The Bad Old Days May be Back
by Dale Tyler

At the April 16 council meeting, three members conspired with the City Attorney to prevent the citizens from exercising their rights to speak on certain issues that come before the city council. These three members, Kelley, MacLean and Ury, approved Item No. 26, the proposal put forward by Bill Curley that would prevent citizens from “pulling” any item on the Council's Consent Calendar to permit open discussion of the issue.

The significance of this anti-democratic action is probably best understood by looking back in city history. From 1994 through the election in 2002, a group of four council members in Mission Viejo showed the public how little they cared about public input. Sherri Butterfield, Susan Withrow, Bill Craycraf and another council member, now deceased, were responsible for keeping the public in the dark as much as possible. From 1 a.m. discussions on minor-league baseball parks to ignoring more than 7,000 Mission Viejo residents' signatures on a referendum to stop rezoning business property for apartments, to browbeating a fellow council member in closed session, which earned them all convictions for violating the Public Records Act, these council members worked hard to prevent the public from participating in city government. Various members of the Committee for Integrity in Government worked diligently to expose waste and secret cost overruns despite the efforts of city workers.

In 2002, Kelly and MacLean were elected on promises to clean up the secrecy and backroom dealing that was prevalent in Mission Viejo city government. Existing council members Ledesma and Reavis, who worked for reform against Butterfield and Withrow for many years, were finally able to start the process of opening city government. Ledesma, Reavis, Kelly and MacLean, the new council majority, put into place several reforms intended to open city government to the citizens. One of these reforms was more openness at city council meetings, including the right to publicly question any item on the council agenda, including the consent calendar. All this sounded good, and it looked for a short time like the new council members would be able to work with Reavis and Ledesma to truly reform our city government.

Unfortunately, the reforms stalled and, despite promises by Kelley and MacLean, the ouster of Dan Joseph, the City Manager who was responsible for many of the problems and secrecy in the city government, was delayed over and over by Kelley and MacLean. Mostly meaningless platitudes sponsored by Kelley and MacLean, including “character words of the month” and workshops, replaced real action.

Astute observers of city government began to see the true colors of the two new council members as, once again, citizen concerns were ignored and the council became more and more isolated from the people of Mission Viejo. With the election of Ury in 2004, the council majority shifted more firmly against open and honest government and toward a “We know best – just stay home and be quiet” attitude. Just last year, in 2006, Kelley and MacLean won reelection, along with Ledesma, in a race that featured seven challengers and a very low voter turnout. It was if the people of Mission Viejo had lost interest in their city government.

Now we see the true faces of Kelley, MacLean and Ury. They have decided, over the objections of the public and council members Ledesma and Reavis, that the opinions and concerns of the citizens of Mission Viejo are less important than the opinions of Kelley, MacLean and Ury. During the discussion of Item 26 at the April 16 meeting, it was revealed that less than 40 minutes were spent on six items pulled from the consent calendar, compared to more than 21 hours of council meetings and more than 162 minutes of council comments since January 20, 2006. It was also pointed out that speaking directly to an item of concern causes the staff to report directly on the issue and that citizen comments are thus more focused and germane than if they were made in the overall public comment section of the meeting, which is to be used primarily for non-agendized items.

During the discussion that followed, MacLean claimed that the consent calendar items are strictly routine, and he objected to the public taking “valuable city council time” by speaking on these items. One wonders why he objects to the public raising their concerns at city council meetings.

Kelley claimed that preventing the public from speaking somehow improved public access to council members. She also claimed that having the public speaking on consent calendar items at council meetings was somehow abusive, perhaps of her very valuable time.

Ury echoed the idea that the public abused the council by the public commenting on these items. He was apparently upset by a speaker who questioned an expenditure for a large amount of software that Ury supported and that indirectly benefited the company he worked for at the time. In that particular case, there was no other opportunity to address that specific issue, and the speaker offered an alternative to spending the funds that was not considered by staff. Ledesma and Reavis spoke up strongly for the public's right to speak, but they were ultimately defeated in a 3-2 vote.

In my view, we have gone back to 2000, where three council members, Ury, Kelley and MacLean, are actively working against the public interest. We will see how they vote in upcoming months, but it will be no surprise if they roll over for the “Poverty Pimps” and pass new zoning rules that will devalue Mission Viejo by building many hundreds of new low-income housing units.