Mission Viejo’s Purveyors of Poverty
Staff editorial

The Mission Viejo News Blog sounded the alarm throughout the city campaign of 2006. The entire city council – all five members – sold out residents by voting for Steadfast’s affordable housing project. All five council members ignored residents’ appeals, including a petition with approximately 3,000 signatures, to stop a developer from ruining a neighborhood. Instead of answering to residents, all five council members overturned commercial zoning near Los Alisos Blvd. and Jeronimo Road. Their votes allowed the developer to proceed with plans to add more housing, more traffic and new burdens on city services and schools.

Forget the claim of an invasion from out of town. The poverty pimps live in Mission Viejo. They comprise the Mission Viejo City Council. Others purveyors of poverty include city staffers pushing the projects. Staffers evidently don’t give a rip about preserving the character of neighborhoods in the city where they work.

How imminent is the threat of more overcrowding and decline? While most residents yawned their way through the March 30 issue of Saddleback Valley News, at least one alert city activist noticed the fine print in the Public Notices section. Page 44 includes a city announcement: Notice of Public Hearing and Notice of Intent to Adopt a Mitigated Negative Declaration. The Planning Commission will conduct a hearing on April 23, and the council hearing will be held May 7. The issue is additional affordable housing projects.

Sites under consideration include a 2.74-acre parcel in Mission Foothill Marketplace (across the street from Palmia), a 7.12-acre parcel at Oso Parkway / Montenoso Drive, an 8.5-acre parcel near the animal shelter and an 8.5-acre parcel on Cabot Road, adjacent to the freeway. For Capo parents, all except the Mission Foothill Marketplace parcel are in YOUR school district. Just in case Newhart Middle School and Capo High don’t get enough poor kids bused in from San Juan Capistrano, the city of Mission Viejo will have a new crop of poverty-stricken residents to subsidize.

Many residents sought quality of life by moving to Mission Viejo from cities like Garden Grove and La Habra, which they dubbed Garbage Grove and Guadalahabra. With council members preferring developer payoffs (all five council members accepted “campaign donations” from Steadfast) over accountability to residents, Mission Viejo’s decline will continue.

The blog pointed out messages of two council challengers in the November 2006 race. Jim Woodin and Michael Ferrall denounced continued housing development, and they vowed to protect Mission Viejo from such intrusions of high-density subsidized housing. Woodin said he’d put zone changes on the ballot for voters to decide. The election was hardly a vote of confidence for incumbents, and Council Members Trish Kelley, John Paul Ledesma and Lance MacLean were reelected with anemic totals.

Residents who were too busy or too confused to vote out the incumbents now have the option of watching foundations of affordable housing being poured in their neighborhoods. Business will be booming for burglar alarms in the so-called safest city in the universe.

The Buzz column, March 30, 2007

Some Mission Viejo residents were polled this week in a phone survey by the Santa Margarita Water District, with an implication of water being in short supply. The timing was likely coincidental regarding the temporary shortage caused by replacing a filtration plant in Yorba Linda. If residents receiving the call responded that water supply isn’t a critical issue to them, they were polled on how the matter could be made more important. Other questions dealt with increased rates, the influence of such groups as the Sierra Club on public opinion, pursuing desalinization versus building a reservoir to increase supply and the public image of the water district.

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Question from a reader: “A blog article said Justin McCusker sold his house in Mission Viejo. Did he leave town?” Blog staffers heard McCusker (unsuccessful 2006 council candidate) moved to Rancho Santa Margarita.

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Reader feedback: “With County Supervisors Campbell, Norby and Bates already tied to lobbyists, does it matter if the newest one [Janet Nguyen] is also tied to lobbyists? Write these people off already.”

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A blurb in the March 30 OC Register mentioned Mission Viejo’s economic development program. Two councilwomen and a couple of city staffers are supposedly leading the city’s economic development effort. With housewives and government employees turning the wheels of commerce, an economic boom is unlikely. The program described in the paper is “Internet Marketing.” The goals of attracting popular restaurants and bringing big-name stores into town are apparently not part of the program. Meanwhile, Mission Viejo residents are patronizing popular restaurants and big-name stores in neighboring cities.

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After the council on March 19 voted 5-0 in favor of Councilman John Paul Ledesma’s worker verification proposal, Ledesma appeared March 26 on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News Network show. Several people remarked to blog staffers that Ledesma did a good job of explaining the city’s position and the importance of following the law to verify legal status for city employees and people who work for city contractors.

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As mentioned in last week’s Buzz column, the only Mission Viejo resident at the March 19 council meeting who seemed not to be in full support of the worker verification plan was Steven Guess, who was campaign manager for unsuccessful 2006 campaign candidate Brian Skalsky. Guess asked about the cost of verifying employment and following the law. Although his question was answered at the meeting, Guess repeated the question in his March 25 letter to the OC Register, claiming he didn’t get an answer. The long answer includes the economic damage of having illegal workers on the payroll when laws are not followed. Several Mission Viejo residents addressed this aspect in detail at the March 19 meeting during their public comments.