there is a darker side to Mission Viejo government as well. Internal power struggles, the growing size and cost of city government and a City Council that can't seem to function without squabbling and fails to make the hard choices the residents should be demanding all contribute to the events that occurred during 2006.

We started the year with two main controversies: a) the complete lack of competence of our city attorney, Peter Thorson; b) a proposal to partially convert one our city's last remaining empty commercial sites to high-density housing.

During January and February, the city council had many closed-session discussions about replacing our city attorney. Unfortunately, due to a lack of consensus, the council decided at their February 20 meeting to retain the same law firm as before, although we got a new person from that firm to advise the city. William Curley would prove to be a little better than Thorson in some ways, but he still is far below the standard we should expect from our city attorney. When asked for legal opinions, he makes long speeches without much useful content.

Also of great concern to residents was the proposal by Steadfast to build a number of high-density residential units on part of a site that was zoned commercial only. A full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) was done. Unfortunately, this report was faulty and failed to accurately disclose many impacts on the surrounding area, including traffic. The company that did the traffic study failed to account for the reverse-direction commutes, and it used ridiculous factors for traffic generated by the commercial and residential components of the project. In addition, it provided no real study of the long-term costs to the city of the residential component compared to building the property as it was originally zoned. Several analyses presented in this NewsBlog outlined some of these impacts, but neither the Planning Commission nor the City Council did anything to perform a detailed analysis of these concerns. The rezoning and proposed residential units were approved on February 20, 2006, much to the detriment of our city and its residents. Even though this project was to house a number of low-income units, later in 2006, the purveyors of poverty known as the Public Law Center sued the city and Steadfast because the low-income units were only one bedroom. Also, Steadfast was busy paying money to the city council members as “campaign contributions” to ensure approval of this project. These payments would become a source of controversy later in 2006 as the election approached.

On February 6, Councilman Ury proposed implementing a wireless network to cover the city council chambers. This idea sounded like something that would better serve residents and should have been implemented for less than $10K. Instead, the city staff and Ury turned the project into a typical Mission Viejo boondoggle costing over $268K.

On March 4, another example of excessive spending occurred when the City Council approved spending more than $235K on replacement computers for city employees. While some of the computers being replaced were more than four years old, others were as new as two years. Our analysis showed that a phased upgrade program would be less costly and possibly allow the city to escape the constant upgrade cycle by using free software instead of Microsoft Windows. Councilman Ury, who works for Intel, a Microsoft partner, ridiculed the idea of using Linux as 'incompatible” and “ill advised.” Ury maintained his opinion despite the growing use of free software in governments inside and outside California. A pilot program could have saved the taxpayers a lot of money and allowed Mission Viejo to keep current with new technologies. Once again, power struggles and bloated bureaucracies won out over good government.

On April 3, several council members, in reaction to the growing concern about CUSD's Superintendent Fleming and the financial difficulties of the district, asked for the city staff to audit CUSD spending on its schools inside Mission Viejo. Many citizens believed that CUSD had long neglected certain schools, especially Newhart Middle School. The NewsBlog ran a number of detailed reports on declining and potentially hazardous conditions at that and other schools. It seemed as though the $35M Fleming and the school board spent on the new administration building may have caused them to shortchange buildings actually used for teaching. One problem was the flip-flop done by Trish Kelley. After years of complete and unwavering support, she apparently decided that the risks to her political future were too great and she began to condemn CUSD's actions.

On May 1, the city staff recommended approval of a plan to install bathrooms costing more than $500K each in city parks. One might wonder how it was possible to formulate a plan where the city would spend as much as a house would cost to place bathrooms in our parks. Jokes about gold-plated toilets and the hanging gardens of Babylon aside, this was but one more example of the grandiose thinking that exists inside the city bureaucracy. Fortunately, probably because of citizen protests and the upcoming election, this matter was tabled.

On May 20, the City Council approved placing a half-cent county sales tax known as Measure M on the November ballot by a 4-1 vote. Councilman Ledesma was the sole dissenting vote in the best spirit of smaller conservative government. Despite the promises of every other council member not raise taxes, they all ignored their prior promises. The NewsBlog and other conservative groups all opposed the tax. The OCTA, which has been spending the existing sales tax money in a very ineffective way, was criticized for its wasteful ways in the OC Register and other media. OCTA was caught with its hand in the cookie jar when it was revealed that taxpayer funds were paying for advertisements supporting the new tax. OCTA agreed to stop doing this, after substantial pressure brought by the OC Register and others. Measure M passed at the polls in November, dooming taxpayers to 30 more years of waste and inefficiency at the hands of the OCTA.

We will continue in Part 2, next week.